her father. However, this novel goes beyond Porius's experience, at times focusing on other characters. This includes the highly significant scene involving Myrddin's magical transformation of the owl Blodeuwedd into a young girl. Another important episode occurs when Morfydd, and Euronwy, Porius's mother, unite "to aid the endangered House of Cunedda". This involves Morfydd "sacrificing her love for Rhun" by agreeing to a political marriage with Porius, "in order to create harmony between the Roman and aboriginal peoples". Then there is the scene which involves Brochvael, Morfydd's scholarly father, who represents classical Roman culture, confronting the aboriginal worlds of Sibylla and the Druids, which dramatizes the novel's central political conflict in yet another way. The novel's final climax comes with Porius's "rescue" of Myrddin from his entombment by the enchantress Nineue on the summit of Snowdon, Wales' highest mountain. A scene where, according to Powys scholar C. A. Coates, Porius saves "the good magician" by resisting "the temptation of the bad fairy". However, the ending is ambiguous, and "Merlin's stature at the end of the novel is such to preclude any sense that his is not in fact the ultimate power". Powys provides invaluable commentary on Nineue in his "The Characters of the Book". However, by freeing Myrddin Porius makes possible Myrddin's return in two thousand years to re-establish the Saturnian Age of Gold. At the end of the novel Ederynion remains free from Saxon domination, a freedom that it will retain and which will shape the subsequent history of the Welsh: "The new nation, the Cymry, is to be born as a result of the Saxon invasion". And Porius himself has also gained the necessary personal freedom and maturity he that will need as the future ruler of Edeyrnion. Characters Porius is the thirty-year-old son of Prince Einion and Princess Euronwy and the hero of this historical romance. Poet and literary critic Jeremy Hooker draws attention to the similarity between the names Porius and Powys. Powys has taken Porius's name from a Latin inscription on a stone found near Trawsfynydd, Gwynedd, Wales, which he describes in a letter to his sister Philippa of 24 December [1947], as "the only authentic Historical Document of the Date", i.e. 499 AD. The Porius Stone reads: Porius hic in tumuli iacet Homo Christianus fuit, “Porius here lies buried. He was a Christian man”. Porius has the blood of the ancient aboriginal giants, the