Last Seen in Massilia (by Steven Saylor)

Following on from the cliffhanger at the end of Rubicon, Last Seen in Massilia follows three main plot threads; the resolution of the cliffhanger, a mystery concerning the death of a young woman and the story of the siege of Massilia by Caesar's troops. The story of the siege is true, in the general outline; the story of the young woman is an ancient fiction (Saylor mentions in his Author's Note that it comes from Lucian) and the story of Meto is, of course, modern fiction. All three are effectively told, gripping stories, though since about a third of the book is concerned with wrapping up earlier plot threads, it definitely isn't a good volume to start reading the series with!

The narrative of the siege is especially effective - Vitruvius is once again a very useful tool for explaining the mechanics of the thing and the in-story narration of the sea battle immediately calls to mind Lucan's equally gory account of the battle in his poem the Civil War. Lucan is one of my favourite ancient epic poets, so I was especially pleased to see this shout-out of sorts to him (our heroes don't witness the battle, but are told about it later by a survivor). Other elements, like the banquet in which one entire course is composed of a single olive, provide evocative snapshots of the horrors of a prolonged siege.

The tradition of the scapegoat, as outlined in the book (in which the people of Massilia would fatten up and then sacrifice one of their citizens in the hope of encouraging the gods to be more kind to the rest of them) is one of those things that I tend to be a bit sceptical about in real life - like all those various and extreme Spartan traditions that we hear about from outsiders who may have been exaggerating, or may have misunderstood. On the other hand, people do terrible things when frightened, so perahps it is true, depressing as that thought is. Hieronymous the scapegoat himself is both an extremely likeable character - these come few and far between in stories about the Late Republic! - and a very useful narrative device that ensures Gordianus and Davus do not become malnourished or even seriously threatened, for the most part, and they are able to observe the siege as outsiders even while they're within the walls.

As in some of the stories in The House of Vestals, I guessed the solution to the mystery(ies) fairly early on, but could not foresee how the whole thing would resolve itself. As in the case of Rubicon, the ending is so bittersweet as to verge on the downright tragic, but lightened by another, happier resolution that cheers up the final few pages. I enjoyed this very much and I'm looking forward to the next book - which I'm sure will refer back to this one a bit - but I do hope it has a happier ending!

Marseille (Massilia) today - sadly not my picture, I haven't yet been there!

The House of the Vestals (by Steven Saylor)

 
I'm delighted to say, I have a new flash fiction (short short fiction) story up at 365 Tomorrows: 'A Shared Interest in History'. Not actually as connected to Classics as the title might sound, but there's definitely a running theme in what I'm writing at the moment..

The House of the Vestals is a collection of short stories that fills in some of the gaps in Gordianus the Finder’s earlier years, between the events of his debut novel Roman Blood and the second novel in the series, Arms of Nemesis. A mixture of stories from historical records and purely fictional mysteries, the collection is broad ranging in terms of setting, subject matter and outcome and is as enjoyable to read as all Saylor’s work. The historical material is interesting, but the real value of this book for fans of the series is the way it enriches the life history and character of the fictional Gordianus and his friends and family.

The best thing about this collection for fans is that it outlines the entire friendship between Gordianus and Lucius Claudius, a character we only meet once he’s dead in Catilina’s Riddle because the country farm he leaves Gordianus in his will is required for the plot of that novel. Here, Saylor gets a chance to introduce us properly to Lucius Claudius and explain how he and Gordianus became friends, and Lucius Claudius features in several of the stories here. He’s a thoroughly likeable character, and I found myself wishing he could feature more – while alive – in a full length novel. He’s also rather useful, as a rich and well-connected friend who doesn’t come with the mass of hidden intentions and conflicting loyalties of Cicero and other powerful (and real) people.

Another nice thing about this collection is that it gives us a glimpse of Gordianus, Eco and Bethesda’s life together when they were younger, and even better, both Eco and Bethesda get the chance to solve a mystery themselves. Bethesda, especially, always strikes me as a very underused character in the novels (though she gets a chance to shine – if that’s the right word in the circumstances – every now and again) so it’s lovely to see her get some attention here. It’s also interesting to see how she and Gordianus interact while she is still his slave, since she is absent for much of Arms of Nemesis and freed and married to Gordianus after that. Their interactions fit quite neatly with how I imagine some master/concubine relationships might have functioned, when the master is kind (and single).

The historical content in the stories is as entertaining and as accurate as ever. ‘The Tale of the Treasure House’ suffers somewhat if you know the sources, because it’s lifted almost directly from a story in Herodotus’ best known part of his Histories, his description of Egypt, with just some minor tweaking by Bethesda. Since the change is so minimal, this does make the story rather a lot less interesting when you already know it. The other historical stories, though (‘Death Wears a Mask’, ‘A Will is a Way’, ‘The Alexandrian Cat’ and ‘The House of the Vestals’) are from more obscure bits of sources and are more substantially altered or added to, while ‘Little Caesar and the Pirates’ takes inspiration from history and creates a new story around it. I particularly like the expansion of very brief historical notes in ‘A Will is a Way’, which is very effective. The reamining stories, 'The Lemures', 'The Disappearance of the Saturnalia Silver' and 'King Bee and Honey', are purely fictional, though inspired by bits and pieces of Roman literature and social history.

Saylor includes an excellent Author’s Note at the back of the book, detailing all the sources for the stories. For ‘The House of the Vestals’, he explains that he had to do an enormous amount of legwork tracking down one and two-line references to the incident in question. Luckily for those of us working on this story at the moment, two articles have since been published (in journals that are available on JSTOR, the online journal storage site, even better!) which go through all the references to the case in minute detail, thus saving the rest of us hours of trawling through Cicero and Plutarch. (Also, we now have the ability to do electronic word searches of the texts. Which helps too.) Both articles offer slightly different summaries of the case but they’re in broad agreement, and they highlight a couple of inconsistencies that lead them to different conclusions from Saylor – not that this matters, since a) Saylor’s conclusions are also perfectly reasonable, the whole incident is extremely difficult to reconstruct and b) he’s writing fiction and any changes would easily fall under artistic license anyway. But since I happen to have looked into this recently, it seemed worth bringing it up!

As always with Saylor’s books, I enjoyed this very much. There were a couple of cases in which I worked out the culprit straight away, but the resolution was never quite so clear, so apart from ‘The Tale of the Treasure House’, I was hooked throughout. There’s also something strangely satisfying about reading about Gordianus’ life when he was poorer, when it was just him and Eco and Bethesda, and when Eco was mute – like reading the scenes with the old Watch in Terry Pratchett’s Night Watch, sometimes, when fictional characters make progress, you find yourself wanting to go back to how they were when you first met them. This collection provides a perfect opportunity to do so!

Catilina's Riddle (by Steven Saylor)

As I’m sure I’ve said before, I love Steven Saylor’s Gordianus books. I first read this one years ago, while on holiday in Sweden, and re-read it recently for a class I’m teaching. Although my very favourite Gordianus books tend to be the earlier ones, this is a long but excellent and entertaining entry to the series and features one of Saylor’s most complex and memorable portraits of historical figures, besides Cicero – his evocative characterisation of Catilina (Catiline).

This book falls right in the middle of the Roma sub Rosa series, which focuses on Gordianus, and it shows. There is only one instance in which an earlier book is actually referenced (footnote, publisher’s details and everything!) but the book is peppered with references to past events in Gordianus’ life and with more subtle references to the future. At the time of publication, only Roman Blood and Arms of Nemesis had been published as books, and events from both are referred to so frequently I must admit I grew rather tired of reading Sextus Roscius’ name! There are also references to events covered in Saylor’s short stories, set during Gordianus’ early career (which is skipped over at alarming speed if one just reads the novels, as the first three novels cover nearly twenty years, the remaining seven just over ten years). At the time of this publication, these had only been published in a mystery magazine, but they are now available in two collections, The House of the Vestals and A Gladiator Dies Only Once. It is refreshing to see how full and real-seeming a character Gordianus is, a man who does not forget old friends or past events simply because his readers might not have read that book, and the plentiful explanations will prevent any new readers from being lost, while avoiding spoiling the central mysteries of these earlier publications. Events in Gordianus’ personal life however are, unavoidably, spoiled. Most successful are the few subtle hints of what is to come – Meto’s taking up of a career under Julius Caesar in the Epilogue, which, it’s not hard to guess even if you don’t know, will become significant in the future – and, even more pleasingly to anyone with knowledge of the history, Marcus Caelius’ passing reference to a widow with green eyes and Gordianus’ memory that Clodius’ sister was instrumental in Cicero’s feud with Clodius and eventual exile.

Catilina is one of the great villains of Roman republican history, and Saylor takes the always entertaining route of, to a great extent, rehabilitating him. I’ve a great soft spot for novels that do this, as it offers such a fresh perspective on the history and is nearly always possible to achieve reasonably plausibly (though I think the emperor Nero might be an exception). Sharon Penman’s The Sunne in Splendour, a sympathetic biographical account of Richard III, is one of the best, and to some extent, I, Claudius could be said to be this sort of book as well.

However, unlike these others, Catilina’s Riddle is not written from Catilina’s perspective, and it is not a straight rehabilitation of the man. The novel as a whole, and it’s narrator, by and large, fall mostly on the side of Catilina, but the number of qualifying words in that sentence gives you an inkling of how effectively Saylor walks the line between presenting a balanced view and coming down hard on one side or the other. Saylor points out himself in his ‘Author’s Note’ that Gordianus is a deliberately unreliable narrator in this story, while his two sons, Eco and Meto, present the views of the opposing sides. This has the double effect of emphasising the differences between Cicero and Catilina (wily and cautious vs violently passionate) and of essentially introducing the reader to the characters of the grown-up Eco (last seen as a mute teenager, now a married adult) and Meto (last seen as a five-year-old slave boy, now turning sixteen). Meanwhile, Saylor’s view of Cicero continues to chime perfectly with my own, making me rather biased in his favour, while his depiction of Catilina is perhaps a little too kind, but thoroughly believable.

As always, Saylor expertly weaves his fictional characters into Roman history. There is, as always, the odd moment that might make the reader sit back and think ‘hang on – that’s a bit convenient’, most notably the climax, in which Gordianus and Meto are revealed to be the only two, unrecorded, survivors of an historical defeated army from which there were no survivors. Saylor has, however, set up his characters well to make them believably connected with the uppermost echelons of Roman society. By creating a connection and mutual obligation between the young Cicero and Gordianus in Roman Blood, from a time when Cicero was a young and unimportant New Man, Saylor has laid the groundwork for Gordianus to become plausibly and intimately connected with Roman politics at the highest level, and it is Cicero who drags him into the Catilinarian conspiracy. Gordianus’ connections therefore feel real and lack the feeling of obvious insertion of a fictional figure into the story that one often gets while watching Rome (‘How Titus Pullo Brought Down the Republic’, ‘Pharsalus’ and ‘Caesarion’ being particularly egregious examples).

Saylor is equally adept at weaving historical evidence into his narrative, though, as with several Gordianus novels, I found that the pace slackened and my attention wandered whenever he described actual speeches at length. No doubt this is partly, if not entirely, due to my own lack of enthusiasm for ancient oratory on an aesthetic level (though, of course, I use it frequently as evidence, and it’s very useful). Saylor’s summaries of real speeches certainly demonstrate the depth and breadth of his meticulous research, but I’m afraid, if I’m reading a novel, I want to read a novel, not a Ciceronian speech, even if it is rendered into modern English. However, given that I loved the excerpts from Catullus’ poetry included in Counting the Stars, I think my own bias is much more the problem than Saylor’s writing here.

The Gordianus novels are murder mysteries by genre though several of them, starting with Catilina’s Riddle and continuing with Rubicon, are more concerned with Late Republican politics than detective work. There is still a murder to be solved though, which Gordianus erroneously believes to be connected to Cicero and Catilina’s struggle but which turns out to have nothing to do with either of them. The murder, the clues and the solution book-end what is otherwise a rich recreation of the Catilinarian conspiracy. I was perhaps a little disappointed that the murder was so unrelated to the rest of the story; although it has an important position in the plot as the spark for Gordianus’ action, he could have come to the same decision without the murder and it shares only the broadest thematic links with the main story. However, as a mystery in itself, it was rather good, and would make a nice short mystery on its own.

I really enjoyed this book both times I read it (and was pleased to find that my vague memories of it were largely accurate). Eco and Meto have grown up into likeable, flawed, believable characters and Saylor presents an account of this particular bit of republican history that is equally enjoyable to readers who have little knowledge of the period (my knowledge of this area was pretty sketchy back when I first read it) and those with much more background knowledge (which I like to think is me now!). His decision to frame the story around Meto’s coming of age provides a particularly fruitful device for explaining the system to the reader, and Saylor continues to be one of the best authors when it comes to the difficult balance between ensuring that your reader understands what’s happening, and writing a history lecture rather than a novel. And this is, of course, essential reading for fans of Gordianus, providing a bridge between the much earlier novels and the complex tangle of mysteries surrounding Caesar, Pompey, Clodius and so on that is to come.

Funky photo I took of the Lutheran cathedral in Uppsala, Sweden. Because, well, that's where I was when I first read the book. Whadd'ya mean, 'pretty tenuous connection'?!

Rubicon (by Steven Saylor)

As I still live in the Land of No Cinema, I haven't seen Centurion yet, and I'm not sure I'm going to (it looks a bit gory for me anyway!). But the excellent Antoninus Pius (1923 years old and still going strong) has a few words about it here, and knows much more about the 'lost legion' than I do anyway.

Before I start, I want to warn everyone that this review contains MAJOR SPOILERS. All my reviews tend to contain some spoilers, partly because they’re half review, half academic musing, and the musing requires the whole plot to be taken into account, and partly because I always think reviews are more fun when read after you’ve watched/read the thing, like discussing it with a friend. And several of the things I review are mysteries and several of my reviews do reveal what happens at the end, and I confess, generally I assume real spoilerphobes will just stay away until they’ve read it themselves. (Also, when I’m reviewing children’s things, I figure parents might want to read up on the stuff that might or might not upset their kids, and the kids themselves won’t necessarily read the blog). But in this case, I wanted to be extra clear – this will really, really spoil the book for you, not only this book but at least one other of the Gordianus books as well (and an Agatha Christie or two into the bargain). If you’re a real spoilerphobe, you might want to avoid even reading the quotes on the back. These books are really, really good – if you’re remotely interested, go out and read it, then come back and read this when you’re done!

I love Steven Saylor’s Gordianus books. I enjoy Lindsey Davis’ Falco series a lot as well, but something about Saylor’s clinches it for me – the richness of the writing, how real and how Roman the characters feel, and the way he builds his plots up from genuine historical events. I have to confess a very slight preference for some of the earlier novels – Roman Blood, Arms of Nemesis and The Venus Throw – I like the purity of the conceit in these (Gordianus investigates a real Roman murder mystery, mostly based on speeches of Cicero, and of course he discovers a different conclusion to that recorded by history). A Murder on the Appian Way also fits this pattern, but at the same time takes the series in a new direction, first hinted at in Catalina’s Riddle, as Rome descends back into civil war and Gordianus is dragged into high politics. Rubicon, although it begins and ends with a murder and a solution, is really more about the civil war than it is about solving a crime. It also features a fictitious, rather than a real, murder, for the real Numerius, who may or may not have been related to Pompey, sailed away with Pompey at Brundisium, according to Plutarch. I have to confess a slight preference for the solving of real murders in Gordianus books, but fictional murders are fine too and there aren’t that many real murder mysteries to solve!

Rubicon also features the return of Tiro, Cicero’s secretary, in a role he is not known to have played historically, but which is reasonably plausible. When I first read Roman Blood, before I started studying Classics, I didn’t realise that Tiro was a real person and I was overjoyed to find out that not only was Cicero’s likeable slave real, he was manumitted and became famous for inventing shorthand, among other things. Though I think a part of me is still half-convinced he’s fictional, which is perhaps why I buy his covert actions so easily. Anyway, it's nice to see him back here.

Right at the end of the novel, Saylor includes a brief mention of Caesar's dream, not quite as well known as his wife's but fairly famous, in which he dreamed he had sex with his own mother. The interesting things about this dream is that it moves. Suetonius says the dream occured while Caesar was quaestor in Spain (Julius 7). Dio Cassius agrees that it happened in Spain, but doesn't mention the dream until he is describing the later civil war between Caesar and Pompey, to emphasise the horror and the awfulness of Caesar's actions (41.24). Plutarch goes one step further. Never one to let history get in the way of a good story, Plutarch claims that Caesar had this dream the night before he crossed the Rubicon (Caesar 32). Historically, Suetonius is probably the most likely to be closer to the truth, but Plutarch moves the dream so as to make Caesar's violation of the river and of Rome seem more dreadful - and Saylor does exactly the same thing. The dream is so much more dramatic when placed there, and can say so much more about Caesar and his character and his actions, it's not hard to see why Plutarch's version of the story works better for a novel.

This novel does an excellent job of explaining exactly what’s going on at each stage of the war. Where Rome frequently leaves the viewer somewhat baffled and even anxious to rejoin Boring Soldier and Dodgey Soldier simply because at least their plotlines are comprehensible, Saylor not only explains exactly what’s going on, he also gets right into the minds of his characters who, unlike us, do not know what is going to happen. Sometimes, retellings of the civil war come with a sense of inevitability; we know Caesar won, he was always going to win. But Saylor fully explores the options open to the Pompeian party, and why Pompey might have done what he did, and for a moment you almost think Pompey might even stand a chance.

Saylor also takes care to explain the history of his main character, partly to catch up new readers and partly because it’s central to the story. I found the idea of the tiny roll of paper inside a shoe rather surprising and a teensy bit OTT, but it did a very good job of reminding readers, or explaining to new readers, who Gordianus and his family were and what connections they had to Cicero, Pompey and Caesar. I was surprised to see old readers forcibly reminded of Saylor’s most shocking ending so far, in which the murder of the philosopher Dio turned out to have been committed by Gordianus’ own young daughter, Diana, in revenge for Dio’s previous abuse of her mother. As it turned out, this was preparing the reader for Saylor to go for the only resolution potentially more surprising than the culprit being the detective’s daughter, as the culprit in this case is Gordianus himself.

I wasn’t quite as shocked by this resolution as I was some years ago when I read the Dio story. I had wondered way back at the beginning why no one seemed to suspect Gordianus himself when he seemed the obvious prime suspect, and I wondered why Gordianus didn’t seem to be making any great effort to actually locate the killer before going to Pompey. I hadn’t actually guessed though, and it was a very satisfying solution. Gordianus’ motive made sense, and there were no glaring passages that couldn’t work with this conclusion. I’ve always been a bit disappointed that I can never fully appreciate The Murder of Roger Ackroyd because I already know the central conceit (I have a feeling I’ve ruined the final Poirot book for myself as well, which I’m really miffed about, but don’t say any more in case I’m wrong!) so this book made me happy, since I was able to properly appreciate this clever ploy, well done. You’d think that would be the end for the detective, but since the motive is understandable and the circumstances extreme, I think most readers will forgive Gordianus, just this once.

What I did see coming, once Gordianus had confessed, was the final twist – that Meto had never betrayed Caesar at all and got the documents to Numerius deliberately. This seemed completely obvious to me from the moment Gordianus explained his motive, it’s just the sort of double bluff that gets played in these things, and Meto’s loyalty to Caesar had been so strong it would be very odd for him to have turned against him. At least this spared me from being completely depressed at the rather dark and downbeat ending, since I was pleased to have been right. Saylor does offer some consolation though, in the form of Numerius’ girlfriend, who has found a way to keep her baby after all, and of course, Davus and the rest of Gordianus’ family are OK. This prevents the ending from being so depressing it might put one off the books all together! As it is, I'm wondering whether I can get hold of a reasonably priced copy of Last Seen in Massilia, since the ending was also almost veering into cliffhanger territory...

Caesar