Ptolemy Caesar (Caesarion) is born to Cleopatra (23 June)
44
Caesar is assassinated at Rome (15 March)
HISTORICAL NOTES
‘The Consul’s Wife’ grew out of two desires: to deal with Sempronia, one of the more remarkable women of her age, and to explore the role of the chariot race at this period of the Roman Republic. No one who saw the movie Ben-Hur as a child could ever forget the spectacular chariot race staged (long before the advent of computer-generated images) with live riders and horses and an audience of thousands. Ben-Hur left indelible images in my mind; for further research, I turned to Sport in Greece and Rome by H. A. Harris (Thames and Hudson/Cornell University Press, 1972), a very British take on Roman racing and gambling that includes an amusing list of translated Latin names for actual horses.
The Daily Acts referred to in the story actually existed, as we know from references to the Acta Diurna in Cicero and Petronius; my use of the Daily Acts owes a debt to a very funny but painfully dated hard-boiled mystery titled The Julius Caesar Murder Case by Wallace Irwin, published in 1935, in which the intrepid ‘reporter’ Manny (short for Manlius) snoops out trouble along the Tiber.
As for Sempronia, readers may learn more about her in Sallust’s Conspiracy of Catiline, which gives an intriguing description of her pedigree, character and motives; not only did she play a small role in that conspiracy, but she was the mother of Decimus Brutus, who with the more famous Junius Brutus was one of the assassins of Caesar. In an early draft of my novel Catilina’s Riddle, I wrote a lengthy passage describing her, which I later decided to cut; I was glad to be able to return to Sempronia in ‘The Consul’s Wife.’ ‘That she was a daughter of Gaius Gracchus is unlikely,’ writes Erich Gruen in The Last Generation of the Roman Republic (University of California Press, 1974), but it is intriguing to speculate that Sempronia might nonetheless have been a descendant of that radical firebrand of the late Republic who was murdered by the ruling class and achieved the status of a populist martyr.
‘If a Cyclops Could Vanish in the Blink of an Eye’ reflects on the domestic life of Gordianus. Cats were still something of a novelty in Rome at this time, and not universally welcomed. The cultural clash of East and West, as exemplified by the different worldviews of Gordianus and the Egyptian-born Bethesda, will increasingly become a part of the fabric of cosmopolitan Roman life, as the emerging world capital attracts new people and new ideas from the faraway lands drawn into her orbit.
Of all the historical incidents between Roman Blood and Arms of Nemesis, the most notable is the revolt of Sertorius; ‘The White Fawn’ tells his story. The fabulous tale of the white fawn is given in several sources, including Plutarch’s biography of the rebel general. The discontent of those who flocked to Sertorius’ side presages the growing discord in Rome, where a series of escalating disruptions will eventually climax in the civil wars that put an end to the republic forever.
In 2000, on a book tour to Portugal, my publisher arranged a private tour of the excavations of a garum manufactory located directly beneath a bank building in downtown Lisbon (ancient Olisipo); that experience inspired me to take Gordianus to such a manufactory, and to uncover ‘Something Fishy in Pompeii.’ Readers craving a taste of garum can make their own; consult A Taste of Ancient Rome by Ilaria Gozzini Giacosa (University of Chicago Press, 1992), which gives the recipe of Gargilius Martialis, who wrote in the third century A.D.
How Hiero, tyrant of Syracuse, put a puzzle to the inventor Archimedes, who solved it in a bathtub with the cry ‘Eureka!’, is a famous tale from the ancient world. When I came across Cicero’s claim (in his Tusculan Disputations) to have rediscovered the neglected tomb of Archimedes, I decided there must be a mystery yarn to be made from such material, and so ‘Archimedes’ Tomb’ came to be written. The sixteenth idyll of Theocritus, extolling the good government of Hiero’s reign, makes an interesting contrast to Cicero’s own Verrine Orations, which exposed rampant corruption and mismanagement in the Roman-run Sicily of his own time.
Reading Theocritus during my research for ‘Archimedes’ Tomb,’ I came across the poet’s twenty-third idyll, which became the inspiration for ‘Death by Eros.’ The details of the spurned lover, the cold-hearted boy, the suicide, the pool and the statue of Eros are all from Theocritus. In his version, death is the result of divine, not human, vengeance; I turned the poet’s moral fable into a murder mystery. ‘Death by Eros’ was originally written for Yesterday’s Blood: An Ellis Peters Memorial Anthology (Headline, 1998), in which various authors paid homage to the late creator of Brother Cadfael. In that book, I noted that the story’s theme ‘would be familiar to Ellis Peters, who frequently cast lovers (secret and otherwise) among her characters. In her tales, for the most part, love is vindicated and lovers triumph; would that it could have been so for the various lovers in this story.’
Having never written at any length about gladiators, I decided to do so with ‘A Gladiator Dies Only Once.’ The financial and critical success of the movie Gladiator was something of a puzzle to me (inspiring me to post my own review of the film at my Web site), but the timeless fascination of the gladiator cannot be denied. Not all Romans craved the sight of bloodshed in the arena (Cicero found the combats distasteful); nonetheless, the distinctly Roman tradition that linked blood sports with funeral games eventually grew into a cultural mania. Centuries later, these gruesome enterprises continue to puzzle us, prick at our conscience and tickle our prurient interest.
‘Poppy and the Poisoned Cake’ was written at the height of the Clinton impeachment scandal; hence its cynical flavour. The details of the crime can be found in Valerius Maximus (5.9.1) and are further explicated in Gruen’s The Last Generation of the Roman Republic (particularly on page 527). Cicero’s quip regarding the piece of cake is recounted by Plutarch; that I have tied it to this particular case is an exercise of artistic licence. (Small-world titbit: the Palla in this story is the same Palla whose property was said to have been stolen by Marcus Caelius; that accusation was one of the counts against Caelius, along with the murder of an Egyptian envoy, in the trial at the centre of my novel The Venus Throw. The ruling class of Gordianus’ Rome was a very tight-knit community, indeed.)
‘The Cherries of Lucullus’ was inspired, in a roundabout way, by a reader in Germany, Stefan Cramme, who maintains a Web site about fiction set in Ancient Rome (www.histrom.de). When my editor told me a new paperback edition of Roman Blood would be forthcoming, giving me a chance to correct any small errors in the book, I contacted Cramme, whose knowledge of ancient Rome is encyclopedic, and asked him to ‘do his worst.’ Cramme informed me of an anachronism, which until then seemed to have slipped past every other reader: in Roman Blood, in a moment of erotic reverie, Gordianus commented that Bethesda’s lips were ‘like cherries.’ Alas, as Cramme pointed out, most historians agree that cherries did not appear in Rome until they were brought back from the Black Sea region by the returning general Lucullus around 66 B.C. – fourteen years after the action of Roman Blood. Since it appeared unlikely that Gordianus could have used cherries as a simile, I amended that reference. In current paperback editions of Roman Blood, Bethesda’s lips are likened not to cherries but to pomegranates – an echo, perhaps not entirely fortunate, of a line uttered by the wicked Nefretiri (Anne Baxter) to taunt Moses (Charlton Heston) in the campy film classic The Ten Commandments.
No historical novelist likes to be found in error, and the problem of cherries at Rome continued to nag at me. I did further research into the diffusion of cherries around the Mediterranean, and discovered that the sources are not entirely unanimous in asserting that cherries were unknown in Rome prior to Lucullus’ return from the Black Sea region, and so there is a slight chance that Gordianus’ musing was not anachronistic after all; but a more significant result of my research was a growing fascination with Lucullus and his amazing career. (Plutarch’s biography makes splendid reading.) Never having touched upon him in the course of the no
vels, I decided to do so with a short story – and at the same time, to confront head-on that business about cherries and exorcise it from my psyche once and for all. Thus ‘The Cherries of Lucullus’ was conceived. The incident of the gardener Motho is fictional, but the members of Lucullus’ circle, including the philosopher Antiochus, Arcesislaus the sculptor, and the poet Aulus Archias, were actual persons, and all the pertinent details of Lucullus’ remarkable rise and sad decline are based on fact.
ARMS OF NEMESIS
A MYSTERY OF ANCIENT ROME
Steven Saylor
ROBINSON
London
To Penni Kimmel,
Helluo librorum et litterarum studiosus
Part One
Corpses, Living and Dead
I
For all his fine qualities – his honesty and devotion, his cleverness, his uncanny agility – Eco was not well suited for answering the door. Eco was mute.
But he was not and has never been deaf. He has, in fact, the sharpest ears of anyone I’ve ever known. He is also a light sleeper, a habit held over from the wretched, watchful days of his childhood, before his mother abandoned him and I took him in from the street and finally adopted him. Not surprisingly, it was Eco who heard the knock at the door in the second hour after nightfall, when everyone in the household had gone to bed. It was Eco who greeted my nocturnal visitor, but was unable to send him away, short of shooing at him the way a farmer shoos an errant goose from his doorway.
Therefore, what else could Eco have done? He might have roused Belbo, my strongarmer. Hulking and reeking of garlic and stupidly rubbing the sleep from his eyes, Belbo might have intimidated my visitor, but I doubt that he could have got rid of him; the stranger was persistent and twice as clever as Belbo is strong. So Eco did what he had to do; he made a sign for my visitor to wait in the doorway and came rapping gently at my door. Rapping having failed to rouse me – generous helpings of Bethesda’s fish and barley soup washed down with white wine had sent me fast asleep – Eco gingerly opened the door, tiptoed into the room, and shook my shoulder.
Beside me Bethesda stirred and sighed. A mass of black hair had somehow settled across my face and neck. The shifting strands tickled my nose and lips. The odour of her perfumed henna sent a quiver of erotic tingling below my waist. I reached for her, making my lips into a kiss, running my hands over her body. How was it possible, I wondered, that she could reach all the way over and around me to tug at my shoulder from behind?
Eco never liked to make those grunting, half-animal noises eked out by the speechless, finding such measures degrading and embarrassing. He preferred to remain austerely silent, like the Sphinx, and to let his hands speak for him. He gripped my shoulder harder and shook it just a bit more firmly. I recognized his touch then, as surely as one knows a familiar voice. I could even understand what he was saying.
‘Someone at the door?’ I mumbled, clearing my throat and keeping my eyes shut for a moment longer.
Eco gave my shoulder a little slap of assent, his way of saying ‘yes’ in the dark.
I snuggled against Bethesda, who had turned her back on the disturbance. I touched my lips to her shoulder. She let out a breath, something between a coo and a sigh. In all my travels from the Pillars of Hercules to the Parthian border, I have never met a more responsive woman. Like an exquisitely crafted lyre, I thought to myself, perfectly tuned and polished, growing finer with the years; what a lucky man you are, Gordianus the Finder, what a find you made in that slave market in Alexandria fifteen years ago.
Somewhere under the sheets the kitten was stirring. Egyptian to her core, Bethesda has always kept cats and even invites them into our bed. This one was traversing the valley between our bodies, picking a path from thigh to thigh. So far it had kept its claws hidden; a good thing, since in the last few moments my most vulnerable part had grown conspicuously more vulnerable and the kitten seemed to be heading straight for it, perhaps thinking it was a serpent to play with. I snuggled against Bethesda for protection. She sighed. I remembered a rainy night at least ten years ago, before Eco joined us – a different cat, a different bed, but the very same house, the house that my father left me, and the two of us, Bethesda and myself, younger but not so very different from today. I dozed, nearly dreaming.
Two sharp slaps landed on my shoulder.
Two slaps was Eco’s way of saying ‘no,’ like shaking his head. No, he would not or could not send my visitor away.
He tapped me again, twice sharply on the shoulder. ‘All right, all right!’ I muttered. Bethesda rolled aggressively away, dragging the sheet with her and exposing me to the dank September air. The kitten tumbled toward me, sticking out its claws as it flailed for balance.
‘Numa’s balls!’ I snapped, though it wasn’t fabled King Numa who found himself wounded by a single tiny claw. Eco discreetly ignored my yelp of pain. Bethesda laughed sleepily in the darkness.
I snapped out of bed and fumbled for my tunic. Eco was already holding it ready for me to crawl into.
‘This had better be important!’ I said.
It was important, just how important I had no way of knowing that night, and not for some time after. If the emissary waiting in my vestibule had made himself clear, if he had been frank about why and for whom he had come, I would have bent to his wishes without the least hesitation. Such a case and such a client as fell into my lap that night are few and far between; I would have fought for the chance to take on the job. Instead, the man, who curtly introduced himself as Marcus Mummius, affected an air of portentous secrecy and treated me with a suspicion that bordered on contempt.
He told me that my services were needed, without delay, for a job that would take me away from Rome for several days. ‘Are you in some sort of trouble?’ I asked.
‘Not me!’ he bellowed. He seemed incapable of talking in a tone of voice reasonable for a sleeping household. His words came out in a series of grunts and barks, the way that one speaks to an unruly slave or a bad dog. There is no language as ugly as Latin when it is spoken in such a fashion – barracks-fashion, I mean, for as sleepy as I was and as numbed with the evening’s wine, I was beginning to make certain deductions about my uninvited guest. Disguised behind his well-trimmed beard, his austere but expensive-looking black tunic, his finely made boots and plush woollen cloak, I saw a soldier, a man used to giving orders and being instantly obeyed.
‘Well,’ he said, looking me up and down as if I were a lazy recruit fresh out of bed and dragging my feet before the day’s march. ‘Are you coming or not?’
Eco, offended at such rudeness, put his hands on his hips and glowered. Mummius threw back his head and snorted in a fit of impatience.
I cleared my throat. ‘Eco,’ I said, ‘fetch me a cup of wine, please. Warmed, if you can; see if the embers are still glowing in the kitchen. And a cup for you as well, Marcus Mummius?’ My guest scowled and shook his head sharply, like a good legionnaire on guard duty.
‘Some warm cider, perhaps? No, I insist, Marcus Mummius. The night is cool. Come, follow me into my study. Look, Eco has already lit the lamps for us; he anticipates all my needs. Here, sit – no, I insist. Now, Marcus Mummius, I take it you’ve come here offering me work.’
In the brighter light of the study I could see that Mummius looked worn and tired, as if he had not slept properly for some time. He fidgeted in his chair and held his eyes open with an unnatural alertness. After a moment he sprang up and began pacing, and when Eco came with his warm cider he refused to take it. Thus does a soldier on a long watch refuse to make himself comfortable for fear that sleep will come against his will.
‘Yes,’ he finally said. ‘I have come to summon you—’
‘Summon me? No one summons Gordianus the Finder. I am a citizen, no man’s slave or freedman, and at last report Rome was still a Republic, amazingly enough, and not a dictatorship. Other citizens come to consult me, to ask for my services, to hire me. And they usually come during daylight. At least the ho
nest ones do.’
Mummius appeared to be working hard to contain his exasperation. ‘This is ridiculous,’ he said. ‘You’ll be paid, of course, if that’s what you’re worried about. In fact, I’m authorized to offer you five times your regular daily pay, considering the inconvenience and the … travel,’ he said cautiously. ‘Five days of guaranteed pay, plus all your lodging and expenses.’
He had my full attention. From the corner of my eye I saw Eco raise an eyebrow, counselling me to be shrewd; children of the streets grow up to be hard bargainers. ‘Very generous, Marcus Mummius, very generous,’ I said. ‘Of course you may not realize that I had to raise my rates only last month. Prices in Rome keep shooting up, what with this slave revolt and the invincible Spartacus rampaging through the countryside, spreading chaos—’
‘Invincible?’ Mummius seemed personally offended. ‘Spartacus invincible? We’ll soon see about that.’
‘Invincible when confronted by a Roman army, I mean. The Spartacans have beaten every contingent sent against them; they’ve even sent two Roman consuls running home in disgrace. I suppose that when Pompey—’
‘Pompey!’ Mummius spat the name.
‘Yes, I suppose that when Pompey finally manages to bring back his troops from Spain, the revolt will be quickly disposed of …’ I rambled on only because the topic seemed to irritate my guest, and I wanted to keep him distracted while I drove up my price.
Mummius cooperated gloriously, pacing, gnashing his teeth, glowering. But it seemed he would not descend to gossiping about a subject as important as the slave revolt. ‘We’ll see about that,’ was all he would mutter, trying feebly to interrupt me. Finally he raised his voice to command level and effectively cut me off. ‘We’ll soon see about Spartacus! Now, then, you were saying something about your rates.’
I cleared my throat and took a sip of warm wine. ‘Yes. Well, as I was saying, with prices wildly out of control—’
Gordianus The Finder Omnibus (Books 1-4) Page 100