Falco Review

Lindsey Davis’s series of mysteries starring Marcus Didius Falco, a private informer in Vespasian’s Rome, has now reached its 20th and probably final volume. Ms. Davis has not said that she won’t be writing any further Falco stories, but a Falco Companion has now been issued and certain plot points in “Nemesis” would mean some radical changes to the series if it were to continue. I’m going to assume, therefore, that the series as it now stands is finished. Inevitably in an overview there will be some SPOILERS in what follows, so you have been warned.

The events in the series take place from AD 70 to 77. Marcus Didius Falco has his 30th birthday during the course of the first book, “The Silver Pigs”. He is a private informer, i.e., a private investigator, specialising in background checks on prospective brides and grooms, finding evidence of adultery, and finding heirs or grounds for challenging wills. “The Silver Pigs” is his first foray into working for the Emperor Vespasian, which he does despite his republican views. During the events described in “The Silver Pigs” he meets his future wife, Helena Justina, the daughter of a senator, Decimus Camillus Verus. Over the course of the series Falco undertakes work for the Emperor as well as private commissions, and some investigations based on his own desire to see justice done. Recurring characters are Falco’s estranged parents, his sisters and their husbands and children, Falco’s mother’s family in the country, Helena Justina’s parents and brothers, and Falco’s best friend, Petronius Longus, who is a captain in the vigiles (the night watch which combined duties fire fighting and combatting minor and some not so minor crimes).

Falco’s activities take him over most of the Empire. Apart from the stories set in Rome itself, Falco also travels to various parts of Italy, to Britain, the frontier in Germany, Spain, North Africa, Egypt, the Eastern frontier, and Greece. He is a Roman citizen, but one of Rome’s urban poor. His clients come from all levels of society and over the course of the series he improves his status entering the middle rank (an eques) and by the end of the last book, becoming rich. The variety of clients means we get to see many different aspects of Roman life.

The books are all narrated by Falco himself in the first person, and his narrative voice is one of the strengths of the series. It shows a wry, ironic sense of humour, not taking Falco himself or life too seriously, and certainly not taking seriously any claims to grandeur or self importance from those who consider themselves socially or intellectually superior. This tone is hugely enjoyable, but the reader can’t help but wonder sometimes whether other characters, particularly Falco’s family and friends, would see events in quite the same way. And this becomes particularly problematic with the recurring character Anacrites, Vespasian’s Chief Spy. Although Falco tells us that Anacrites had set him up on his mission to Petra in “Last Act in Palmyra”, meaning him to be killed, and Anacrites later stalks Falco’s sister Maia in “The Body in the Bath House”, I at least found it impossible to take Anacrites seriously as a villain or a dangerous threat to Falco.

Although the humorous tone is, as I said, enjoyable, some may find it anachronistic. The only time I found the humour really jarred was in the last book, “Nemesis”, when Falco wishes that there were some way of proving or disproving paternity through the blood and hopes that the researchers in Alexandria are working on it.

I recently read the whole series through in sequence over a couple of months, which may not have been the best way to read them. Read like this, I have to say that the way Geminus, the auctioneer employed in “Shadows in Bronze” to auction off Pertinax’s effects, turns out to be Falco’s father who had walked out and abandoned the family when Falco was 7 struck me as clumsy. Once he was in the series, though, he became an important character, along with Falco’s other relations. The stories where we meet new members of Falco’s family are always particularly enjoyable. I also found the on again off again on again nature of Falco’s relationship with Helena Justina very tedious after the first couple of books until they finally settled down together in “Poseidon’s Gold”.

Another time where I thought Ms. Davis let her readers down was in “Scandal Takes a Holiday”, when Falco, who we have been repeatedly told cannot swim, was thrown overboard by pirates out at sea near Ostia, yet manages to float on his back until he just happens to meet another boat, which just happens to be his father’s skiff waiting to take goods off a ship unobserved so as to avoid import duty. For me that definitely broke the flow of the narrative as I pondered its unlikelihood.

Having said that I would like to stress that Lindsey Davis does a wonderful job over 20 novels in the very demanding genre of historical mysteries, managing to balance enjoyable stories with the exploration of a civilisation superficially similar but actually very different from our own.

Review of The Roman Mysteries

Caroline Lawrence's The Roman Mysteries is a series of 17 detective stories set in the Roman Empire between June 78 and October 81 AD, i.e., basically in the reign of Titus. The detectives are a group of four children: Flavia Gemina, daughter of Marcus Flavius Geminus, sea captain; Jonathan ben Mordecai, her Jewish Christian neighbour; Nubia (formerly Shepenwepet), a Nubian slave bought by Flavia and later freed by her; and Lupus, a mute beggar boy taken in by Joseph and his family. The books seem to be aimed at an audience of children from 8 or 9 year olds to the early teens, though older readers will also get a great deal of pleasure from the series. They stories have been televised but I haven't seen the programmes, only read the books. Inevitably in a review of the whole series, there are SPOILERS in what follows. (picture of well in Ostia Antica from wikicommons is in the public domain)

The first book in the series, The Thieves of Ostia, gives the impression of The Famous Five meet Falco, with a rather heavy-handed Christian message at the end. Some readers might find this offputting, but they should definitely persevere. We are taken through a series of historical events: the eruption of Vesuvius that buried Pompeii, the opening of the Colosseum, an epidemic and fire that struck Rome in the early part of Titus's principate, and (in flashback) the sieges of Jerusalem and Masada by the Romans. Amongst the historical figures we meet are Titus and Domitian, Pliny the Elder and his nephew Pliny the Younger, Suetonius, Josephus, Quintilian, Queen Berenice, Gaius Valerius Flaccus, and John, the beloved disciple. Jonathan, Nubia, and Lupus all have back stories, which are gradually revealed in various story arcs running through the books. A linked long term story arc is the tracking down of a criminal mastermind who kidnaps and enslaves children. The geographical area covered includes Ostia and the bay of Naples in Italy, mainland Greece, the Greek islands, Roman Asia, Egypt, and North Africa.

The main characters' family and other connections mean we get to see many different aspects of Roman life at all levels of society, from beggars and poor provincials to the Imperial family. We find out about science and medicine (Jonathan's father is a doctor and Flavia Gemina is a great fan of the Elder Pliny and his Natural History), gladiatorial and other games, education, literature, and oratory and legal procedure. Cultural riches are brought out in the children's lessons with their tutor, Aristo, but the harsh realities of life are not ignored: long before the first book Flavia's mother had died in childbirth and Jonathan's sister Miriam, who marries Flavia's uncle Gaius, suffers the same fate in The Slave Girl from Jerusalem; Lupus is mute because his tongue was torn out. The books each contain a Final Scroll in which the author discusses historical, literary and social references. The series is particularly interesting in its treatment of two issues, slavery and religion. (picture of page from 14th century codex of Pliny's Natural History from wikicommons is in the public domain)

Slavery is a major problem for modern fiction set in ancient Rome. How do you give a realistic picture of a member of a slave-owning society without forfeiting the reader's sympathy for him or her? Caroline Lawrence manages this very well. How somebody treats their slaves is a powerful indicator of their moral worth. In The Thieves of Ostia, Flavia spends the money she received for her birthday on buying Nubia because she feels sorry for her. Pulchra, a minor character who appears in several books, starts off in The Pirates of Pompeii as a spoiled brat who mistreats her slaves but she matures in later books as she deals with her problems of loneliness and parental neglect and starts to treat her slaves more humanely. Less convincing is the attitude of Jonathan's father, who refuses to own slaves, thus obliging his children to do household chores. This definitely struck me as anachronistic.

A major story arc running throughout the series is the kidnapping and enslavement of children, first by Venalicius, a slave dealer based in Ostia, and then as the leader of a criminal ring, the powerful Magnus. The realities of a slave's life are not glossed over. We are told that good looking children, girls and boys, amongst the enslaved children are separated out from the others -- and older readers will know what their fate would be, even though this is not explicitly stated. Slaves are subject to humiliation, beaten, and forced into work in carpet factories which blinds them. Other slaves are much better treated, such as Flavia's father's two house slaves Caudex and Alma, though it is never suggested that they might be freed. Sisyphus is a slave secretary to Flavia's uncle, the senator Cornix. He wins his freedom from Cornix in a bet, though he continues to work as Cornix's secretary as a freedman.

Religion is another interesting feature of the books. Both the traditional Greco-Roman religion and Christianity are taken seriously. Flavia and her family believe in the traditional Roman religion. They have a nice line in "swearwords": Great Juno's Peacock, Great Jupiter's Eyebrows, etc. Flavia's family perform sacrifices, make vows to the gods, and consider omens. Lupus's mother dedicates herself as a priestess of Apollo. What Nubia's religion back home was, we never find out. One of her major functions in the book is as a foil for explanations of Roman religion and other aspects of life she cannot be expected to know about as a recent immigrant. Jonathan's family are Jews who have been expelled from the synagogue as Christians. Although Jonathan's father quotes Jesus early on as declaring all foods pure, Jonathan still has qualms in a later book about his father's reaction if he goes to a pig butcher's on the Sabbath. (Udimu's photograph of Roman mosaic from Hinton St. Mary via wikicommons licensed under Creatie Commons)

Jonathan has prophetic dreams, and reflects on his religious feelings as his experiences change him in the books. Although in the first book the theme of repentance and forgiveness seems to be added on rather clumsily, it proves to be a common theme running through the books right up until Jonathan finds peace, relieved of his misplaced guilt over the fire in Rome in which 20,000 people lost their lives. In the penultimate book, after meeting John, the beloved disciple, Lupus, Nubia, and Aristo, the children's tutor, become Christians and Flavia tries to believe, but in the end cannot. Nevertheless, they all find meaning and purpose to their lives.

All in all, this is a rich series full of adventure through which the reader will learn a lot about life in Roman times and along the way will also find a lot to reflect on in the similarities and differences in life and thought between Roman times and our own. It is well worth reading the whole series in order to see how the themes and story arcs work themselves out.

Patrick Hunt's Hannibal Lectures -- a review

I've now finished listening to Patrick Hunt's series of lectures on Hannibal I referred to in my post on the Punic Wars. I thought the first few lectures in the series, on the history and cultural background to Carthage and on the first Punic War were the best, full of interesting information with insights from many different fields of study. The lectures on Hannibal's great battles and strategy in Italy were competently done and interesting, with close textual attention to Polybius', Livy's, and Appian's accounts. (picture of Carthaginian double shekel from wikicommons)

As we all know, Hannibal's most famous exploit was crossing the Alps to attack Italy from the north. However, I did feel that the amount of time given over to the discussion of this pass vs that pass as Hannibal's route was excessive (though the account of the 1950s British expedition taking an elephant over the Alps was fun).

No doubt it's a personal quirk on the part of the speaker and shouldn't really matter in the larger scheme of things, but something I did find very grating was his curious pronunciation for horse-borne troops. There were times I felt I would scream if I heard one more mention of Hannibal's (or the Romans') Calvary.

Byzantium 330-1453, a review

I went to see the exhibition Byzantium 330 - 1453 at London's Royal Academy yesterday (Monday). The exhibition covered the history from Constantinople's foundation by Constantine to its fall to the Turks in 1453, court life, domestic life, the church, icons, the Byzantine Empire's artistic interaction with Latin Christendom, its interaction with other cultures, and St. Catherine's monastery on Mount Sinai. The exhibits were overwhelming in their profusion, and I wish I'd gone earlier in my visit back to Britain so that I would have had time to go to the exhibition twice. The three hours I spent there really wasn't enough. Fortunately, despite the sign saying no re-entry, the staff were quite happy to let people go in and out for toilet breaks or a cup of coffee. As it was I had to skimp the section called "Beyond Byzantium" which dealt with the Orthodox church amongst the Slavic peoples and with the Coptic church, Armenia and so on.

The objects on display included busts, statuettes, coins, books, textiles, icons, jewellery, household goods and church equipment. Despite the large number of people at the exhibition, the exhibition space was large enough for it not to feel crowded, though there were slight traffic jams around the objects featured on the audio guide. Although the wall boards were informative and provided context for the objects on display a glossary would have been helpful, particularly for the icons. The audio guide went some way to remedying this, although it did mean some backtracking when the audio for one object explained something I'd seen earlier. I think I can now tell the Virgin Hodogetria from the Virgin Psychosostria, but an earlier note somewhere that the Kimisis (Greek) of the Virgin is the equivalent of the Dormition (Latin) of the Virgin (in itself hardly a term I use every day) would have been nice, and until I was able to look it up on the internet, I had no idea what the salient features of a Deesis were. Despite this shortcoming, I would have no hesitation in recommending the exhibition to anyone, although as I said, you might find two visits necessary.

Podcast Review: Isabelle Pafford on the Roman Republic

This podcast is a series of lectures on the Roman Republic given by Dr. Isabelle Pafford of Santa Clara University. The lectures take us from the founding of Rome down to the death of Julius Caesar. Unfortunately some of the lectures are missing due, I gather, to technical problems. It's the first time I've listened to the iTunes U, so I'm not sure how much of what I have to say is specific to Dr. Pafford's course and how much is due to a format imposed by iTunes U or Santa Clara University itself.

Dr. Pafford struck me as an engaging and stimulating lecturer who interacts well with her students. There were certainly times when I was dying to leap in and ask questions. On the other hand, there did seem to be an awful lot of moments when she lost her place in her notes or slides and we had to wait for her to find her place again -- but perhaps that is more noticeable to those listening in than it would be to those present. She does have a penchant for trying to draw analogies with contemporary personalities and events, some of which work better than others.

On her page at the Santa Clara University website, Dr. Pafford says of herself, "She likes to use technology in her classroom, when possible, and many of her class lectures are available as podcasts." I think more thought needs to be given to who the podcasts are actually aimed at -- are they simply for her own students who miss lectures for whatever reasons, are they aimed at whetting the appetite of prospective students, or are they aimed at the interested public at large? If the podcasts are meant for the public at large, then it would be helpful if she could put notes online in the form of reading lists or links to sources to accompany the lectures. I'm not sure how useful the podcasts by themselves without any supporting material would be to anyone who had no knowledge of the Roman Republic to orient themselves.