Gordianus The Finder Omnibus (Books 1-4) (105 page)

HISTORICAL NOTES

The novels which feature Gordianus the Finder have all, so far, taken place a number of years apart, with gaps of from four years to nine years between them. Not all readers have found these leaps forward in time to their liking. For one thing, Gordianus has seemed to age, and his children to grow up, so very
fast.
(One might argue that this is an instance of realism, since the same disquieting sense of rapidly passing time takes place in real life.) Readers of mystery series, especially, seem to prefer a more glacial progress, with one book ending and the next beginning, ideally, the very next morning – not several years later!

My idea in writing the
Roma Sub Rosa
series has been to create a fictional portrait of the last tumultuous years of the Roman Republic, covering the great arc of time from the dictatorship of Sulla in 80 BC down to the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BC, and perhaps beyond. The inclusion of a mystery plot at the centre of each novel has posed no problem, as the sources offer no shortage of stabbings, poisonings, murder trials, and other assorted mayhem. However, I have also sought to build each book around a highly significant historical event, with an implicit theme large enough to support a full-scale historical novel – Sulla’s dictatorship and Cicero’s debut (
Roman Blood
), the slave revolt of Spartacus (
Arms of Nemesis
), Cicero’s consulship and the Catilinarian conspiracy (
Catilina’s Riddle
), the trial of Caelius Rufus and the decadent ‘lost generation’ of Clodia and Catullus (
The Venus Throw
), and the murder of Clodius, the trial of Milo, and the beginning of the end of the Republic as it teeters on the brink of civil war (
A Murder on the Appian Way
). Such a scheme has so far necessitated spacing the novels a few or several years apart. This may change with future volumes, however, as war erupts between Pompey and Caesar and notable events begin to crowd more closely together. Perhaps Gordianus can begin to age a bit more slowly, enjoying his hard-won wisdom.

Sometimes in my readings and research, I come across intriguing mysteries and bits of information which are not of a scale to justify a novel, but are fascinating nonetheless. That’s where the short stories come in.

Reading Cicero’s oration for Cluentius, I came across such a tidbit, which inspired the first Gordianus short story, ‘A Will Is a Way’. Oppianicus, Asuvius and Avillius, the case of the will, and the bribery of the commissioner Quintus Manilius all come straight out of Cicero’s speech. But, as Gordianus tells Lucius, ‘Villains like Oppianicus and the Fox eventually come to a bad end.’ Sure enough, four years after the case of the will, in 74 BC, Oppianicus was tried and convicted for numerous other crimes, and two years later he was himself murdered. (It is from Cicero’s defence of the man accused of killing Oppianicus that we know all these details, including the tiny portion of his speech which touches on the matter of Asuvius and the will.)

‘A Will Is a Way’ was the first of these stories to be written, but the first chronologically is ‘Death Wears a Mask’. It, too, was inspired by details from Cicero, specifically from his oration on behalf of the wealthy, famous comedian Quintus Roscius (one of the first show-business celebrity clients!) in a property litigation. There is some debate about the date of the murder involved (it may have been 81 rather than 80 BC); I chose to set it shortly after
Roman Blood
, during the annual Roman Festival in September, so as to take advantage of the theatre season and include some details of the ancient stage. (Interested readers may consult
The Roman Stage
by W. Beare, and the comedies of Plautus, which are fascinating for what they reveal about Roman ideas of ‘humour’.) Statilius, Roscius, Panurgus and Chaerea are all drawn directly from Cicero’s oration.

The very earliest action in the stories is of course to be found in the fable recited by Bethesda for Gordianus’ amusement, ‘The Tale of the Treasure House’. This ancient story can be found in Herodotus, Book II. I first became aware of it from Ellery Queen’s ‘Incunables’ (from the Latin
incunabula
, ‘swaddling-clothes’), a list of ancient literary forerunners of the modern detective story. It occurred to me that Gordianus himself might enjoy hearing a good detective story (set in the distant past, of course; Gordianus, like his creator, enjoys historical mysteries). Herodotus’s original version was recently anthologized as ‘The Thief versus King Rhampsinitus’ in Mike Ashley’s
The Mammoth Book of Historical Whodunnits
(Carroll & Graf, 1993). Readers may compare the differing versions, as told by Herodotus and by Bethesda.

‘Little Caesar and the Pirates’ and ‘The Alexandrian Cat’ were drawn from true stories in ancient sources that I transmuted for my own ends. Beginning in roughly 80 BC, their ranks swollen by refugees from the Roman civil war, pirates became an increasingly dangerous presence in the Mediterranean, and numerous Roman commanders were dispatched to bring them under control; it was Pompey who finally succeeded, but not until 67 BC. Julius Caesar’s abduction by pirates, as recounted by Lucius Claudius in the story, is a famous incident to be found in Plutarch and Suetonius. The kidnapping in ‘Little Caesar’ may be seen as a ‘copycat’ crime, with a ruthless and conniving perpetrator behind it.

‘The Alexandrian Cat’ was inspired by a hair-raising tale found in Diodorus Siculus. I retained the basic details but moved the incident back in time from 60 to 90 BC (when Gordianus himself was in Alexandria). Having been severely chided by certain mystery fans for the killing of a cat in one of my novels, I felt perversely compelled to do it again. (I was only being true to Diodorus Siculus!) Let me assure readers that I am a devout cat lover, with two felines in my own household named for favourite fictional detectives, Hildegarde Whiskers and Oscar Pooper. (Stuart Palmer fans, a rare breed themselves, will understand.) Please note that a cat plays a major role in the discovery of the criminal.

Of all the stories in this volume, ‘The House of the Vestals’ required the most extensive research, and yielded perhaps the greatest gratification to the author, who felt quite the sleuth after tracking down so many tantalizingly incomplete details in so many sources, some of them quite obscure. The details regarding the punishment of straying Vestals are authentic, and there was indeed a trial in 73 BC in which all the parties mentioned in ‘The House of the Vestals’ were involved. Sources include fleeting references in Cicero’s
Brutus, In Toga Candida
, and his third speech against Catilina; Plutarch’s Lives of Crassus and Cato the Younger; Sallust’s
Conspiracy of Catilina
; Asconius; and Orosius. Ironically, in his later propaganda war against Catilina, Cicero’s kinship with Fabia (and his deference to Crassus) precluded him from being able to mention the scandalous trial of 73 (except in an oblique and roundabout way).

The remaining three stories are not based on specific historical events, but rather flesh out details of Roman daily life which have intrigued me.

‘King Bee and Honey’ was largely inspired by Virgil’s
Georgics
, Book IV (‘I will sing of the heavenly gifts of aerial honey . . .’). All the bee lore is authentically Roman, including the guardian presence of Priapus at the hives. And the Romans did use the Latin word for honey (
mel
) as a term of endearment, much as we do.

The peculiarly Roman belief in ghosts inspired ‘The Lemures’. The story also draws on Pliny for certain pharmacological details.

‘The Disappearance of the Saturnalia Silver’ celebrates the Roman midwinter festival, certain traditions of which have survived down to the present in various cultures, as in our own Yuletide exchange of gifts. I quote from my constant companion, the 1869 edition of William Smith’s
Dictionary of Greek & Roman Antiquities
:

All ranks devoted themselves to feasting and mirth, presents were interchanged among friends . . . and crowds thronged the streets . . .

Many of the peculiar customs exhibited a remarkable resemblance to the sports of our own Christmas and of the Italian Carnival. Thus on the Saturnalia, public gambling was allowed by the aediles, just as in the days of our ancestors the most rigid were wont to countenance card-playing on Christmas-eve; the whole population threw off the toga, wore a loose gown . . . and walked about with the pileus on their heads, which reminds us of the dominoes, the peaked caps, and other disguises worn by masques and mummers . . . and lastly, one of the amusements in private society was the election of a mock king, which at once calls to recollection the characteristic ceremony of Twelfth-night.

Curiously, while ‘The Alexandrian Cat’ was anthologized in a topical collection called
Mystery Cats 3
(Signet, 1995), and ‘The Lemures’ was anthologized in a seasonal collection called
Murder for Halloween
(Mysterious, 1994), my hope to see ‘The Disappearance of the Saturnalia Silver’ anthologized in a Christmas collection has so far gone unfulfilled. It is, after all, a Christmas-time murder mystery – even if it is set seventy-seven years before Christ!

A GLADIATOR
DIES ONLY ONCE

Steven Saylor

ROBINSON
London

To Rick,
who read them first

Natura inest in mentibus nostris insatiabilis quaedam cupiditas veri videndi.

(Nature has planted in our minds an insatiable longing to see the truth.)

– Marcus Tullius Cicero,
Tusculan Disputations

PREFACE

Gordianus the Finder, detective of ancient Rome, was introduced in a novel called
Roman Blood, first
published in 1991.

Over the course of the eight subsequent novels and eighteen short stories of the Roma Sub Rosa series, Gordianus has progressed from the age of thirty to the age of sixty-one. His concubine, Bethesda, has become his wife, and his family has expanded to include a daughter, two adopted sons (one born a slave), and four grandchildren (‘a typically Roman extended family,’ as the classicist Mary Beard commented in the
Times Literary Supplement
). He has rubbed elbows with the most famous men and women of his time, including Caesar, Cicero, Marc Antony, Pompey, Crassus, and Cleopatra. He has taken part (usually behind the scenes) in many of the most important events of his era, witnessing the final decades of the Roman Republic as it disintegrates into the civil wars that ultimately will give rise to the empire of the Caesars.