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by James E. Hawking
I know histhry isn't thrue Hinnessy, because it ain't like what I see ivry
day in Halsted Sthreet. If any wan comes along with a histhry iv Greece or Rome
that'll show me th'people fightin', gettin dhrunk, makin' love, gettin' married,
owin' th'grocery man an' bein' without hard coal, I'll believe they was a Greece
or Rome ..
Finley Peter Dunne. Observations of Mr Dooley
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The
Grass Crown
by
Colleen McCollough
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Novelists of widely varying reputations, abilities, purposes, and nationalities
have chosen to set fiction in an ancient world dominated by Rome. Fiction makes
the history of the Roman world come to life because fiction is freed from the
constraints which make history tell the victors' story. Fiction set in the Roman
era sometimes features women, slaves, so-called barbarians, children, and even
pets. The 100 works of fiction which will be discussed in this paper provide a
history from Romulus' founding until the final rummaging through the ashes. In
keeping with the Historical Novel Society's first steps toward establishing a
canon of historical fiction, I am marking my 10 personal favorites with an
asterisk (*).
Foundations and Carthage
Alfred Duggan's Children of the Wolf* opens with seven bare hills and the
fratricidal foundation of Rome. Not a city in the true sense, but "an
encampment of brigands," early Rome practices the mixture of brutality and
clemency which was to make it great. Simple rustic spearmen, desperate for
women, follow a man who claims to be the son of Mars while privately
entertaining more naturalistic explanations for his mother's pregnancy.
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I
Cludius
by
James Graves
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Time
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Lindsey Davis
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Gustave Flaubert's Salamnbo recreates the revolt of Carthaginian mercenaries
with Roman power in the background. Salamnbo, a priestess with a personal
python, evokes the exotic aura of the doomed alternative to Rome. Ross Leckie's
Hannibal follows the elephants through the frozen passes of the Alps, onto Italy
and ultimate failure. "The cloying, rich, sweet and sickening, sticking,
stinking smell of death" is the kind of phrase which typifies the novel.
Whether you like the work may depend on whether you respond to this vivid kind
of description of brutality. (It makes me anticipate Scipio, the sequel.) Bryher
wrote Coin of Carthage about the Italian peninsula during Hannibal's invasion. A
sharp Greek trader predicts a Roman triumph because they represent "a
people rather than an army." Carlos Fuentes' story "The Two Numantias"
focuses on Scipio the Younger's destruction of a Spanish city, using the hero's
role as a patron of Polybius and a Latin language purist to meditate on fiction,
history and language.
The Late Republic
The civil wars of the late republic receive irreverent treatment from John Arden
in Vox Pop*, relating events between 91 BC and 81 BC. Actors and pirates become
involved in the Mule Driver's (Marius's) attempts to undermine Sulla (Stain) and
to foil Strychnine (Mithridates) in this view of the late republic from the
perspective of the common man and his Egyptian mistress Cuttlefish.
Stephen Saylor's series Roma sub Rosa puts Gordianus the Finder to work solving
homicides. Roman Blood, set in the time of Sulla's proscriptions, begins with a
hungover detective approached by a slave of Cicero to work on the case of the
accused parricide Sextus Roscius. In Arms of Nemesis, the hero works for a
conscienceless Crassus who hopes to reap political benefit by executing his
slaves at the villa where the murder took place. A charismatic Catalina and a
headless corpse provide the mystery in Catalina's Riddle, a story which does not
abuse our patience. The Venus Throw alternates between international intrigue
and household life, with a subplot involving the poet Catullus and his enamorata
Clodia. Saylor's books guarantee a meticulously accurate Roman setting and a
well-plotted mystery with enough clues for reasonable deductions.
In John Maddox Roberts' SPQR, a commissioner on the first rung of the political
ladder, solves the murder of a wealthy freedman. Joan O'Hagan's Roman Death
portrays Roman domestic relations and the court system in yet another case of
Cicero's. Benita Kane Jaro's The Key intersperses invented fiction with quotes
from the poems of Catullus, resulting in a wonderfully lyrical yet ironic story
of his love for Clodia.
Howard Fast's Spartacus shows the horror of Roman slavery and the nobility of
the revolt. The thin and conflicting historical record of the events gives the
author a chance to play Fast and loose with history, but the novel is still more
accurate than the film made from it. Arthur Koestler's The Gladiators joins the
Spartacus revolt in progress. Chapter titles such as "The Lofty
Reasons" are in keeping with the book's stated theme - the question of
revolutionary ethics. Those to whom this is appealing might turn to Koestler
while the rest of us read Fast or rent the video.
Duggan's Winter Quarters follows a legionary from Gaul after the defeat of the
loathsome Crassus at Carrhae. In this well-crafted novel, the Gauls join the
Parthians, fighting where no Gauls have fought before, trying to fashion a name
for heroism. Empire of the Eagle by Andre Norton and Susan Schwartz starts with
more Roman legionaries who survive the Carrhae disaster and then fight their way
through India on to China - not much history here, but there is an authentic
spirit of the hardened legionary, living to fight and adapting to new
circumstances.
Colleen McCullough's series Masters of Rome exhibits meticulous research and a
subtle interpretation of the political history of Rome from the time of Marius
through to Caesar. The struggles over the laws and the forms in the late
republic become personalized through the interactions of the oligarchy. By
staying close to the facts of a specific time and place, McCullough, achieves a
generalized portrait of politics in any era, much as Anthony Trollope does in
his parliamentary novels. The First Man in Rome, beginning in 110 B.C., centers
on Marius's rise to dictatorial power and the shaping of the Roman army by
recruiting among the lowest free classes - the Head Count. The Grass Crown*
features the aristocratic bohemian Sulla seizing Rome, upholding conservative
values by an unprecedented attack on the city. Fortune's Favorites continues the
story of Sulla with more of Pompey's ego and Caesar's charm added to the mix.
Caesar's Women personalizes the political still more with a vivid portrait of
Caesar's wives, mistresses, and female relations. Each of the volumes contains a
glossary and lists of characters, making the confusing political and family
relationships somewhat easier to follow. By carefully presenting her facts,
McCullough seems to be daring some hypothetical pedant to challenge her flawless
work. The next entry in the series is tentatively called Let the Dice Fly.
Rex Warner's Young Caesar and Imperial Caesar are told in the form of a first
person narrative by the man who always said "Caesar" instead of
"I." They offer little except to have provided Robert Graves (as
reviewer of the former) with a chance to formulate an evaluation algorithm for
historical fiction:
1) He knows his stuff, and writes convincingly
2) He knows his stuff, but writes unconvincingly
3) He does not know his stuff, but writes convincingly
4) He does not know his stuff, and writes unconvincingly More of this later.
Thornton Wilder's The Ides of March shifts Clodius's interruption of the rites
of the Bona Dea seventeen years forward, intentionally confusing it with the
events around Caesar's assassination, creating what Wilder calls a historical
"fantasia," evidently a synonym for mishmash. Allen Massie's Caesar is
narrated by the imperator's protege, the "other Brutus." The author
cleverly inserts his narrator at the center of Roman intrigue by assigning him
the overextended Clodia as a lover and the undistinguished but sly young
Octavian as a catamite.
The Early Empire and Early Christianity
Massie's Augustus is a self-justifying and self-congratulatory vita narrated by
the first emperor. "Marcus Tullius Cicero was the cleverest man I have ever
known, yet I outwitted him constantly," is an example of the kind of ironic
characterization that is one of the many delights of this work. John Williams'
Augustus presents the emperor's life through a series of documents giving us
views such as those of Marcus Agrippa, Cicero, and Antony.. Julia's memorable
diaries from Panadeteria carry much of the narrative and are the most compelling
parts of this 1973 National Book Award winner. (U.S.) Duggan's Three's Company
resurrects one of history's nonentities, Marcus Aemilius Lepidus (Octavian and
Antony's partner in the Second Triumvirate). Although politically irrelevant in
his role as Pontifex Maximus, he was the last of the freely elected Roman
magistrates. Gossip from Clodia ends each chapter. The heroine in Marilyn Todd's
I Claudia is a fictional creation who becomes a sleuth to conceal her practice
of a still older profession. The puritanical and hypocritical standards of the
Augustan Age provide a moral backdrop for this amusing mystery. The
well-regarded German writer Hermann Broch's Death of Virgil captures meditations
of the poet in his final illness, weaving his real poems and imagined thoughts
into a unique art form of its own. Augustus tries to dissuade the poet who
threatens to destroy the Aeneid.
The story of the earliest days of Christianity provides a special Roman context.
The Yiddish language writer Sholem Asch shocked many of his co-religionists with
a trilogy of novels favorably portraying the origins of the messianic religion.
Mary shows the Virgin as a Jewish maiden weaving vestments in the Temple and
then hearing an angel telling her that she will bear the son of God. The
Nazarene is told from the point of view of a Roman soldier doomed to live two
millennia after the crucifixion. The rediscovered gospel according to Judah
Ish-Kiriot sheds new light on the Passion. The Apostle* follows Paul from
flinging stones at Reb Istephan, down the road to Damascus and through the
mission to the Gentiles. "Among Jews a Jew, Greeks a Greek" expresses
the tone of a novel that treats pagan, Christian and Jewish traditions with
respect. Graves' King Jesus, on the other hand, begins with a secret marriage
between Herod's son and Mary: no Virgin in this version. The mission of the
messiah here concerns Jewish politics, which may offend believing Christians
while non-believers might wonder why he bothered with the story. Paul Maier's
Pontius Pilate connects Pilate to Roman history through an attested relationship
to Sejanus. Maier struggles valiantly to make a sympathetic character out of a
model of cowardice. Anatole France's story "The Procurator of Judea"
depends on a trick ending, but it is an authentic view of Jewish society through
Roman eyes. Lew Wallace, an American governor of the 19th Century, wrote Ben Hur
without much regard for the historical background. The prose is quaint, and the
journey from galley slave to spiritual and material wealth is wildly improbable,
but the story keeps even a sophisticated reader's interest nonetheless, and the
attention to detail is pleasing if not particularly accurate. This book has been
overwhelmed by its film versions, but this makes reading about the chariot race
more visual. The Christianity in Lloyd Douglas' The Robe seems to center around
relic worship. It uses the names of such characters as Sejanus and Julia, but it
distorts their role and the time frame in which they lived. Then Vice-President
George Bush named it his favorite book when asked during the 1988 presidential
campaign. Kingdom of the Wicked by Anthony Burgess brings together the pagan
world and the early Church. The apostles are humanized by their rivalries and
weaknesses, and the Roman officials are portrayed in accurately and originally.
The First Century from Tiberius to Domitian
The Claudian emperors provide the most typical backdrop for Roman novels.
Tiberius, another autobiography "discovered" by Massie stands in
contrast to the monster of Suetonius or Tacitus. A modest military man, Tiberius
represents Roman republican values with an overlay of Greek learning. I Loved
Tiberius by the Norwegian writer Elizabeth Dored operates on the wild premiss
that Augustus's daughter Julia really loved Tiberius in spite of unanimous
historical sources which suggest she tromped him with a cross section of Roman
society. Dored's Julia is punished for a misunderstood hallway hug, but this
makes for a more sympathetic narrator and a better story. Albert Camus' play
"Caligula" presents an amoral emperor, murdering raping, hunting
legacies, and humiliating his dinner guests by making love to their wives.
Caligula ascribes these actions to his existential love of liberty.
Perhaps the best-known of Roman novels, Graves' I Claudius* and Claudius the God
draw from a broad selection of ancient sources, staying faithful in detail while
contradicting the main intent. Graves's wise, liberal and valiant Claudius
probably would not have been recognized by his contemporaries, including his
mother who thought him an idiot, but the reinterpreted character makes for a
compelling narrator, although one wishes Livia's libel lawyer were given a
chance to present her side. Toward the end of the second novel, Graves' Claudius
reveals his plan to have his son escape to Britain, paint himself blue, and come
back to restore the republic, making the supposedly wise fictional Claudius even
more foolish than his historical counterpart. The Sybilline oracles prophecies
are always coming true, taking the story to the border of myth. And yet, the
novel captures Roman history intensely with the tabloid fodder of Suetonius,
making it, alas, the greatest of the novels discussed set in the era under
discussion..
Nero's Rome is probably the most popular of ancient settings. Henryk
Sienkewicz's Quo Vadis features a beautiful Christian slave and the obligatory
presence of Peter and Paul. The chronology is confused, and the use of the
character of Petronius as the relatively virtuous pagan is whimsical, but the
central story captures both the Roman and the Christian ethos. A new translation
by W.S.Kuniczak has made this novel and others by Sienkewicz, often considered
Poland's national writer, more alive to English language readers. Naomi
Mitchison's Blood of the Martyrs memorably describes the sadistic spectacles
used to persecute the Christian scapegoats. Her martyrs indulge in homoerotic
activity before their Christian services, but this quirk only serves to humanize
them. The Finnish writer Mika Waltari's The Roman features a fringe political
survivor who supervises the persecutions, in spite of the opposition of his wife
who fears such activity will spoil the lions. The book sweeps through first
century history from the point of view of a political survivor. John Hersey's
The Conspiracy describes the story of the Pisonian conspiracy through a number
of intriguing communications between principals. Balanced characterization makes
the effort less heroic than tyrrannicide might normally seem; the poet Lucan's
attempts to buy his way to freedom by turning his mother over to the secret
police is horrifyingly vivid. Maier's Flames of Rome, a documentary novel with
25 pages of notes, contextualizes its story of Flavius Sabinus, secret
Christian. David Wishart's Nero ingeniously explains who was responsible for the
fire Nero blamed on the Christians. Petronius the Arbiter narrates a tale which
does not sympathise with young 'Lucius' (Petronius always uses his birth name
rather than 'Nero') but it explains some of his actions through youth and bad
influences. The French writer Hugo Monteilhet's Neropolis deserves to be
translated, if only for the account of Nero's plans for the new Rome's permanent
open air sex market and the contrast with the humane simplicity of the early
Christians. Nero's life continues to be a subject for writers even after his
death, with Lion Feuchtwanger's The Pretender recounting the intriguing story of
a potter who impersonated the dead emperor in the East and tried to effect a
restoration.
Henry Treece's This Dark Island memorably portrays Claudius's bumbling
interference with his own military. Red Queen, White Queen pits poetic Celts
against practical Romans in a war to avenge the indignities heaped on Queen
Boudicca. Simple language and broad characterizations do not lessen the impact
of the widowed queen's struggle and defeat. George Shipway's Imperial Governor
describes the same period from the viewpoint of Roman civilian and military
administration, exemplified by the efficient Gaius Suetonius Paulinus. Marion
Zimmer Bradley's The Forest House occurs after Boudicca's defeat, creating a
feminist interpretation of the world of the Druids. Jack Holland's Druid Time
moves between Rome and Britain, being rather unique in casting Nero's mother
Agrippina in a somewhat favorable light.
Feuchtwanger's trilogy, Josephus*, Jew of Rome, and Josephus and the Emperor
sympathetically chronicles the life of the historian Flavius Josephus. The young
Josephus is a diplomat to Rome, a scholar-priest, a conciliator with the Romans,
a rebel general, and a turncoat within the first volume. Written during the
Hitler era, this German Jew's novel highlights the heroism of the Jews' efforts
to survive through a rabbinical school and Josephus's own histories of his
people. The Tenth Measure by Brenda Segal creates a more unflattering portrait
of the historian's role. This poetic novel lives up to the tragic beauty
promised in its epigraph, "There are ten measures of beauty in all the
world . . . and nine of these are in Jerusalem." David Kossoff's Voices of
Masada recreates the final siege of the war with archaeological evidence and
historic imagination. Ernest Gunn's The Antagonists effectively dramatizes
Masada as a conflict between stubborn Eleazar and the competent Roman commander
Silva. The Triumph, a less successful sequel, involves the struggles between
Titus and Domitian. Fast's Agrippa's Daughter tries to build sympathy for an
unfortunately sanitized Queen Berenice, normally represented as a harlot with
chutzpah.
Lindsey Davis offers the hard-boiled informer Marcus Didius Falco, an ancient
Roman version of the 1940's private detective. Silver Pigs opens the series with
Falco sneaking up to the 6th floor of his insula in order to avoid his
unspeakable landlord, Smartacus. Falco's relationship with Helena, the imperious
daughter of a senator, begins in this volume and continues through the series.
Falco solves the mystery of some silver ingots, called pigs because they are
made from molten silver flowing into channels as does milk to suckling piglets.
Shadows in Bronze has Falco posing as a door-to-door salesman and a pater
familias on vacation by the Bay of Naples. Although perfectly accurate in
material history, Davis provides touches of pleasing social anachronism. For
instance, in Venus in Copper Falco suggests that he needs a girl to take his
messages while he is out. The Iron Hand of Mars shows Falco boasting that he has
his own resources for boning up on senators, and gossip is his stock in trade.
Falco represents Vespasian on a mission to Germany. In Poseidon's Gold Falco
defends the reputation of his late brother and deals in classical objets d'art.
Last Act in Palmyra takes him to the Near East where his employment as writer
for a comedy troupe sets him to musing on his play that opens with a recently
murdered father's ghost appearing to a son. On a cheerful note for those of us
who appreciate the series, Falco implies that he lived at least through the age
of Trajan, giving Davis the scope for at least forty more years of Falco. Time
to Depart* derives its title from the custom of allowing a convicted criminal a
chance to choose exile. Falco continues, as always, a committed republican
serving the autocratic and parsimonious Emperor Vespasian. The series is at its
best when Falco is relating to his extended family of irritating sisters,
undisciplined nieces, and worthless brothers-in-law. In Course of Honour Davis
steps outside of Falco to create a love story centering on Vespasian's mistress,
the freedwoman Caenis. By presenting the life of an independent Roman woman, a
unique perspective is gained.
Anne de Leseleuc's Marcus Aper chez Les Rutenes is one of a series where the
orator from Tacitus' Dialogues solves mysteries in his role as a an advocate in
Gaul. A potter's daughter's death provides the plot for a roman policier of
sorts as well as an opportunity to describe a thriving ancient industry.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton's Last Days of Pompeii mixes a willful lack of fact, a
melodramatic plot, and a style so hackneyed that the author is the eponym for an
annual worst sentence contest. However, this may be the first novel of the
genre, certainly the first commercially successful one, making it historic if
not historical. Louis Untermeyer's poignant short story "The Dog of
Pompeii" captures the sense of the moment frozen in time in a much more
effective and decidedly shorter fashion.
Second and Third Century
Memoirs of Hadrian by the celebrated French writer Margaret Yourcenar presents a
civilizing Hadrian, humane and eager to spread Greek culture with Roman rule.
Much of the action seems to take place in Hadrian's mind, giving the novel a
static quality. Geoffrey Trease's Message to Hadrian lives up to its subtitle as
an adventure story as a young British orphan explores wider and wider roads
leading to the proverbial focal point of all roads. Rosemary Sutcliff's exciting
The Eagle of the Ninth, aimed at younger readers but without compromise of
thought or language, explains the disappearance of a legion and the discovery of
an eagle in a story which ends in Isca Dumnoniorum, modern day Exeter.
Walter Pater's Marius the Epicurean, taking place during the reign of Marcus
Aurelius, concerns itself more with philosophy than history. Robert Pilpel's
Between Eternities alternates between the enlightened rule of the
philosopher-emperor and the reign of terror of Commodus, the gladiator-emperor.
Ron Burns' Roman Nights shows sleuth Licinius Severus meditating on the
philosophy of his emperor Marcus Aurelius while attempting to foil the felonious
Commodus. (Burns' other Licinius Severus narrates Roman Shadows in the first
century BC, a mystery most interesting for its antipathy to Antony and sympathy
for Cicero.) Andivius Hedulio by Edward White shows Commodus killing elephants
with arrows and ostriches with clubs while a conspiracy to murder him unfolds.
Duggan's Family Favorites recounts with historical accuracy the incredible rise
to power of the the Syrian priest who became the Emperor Elagabalus whose
grandmother claimed he was the bastard of Caracalla by one of her slutty
daughters. The teenaged emperor took as lovers a male charioteer and a male
prostitute before seriously violating propriety by marrying a Vestal virgin. His
grandmother hopefully sent him a bevy of female prostitutes, but he hooked them
up to chariots and raced them to popular acclaim. Antonin Artaud's version of
the story, Heligobale, ou l'Anarchist Couronne*, opens with the olfactory image
of the latrine in which the emperor's body was eventually stuffed and the sperm
said to surround his cradle in the perverted environment to which he was born.
The image of 300 bare-chested women leading his god's giant phallus to Rome is
particularly vivid regardless of the gender or orientation of the reader.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Last Galley consists of vignettes set in
chronological order, many of them through the Roman period. "Giant
Maximin" tells the story of an eight-foot giant who rose to be emperor only
to fall, as so many smaller politicians have, over excessive taxation.
The Christian Empire
Constantine by Frank Slaughter reads in part like a Latin pony with dozens of
nouns carefully explained. Slaughter's hagiography gives us a saintly man who
murdered his father-in-law, son and wife, but unlike Constantine's contemporary
defenders who skipped over the deeds, Slaughter prefers to deal with and explain
away the historical facts. It is an admirable effort from a historical
perspective. Evelyn Waugh's Helena is equally uncritical without the virtue of
either historical accuracy or the author's customary satirical verve. France's
Thais is set in Christian North Africa where a courtesan is converted by an
anchorite, and vice versa. The courtesan's calling a gathering a philosophers
"a bunch of old goats" marks the high point of the book.
The reaction against the Christian empire receives a sympathetic portrayal in
Gore Vidal's Julian*. Letters between two of his mentors document his struggle
with his intolerant "Galilean" enemies. Julian's journal shows his
plan to restore the old gods in a temperate and tolerant fashion. Dmitri
Merezhovskii's Death of the Gods presents Julian as less sure of himself than
Vidal's, and the Christians are less villainous, making the story a little
blander. The Dutch writer Helga Haasse's Threshold of Fire describes Christian
persecutions of virtuous pagans, centering in 414 AD. Nostalgic crowds taunt
Emperor Honorius with chants of "Minerva" or "Games" when he
makes one of his rare visits to the capital.
Beacon at Alexandria by Gillian Bradshaw follows Charis, a maiden of Ephesus,
who flees a forced marriage, impersonates a eunuch, and becomes a physician with
surprisingly modern views on hygiene, bleeding, and dissection. A strong
feminist message pervades this story of the era of Theodosius I. Helen Mahler's
Empress of Byzantium focuses on the Empress Aelia Eudoxia, the daughter of an
Athenian philosopher who married Theodosius II. The emperor, his wife, and his
sister Pulcheria (later canonized) are all in love with the same male courtier
and each other, forming an intriguing incestuous, bisexual quadrangle. The
action takes place amidst an attempt to reunify the Eastern and Western empires
in the 5th Century. Imperial Purple by Bradshaw invents the story of a coup
attempt in a later period of the same emperor's reign, showing the action
through a dyer of cloaks and her fisherman husband, working together with
Pulcheria to assure a worthy successor.
The Fall of The Empire and After
Cecilia Holland's Death of Atilla describes the army of the Huns in disarray
after the wedding banquet and death of their leader who leaves a vacuum after
his death. Events on the fringe of the Roman world are moving quickly toward the
center by this period. Wilkie Collins' Antonina tells of the sack of Rome
through invented characters because, Collins notes in his preface, stories where
historical figures form the main characters must necessarily falsify some
details. Antonina, an innocent Roman maiden, becomes a pawn in the pagan plots
of Ulpius. The Goth who falls in love with her incurs the wrath of his
countrymen in a tried and true Romeo and Juliet plot, but the style is as
elegant as that of Collins' better-known works. Stefan Zweig's The Buried
Candelabrum* pursues the menorah stolen from the Temple by Titus and removed
from Rome during a sack by the Vandals. The seven-branched sacred object was
made of gold to increase the respect in which even pagans would hold it and to
preserve it for the Jews who pursue it even after the empire falls.
The end of Roman rule in Britain has its own literature. Late Roman Britain
forms the setting for Jack Whyte's recent novel The Skystone, which tells the
tale of the meteoric rise of a local blacksmith. Duggan's The Little Emperors
takes place after the empire has sent word that Britain is on its own and
describes the competition for the right to rule as Romans. John Cowper Powys'
Porius, restored to its full original length in a recent edition, takes place
over eight days in 499 AD, marking the transition toward Arthurian legend with
the familiar characters of Mallory and Tennyson appearing under their Welsh
names.
Graves' Count Belisarius tells the story of the title character's Job-like
sufferings at the hands of the Emperor Justinian, territory also covered by
Bradshaw's The Bearkeeper's Daughter, which focuses more on the
actress-prostitute Empress Theodora. Gary Jenning's Raptor traces the career of
the hermaphroditic Thorn who didn't allow his/her condition to act as a bar to a
highly active and varied sex life while helping Theodoric in his attempt to
restore Roman ways. George Gissing's unfinished Veranilda highlights the
architecture and religion of ancient Rome in the difficult era of the 540's.
Cecilia Holland's Belt of Gold describes 9th Century Constantinople through the
eyes of one of Charlemagne's knights stopping off on the way home from a
pilgrimage, but in spite of the presence of Blues and Greens, this moves us into
another period of historical fiction.
James Hawking's Top Ten:
Alfred Duggan, Children of the Wolf; John Arden, Vox Pop; Colleen McCullough,The
Grass Crown; Sholem Asch, The Apostle; Robert Graves, I Claudius; Lion
Feuchtwanger, Josephus; Lindsey Davis, Time to Depart; Antonin Artaud,
Heligobale, ou l'Anarchist Couronne; Gore Vidal, Julian; Stefan Zweig, The
Buried Candelabrum.
c James Hawking 1997
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