Roman Reading

Submitted by Kierkegaard on Sat, 05/31/2008 - 7:44pm. Tags:

Books and Film

Since theForvm is about to be redesigned--and because summer, with its reading-for-pleasure leisurely holidays, is almost upon us--I thought I'd take the liberty of listing a few of the Roman-flavored fictions that I've enjoyed in the months since the merciful finale of HBO's colorful and beautifully cast, but often offensively inaccurate, "Rome".

First, a brief plug for the grandfather of Caesarian TV series, ITV's 1969 "The Caesars", just released in the UK on DVD. For decades I'd heard the legend that this 6-part series was more accurate and better-cast than "I Claudius", which it had spurred the production of (as many of you know, I'm sure, Orson Welles had attempted and abandoned a film version in the 1950s). And to some slight degree, these claims are true, though "The Caesars" was filmed on even more of a shoe-string budget (and in dank black and white) than its illustrious successor; the elderly Augustus looks eerily like his own statues, and Tiberius, played brilliantly by Andre Morell, becomes the dominant figure in the story, wracked by duty rather than ambition, his celebrated vices politely ignored. Freddy Jones is brilliant as Claudius and bears up well to comparison even with Derek Jacobi, whom I consider to be one of the finest actors in recent history (his "Hamlet" underscores this assertion, subtly eclipsing any I've ever seen). The script is spare, dry, and elegant, and sticks to recorded facts, unblemished by Robert Graves' magnificent fancies and Jack Pullman's rather lurid improvisations upon them. In the end, however, it is precisely this brilliance, along with the extended time-line of the story and the amazing, relentlessly glittering cast, that make "I Claudius" the greater production.

Off the bookshelf, pride of place must go surely to Robert Harris' "Imperium", the first of two intended novels about Cicero. Readers may find the story overly factual, even dull in places, with its pedantic attention to detail; and a lawyer is seldom as sexy a subject as a soldier. But Harris (whose earlier "Pompeii" was a far more gripping and dramatic evocation of the time), deserves full marks for making the effort to turn the bane of British schoolboys into a living, breathing man.

Those who enjoy an epic sprawling history of families and places (a la Edward Rutherford), rather than individuals, will enjoy Stephen Saylor's "Roma". Author of a long series of (I ask his fans to forgive me in advance) often tedious and predictable mystery novels set in Caesar's time, Saylor uses his research to 'explain' many of the myths of Rome's founding (the Cave of Cacus, the suckling of Romulus and Remus, etc) in naturalistic terms, sometimes based on recent archaealogy. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't. But even those who are not enthralled by his transitory characters will enjoy the snapshots of Rome's building and changing cultural life--even though, just as all roads to Rome, his story leads inexorably down through time to Julius Caesar himself (yet again).

I'm not a fan of Lindsay Davis, either, whose very first Falco novel was a jolly romp, but whose work has since devolved into self-referential formulaism. My favorite "Roman detective" is Decius Metellus of John Maddox Roberts "SPQR" series, which is written with a far greater degree of accuracy than many far more pretentious novels about Rome, as well as a great deal of sly wit and charm. I believe we're up to the 12th of this delightful series; in the more recent novels, the "mystery" has increasingly taken a back seat to political and military events. Imagine Bridget Jones as a Roman social climber-turned-private-detective, and you have the central conceit of Marilyn Todd's lively "I, Claudia" series; unfortunately the conceit wears a bit thin in sequels. Initially I had high hopes of Simon Scarrow's "Eagle" series about the adventures of a pair of Roman soldiers, but these have soured as, infected with the awkward unimaginative lecturing of the re-enactor-turned-author, the episodes have floundered on and on.

A wonderful surprise has been the reissue, after several decades OOP, of Wallace Breem's "Eagle in the Snow" and "The Consul's Daughter". The first is set in the same "imperial twilight" as Alfred Duggan's "The Little Caesars" and John Gloag's "Caesar of the Narrow Seas" (both highly recommended), the second is about the mission of an investigator sent by Agrippa to inform on the intrigues surrounding a daughter of Cleopatra, Selene, who was reared by Augustus' sister Octavia and then married off to one of the kings of North Africa. Both novels are haunting and evocative. The history of Selene's parents is examined in Colleen McCollough's massive sequel to her Caesar sextet, "Anthony and Cleopatra". All her talents and faults are on full display here; her descriptions of battles and military campaigns are even more cursory than usual, and her flair for schoolgirl soap-opera dialogue at awkward moments has not deserted her. But her depictions of Anthony and Augustus Caesar lack the bloated hagiographical tone of those of Julius, and her Cleopatra is not unconvincing. Weirdly, however, for a writer so unabashed at deploying her research, she neglects to mention many of the most famous details of the story--including the famous calumny by Anthony that he had once sodomized the young Augustus. Still, one hopes the old beldame lives, like Claudius, long enough to get to Nero. And that I live long enough to read them all...

I realize that many of you have abandoned reading fiction altogether, so I've left out recent non-fiction publications on Rome (like Anthony Everitt's earnest and rather too-PC "Augustus") from this post in the hopes that you'll fill in the blanks below. Perhaps I'll tackle Troy soon; a great number of books about the Trojan War have been piling up on my end-table lately.

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Thanks for the outline, K (#96987)

by BlaiseP on Sun, 06/01/2008 - 11:05am

I haven't read much along these lines in many years. The interesting parts of the Roman Empire were in the East. For my money, Rome's heyday was during the Republic. The Republic fascinates me, especially the earliest years, the defeat of Tarquin and the transformation of the Republic during the Samnite and Latin wars.

But the Greeks were never really out of the picture, and much of what we'd call Roman, and no doubt they would too, was Greek. The Romans just built larger versions of these things.

My problem with novels about Rome is the same problem I have with all the books about Lincoln: there's only so many times you can plow the same ground. And it's sorta like the debate between Hard and Soft Sci-fi. If someone tries to deviate from Livy and Suetonius and Tacitus, or try to dig up the lost historians, to put words in their mouths, then the historians get annoyed. If someone tries to cast these people in the mold of modern sentiments, the novels become costume dramas. Nobody's ever adequately conveyed the brutality of the times, the jingoism, the gleeful sadism. Oh we get a few baroquely obscene emperors here and there, but the sheer scale describing the enterprise that was Rome is as indescribable as writing a novel about a nest of fire ants.

Barbed wire enclosed an arbitrary spot
   Where bored officials lounged (one cracked a joke)
And sentries sweated for the day was hot:
   A crowd of ordinary decent folk
   Watched from without and neither moved nor spoke
As three pale figures were led forth and bound
To three posts driven upright in the ground.
-
The mass and majesty of this world, all
   That carries weight and always weighs the same
Lay in the hands of others; they were small
   And could not hope for help and no help came:
   What their foes like to do was done, their shame
Was all the worst could wish; they lost their pride
And died as men before their bodies died.
-
    She looked over his shoulder
           For athletes at their games,
    Men and women in a dance
           Moving their sweet limbs
     Quick, quick, to music,
           But there on the shining shield
     His hands had set no dancing-floor
           But a weed-choked field.
-
A ragged urchin, aimless and alone,
   Loitered about that vacancy; a bird
Flew up to safety from his well-aimed stone:
   That girls are raped, that two boys knife a third,
   Were axioms to him, who'd never heard
Of any world where promises were kept,
Or one could weep because another wept.

The poets always say it best. Auden, Shield of Achilles.

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some roman limericks (#97245)

by Micky Love on Tue, 06/03/2008 - 10:42am

Over the Alps on an elephant
Went Hannibal out of his element
For the elephant's motion
Was so like the ocean
He continually Punicked
Upon his best tunic
And his slaves had to wash off the elephant

Dido wrote to Aeneas
Why don't you sail by and see us
I'm here all alone
With my lust and no phone
Half dead of desire
My crotch quite on fire
Which I've heard you'd put out with your penis

There was a young lady from Exeter
And all the young men threw their sex at her
One day to be rude
She posed in the nude
While her parrot, a pervert, took pecks at her

Nothing resembles virtue more than a great crime. Saint-Just

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Roman Reading

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