"Roma" - Steven Saylor

Steven Saylor was probably one of the reasons I became interest in Classics, particularly Roman history. He has written many mysteries set in Ancient Rome with the protagonist Gordianus the Finder, a sort of Ancient Sherlock Holmes. A few of the my favorites of his mysteries include "A Murder on the Appian Way" and "Roman Blood".

More recently, he came out with "Roma - A Novel of Ancient Rome". The story follows two Roman families, the Pinarii and the Potitii, who survive from the time before Rome's founding, as salt and metal traders, up through the moment of Cleopatra's suicide. The novel is a work of fiction, but ties in many real events and looks at them from the eyes of the these two families.

Saylor's ability to transport the reader back to the key moments in Roman history makes this a great overview of Rome, full of historical detail, but a very easy read. He also does not beat around the bush on the realities of Rome that often are glossed over, brutal civil wars, political corruption, rapes and murders. While Rome may be viewed as one of the greatest and most enduring empires, it was rife with problems. One example of this is the story he recounts of a girl from a wealthy plebeian family who becomes the obsession of a powerful senator, but she has little interest in him. While her father is away with the army be sends his henchman to her house and claims that she was his slave who ran away and she must be returned to him. Without her father around, the rest of her family is helpless to stop him. She is taken to the Forum before the Senate and they agree there must be a trial, but that she cannot be let go until the trial has taken place so she must be detained. The senator who is obsessed with her takes her in and that night rapes her. The next day her father has returned and pleads to the senate to see her daughter with the slave who helped raise her because they are the only ones who would be able to identify a birthmark on her inner thigh, thus proving she was his daughter. When he sees her and realizes what has happened, he stabs his own daughter to death, instead of forcing her, and the family, to live on in shame.

This is just one example of the frailty of human life in Roman times, one false sentence or unfortunate mishap could easily lead to death.