"With the Romans, we have
cookbooks, letters, erotic poetry, political
speeches, natural history. We just have an enormous
amount of literary source material that tells us
not just what happened, but how did these people
really think, what motivated them, what were their
personalities like? And the great people on the
world stage, how did their personalities clash? We
have a lot of drama. There're good stories, good
material."
The legend of the Gordian knot runs
roughly thus: For centuries, an oxcart sat in a temple
square in Turkey, its yoke and shaft bound by an elaborate
knot. Lured by a prophecy that whoever managed to undo the
knot would become the ruler of all Asia, many
nimble-fingered challengers attempted to unravel its
threads. But the knot remained tied until the day that
Alexander the Great rode into town.
Bent on conquering Asia, with army in tow, Alexander could
not pass up the Gordian knot and its legend. He pondered the
problem for a while before muttering, "It makes no
difference how it is loosed." And, drawing his sword, he
severed the knot with one stroke.
As a metaphor for unconventional problem-solving, the legend
of the Gordian knot has proved hugely popular. The moniker
"Gordian" is used by a Nebraska book imprint, a Hungarian
music company and a Tennessee health-care consulting
concern, to list but a few. It's also the inspiration behind
the name author Steven Saylor gave to his fictional
detective: Gordianus, star of a series of historical
mysteries set in ancient Rome, the newest of which is A
Mist of Prophecies.
Gordianus, also known as the Finder, makes a living asking
questions, dredging up secrets, and bouncing back and forth
between the scheming politicians of Rome in the last century
before Christ. The job is tough and disreputable, but not
exactly brutal; the 62-year-old Gordianus seldom has to
imitate Alexander and resort to the sword. He's a man of
words, not action. All of which makes the story of
Alexander's swinging solution -- while appealing in its
rebelliousness -- rather an inappropriate metaphor for this
detective's life.
Fortunately, like most legends, the story of the Gordian
knot has an alternate ending: Instead of chopping the knot
apart, Alexander simply pulled out the peg holding the
oxcart shaft to the yoke, letting the knot fall open from
the inside. Efficient, creative and subtle. What better
attributes could a detective hope to have?
* * *
Saylor's detective is generally all of these things, but
subtle most of all. He has to be. In combining two distinct
literary genres -- historical fiction and detective fiction
-- Saylor comes down firmly on the side of history. The nine
volumes of Saylor's "Roma Sub Rosa" series all involve
actual historical figures, trials, scandals, battles and
murders. Occasionally, as in A Mist of Prophecies,
the central mystery follows a fictional character -- in this
case, a prophetess named Cassandra. But more often,
Gordianus is hired by the likes of Cicero, Pompey and
Caesar, notables anxious to dig up dirt on each other.
"If [Gordianus] did his job well, he wouldn't appear
in the historical record," Saylor says. "He would kind of be
an invisible person, as most people are in the historical
record."
The 46-year-old Saylor writes his novels from a setting
appropriately evocative of the Mediterranean: the sunny back
deck of his house in Berkeley, California, surrounded by
flowering fruit trees and the plashing of a little plug-in
fountain. A small man with dark hair going somewhat to gray,
Saylor exudes an unusual blend of calm and energy. Since he
began the Gordianus series more than a decade ago, he has
published a book nearly every year, including A Twist at
the End (2000), an inventive standalone novel based on a
series of historical unsolved crimes in his native Texas.
And due out next year is an autobiographical suspense novel,
Have You Seen Dawn?, set in modern-day, small-town
Texas. Both of the Texas books revolve around serial
killers, a fact that Saylor recognizes as ironic.
"I never thought I'd write about serial killers," admits
Saylor. "They don't interest me."
Then again, when he arrived at the concept of the first
Gordianus novel, Roman Blood, Saylor had no idea that
he would wind up writing a multi-volume saga of a man and
his family trying to survive and thrive in the waning Roman
Republic.
As Saylor says, Gordianus is indeed rather an invisible
person. He's just an ordinary guy, an honest man whose chief
problem in life is the conflict between his desire to be a
quiet homebody and his obsession with uncovering the truth.
(This discord apparently runs in the blood; Gordianus'
origins are obscure, but he reveals that he learned his
craft from his dead father.) Over the course of the series,
his family has grown from two (Gordianus and his
Jewish-Egyptian slave/concubine, Bethesda) to 10 (two
adopted sons and a natural daughter, plus their various
spouses and offspring). He's got a lot of loved ones to
worry about, and they don't make it easier for him. His
elder son, Eco, has followed in his footsteps as a
professional investigator. His younger son, Meto, is a
soldier in Julius Caesar's service. His daughter, Diana, is
married to Gordianus' bodyguard, Davus, and keeps
threatening to be a pesky female and help him solve
mysteries. And his aloof but passionate wife, the manumitted
Bethesda, wishes that he would just stay safely at home.
Gordianus' household is sensitively depicted, and it is
something of a poignant pleasure to watch all of its members
age over the course of the books. But as characters, they
pale by comparison with the larger-than-life historical
figures who sashay and stomp their way through Saylor's
works. The dyspeptic, hypocritical advocate Cicero, the
beautiful, decadent aristocrat Clodia, the elusive, charming
politician Catilina -- these and the rest of the long-dead
crowd of "real" people stick more firmly in the reader's
mind than any of Saylor's fictional folk. Even the notorious
dictator Sulla, who has a mere cameo appearance in Roman
Blood, is vividly portrayed: "His skin was splotched and
discolored, dotted with blemishes and etched all over with
red veins as fine as bee's hair." Gordianus, on the other
hand, is repeatedly described as average-looking; in A
Mist of Prophecies, he gazes in a mirror and sees
nothing more than "a gray-bearded man whose face was lined
with worries."
Of course, Gordianus and his family are everyday people
trying to live everyday lives, while the celebrities who
keep butting in are anything but quotidian.
"All these famous historical figures, they didn't die in
bed," points out Saylor. "They died in the saddle, so to
speak. And they would have been proud of that. The
historical record we have is not about normal, average
people. It's about Caesar, Pompey, Cleopatra, people who
might have to be institutionalized today. Either they would
be Bill Gates or Hannibal Lecter -- I'm not sure which.
These are people who lived ego-driven, almost maniacal
existences. I don't know how they managed it. Whereas the
average person in history is kind of lost; we have a hard
time finding them, what they were actually like, what their
values were."
* * *
The lack of strong fictional characterization is
forgivable when compared to the lush atmosphere and creative
plot-handling in these novels. Saylor doesn't just toss a
clutch of men in togas into the Forum; he describes how
difficult it is to wind oneself into a toga, and how hot the
stones in the Forum feel on a summer day, burning through
shoe leather. He makes the fact that his detective happens
to run into a lot of famous people on a regular basis feel
absolutely believable; this is a city, after all, of just
one million people, where everybody prefers to pass the time
outdoors in such convenient hangouts as the Forum. And, by
sticking to the facts of ancient events, Saylor pulls off an
unusual feat: writing one long historical saga disguised as
a mystery series. The suspense behind each book isn't
Will Gordianus solve the mystery? but, Will
Gordianus survive yet another round of scheming? It's
I, Claudius for the beach-reading crowd.
In A Mist of Prophecies, Saylor departs from pattern
by going behind the scenes, as it were, and writing a novel
focused solely on the women of Rome. The book is a series of
interviews with seven historical women, mostly politicians'
wives, about the murder of an eighth, fictional woman, the
mysterious seeress Cassandra.
"What was going on with the women?" Saylor asks. "That's
what intrigued me. After doing the last two books
[Rubicon
and Last Seen in Massilia] about the war
[between forces loyal to Pompey and Caesar], I
wanted to get back to intrigue."
Saylor also departs from form by having Gordianus --
heretofore always a loyal, faithful husband -- fall in love
and into an affair with Cassandra. It's an unusual
development, but no more so than the shocker at the end of
Last Seen in Massilia, where Gordianus, in a rage,
disowns his son Meto.
"There's a civil war going on, and Gordianus' family has to
mirror the civil war in some way," explains Saylor. "There's
got to be family conflict."
And in a third innovation, Saylor drops his usual
straightforward story structure in favor of alternating
flashbacks and interviews. The central scene in A Mist of
Prophecies -- Cassandra's sudden death in a busy
marketplace -- turns out to be the heart of the book, from
which the story spirals both forward and back. (Because of
this novel's time-twisting structure, the scene is actually
written out twice.) No real-life celebrities wander through,
but otherwise, the scene has all the Saylor strengths:
current political tensions reflected in the market's
exorbitant prices, descriptive touches ladled over such
everyday objects as a bunch of radishes (they exude "the
smell of hot Etruscan sunshine") and a plot simmering just
below the surface.
In the scene, Gordianus and his family are shopping, or
trying to. His wife is sick with a mysterious, lingering
ailment. The civil war has pushed his debts so high, he
can't afford to feed his household. He's stricken with guilt
over his love affair. Suddenly, the blond, enigmatic
Cassandra herself staggers into the marketplace, stumbles
into Gordianus' arms, and dies. The staring crowd gathers
round. Rumors fly.
"Did you see that? She died in the old man's
arms!"
"Cassandra -- that's what people called
her."
"I heard she was a war widow. Went crazy with
grief."
"No, no, no! She was a Briton, from way up north.
They're all crazy. Paint themselves blue."
"I heard she was a Vestal who broke her vows and
got herself buried alive. Managed to claw her way out of
the grave but ended up raving mad."
"Nonsense! You'll believe anything."
"All I know is, she could see the future."
"Could she? I wonder if she saw that
coming."
In Gordianus' world -- a world lacking a police force,
forensic science or, indeed, much in the way of objective
reasoning -- detection is two-thirds psychology and
persuasion and, with a bit of luck, one-third proof. Against
superstition, prejudice, hearsay, custom and myth, it's an
uphill battle.
When no one comes forward to claim Cassandra's body,
Gordianus arranges for her funeral himself. At the
cremation, seven silent guests appear -- seven women, all
connected by marriage or blood or love to powerful Roman
politicians. Confused, angry and grieving, Gordianus begins
interviewing them all, trying to find out what their
connections were to Cassandra.
The women are Calpurnia, Caesar's wife; Terentia, Cicero's
wife; Antonia, Mark Antony's wife; Cytheris, Mark Antony's
actress-lover; Fulvia, a widow of two politicians and the
future wife of Mark Antony; Fausta, the daughter of the late
Sulla; and Clodia, the lovely, scandalous sister of the
murdered politician Clodius. Needless to say, none of these
women is exactly forthcoming with Gordianus, who seems a bit
out of his element, wandering through a haze of femininity.
He goes through his routine of politely persistent
questioning, but the results are minimal, and in the end,
most of the answers he wants come not from his own efforts
but from the women taking pity on him and confessing their
secrets. As Clodia says, angrily, "You think you know
everything, Gordianus, yet you know nothing!"
Researching A Mist of Prophecies, says Saylor, proved
to be similarly frustrating. "What was really daunting is
there are no biographies of any of these women from the
ancient world," he explains. "Plutarch could not imagine
writing the biography of a woman. Not even Cleopatra. We
have virtually no primary material at all. All we have is
references in the biographies of the men. So that was one of
the challenges, trying to visualize these women without the
kind of sources I've had in the past about the men."
Some of the women in A Mist of Prophecies -- Clodia,
Fulvia and Fausta, as well as a few other minor players --
have appeared previously in the Roma Sub Rosa series, and
thus are more recognizable than the book's other women. But
Saylor does a creditable job of keeping all of his female
characters from blurring together, and a few of the new ones
-- Calpurnia and Cytheris, in particular -- register
strongly. And Cassandra, the fictional prophetess, eclipses
them all. She's truly mysterious and intriguing, and it's
perfectly understandable that Gordianus would be mesmerized
by her.
"It's essentially a portrait gallery of these important
women in Rome at that time," says Saylor of his book. "And
at the end, things are set up to take Gordianus to Egypt,
where he will finally meet Cleopatra. In many ways, the
entire series has just been a progress toward
Cleopatra."
* * *
In 1991, when Roman Blood was published, Saylor
had no plans to turn his historical mystery into a series.
He had built a career as a writer and editor of gay erotica
(his writings in this field, mostly for such magazines as
Drummer, are frequently anthologized), and Roman
Blood was both his first novel and a significant
departure from his previous work.
"I thought I was writing a 'literary novel,'" Saylor
recalls. "At least, that's what I told my editor when he
asked for a sequel."
A fan of ancient Roman culture since childhood, Saylor
studied the classical world as an undergrad at the
University of Texas at Austin, but didn't visit Rome until
the late 1980s. The trip proved so enthralling that, after
his return to the United States, Saylor hunted around for
something to keep his mind in ancient Rome. He lit upon a
Penguin edition of Cicero's murder trials. The book's very
first case -- Cicero's oration defending Sextus Roscius, a
Roman who had been charged with murdering his own father --
eventually became the basis of Roman Blood.
"It's about a young advocate lawyer who, the more he finds
out about this case, the more danger he's in. And that's
classic John Grisham," says Saylor. "Knowledge is dangerous.
You've got to crusade for the truth."
Saylor's first draft featured Cicero as the muckraking
detective, with his secretary Tiro playing the faithful
Watson. But Cicero's self-serving personality began to set
Saylor's teeth on edge, so he scrapped Plot A and started
over with Plot B: Gordianus, a fictional, hungover,
underemployed private investigator, is visited one morning
by Tiro, who asks him for help in the Sextus Roscius case. A
great deal of skullduggery, politics, family secrets,
seaminess and violence ensues; by the end of Roman
Blood, Gordianus is disgusted, fascinated, exasperated,
relieved and the adoptive father of a street urchin. The
boy's name? Eco -- in honor of Umberto Eco, whose 1983
best-selling historical mystery, The Name of the
Rose, was as influential as Cicero on Saylor's choice of
genre.
"It was historical, and it was a murder mystery," Saylor
explains. "And that just struck me as this perfect
combination. I thought, 'That's it. That's everything I want
to read in a book.'"
In the late 1980s, when Saylor started out, writers of
ancient Roman mysteries were few and far between. Since
then, at least 10 novelists have developed mystery series
set in various eras of ancient Rome. The best-known of these
writers (besides Saylor) is probably Britain's Lindsey
Davis, whose newest work, The Jupiter Myth, is the
14th in her series. Her detective, Marcus Didius Falco, is a
Hammettesque tough guy employed by the emperor Vespasian.
There's even a popular series aimed at the young-adult
market: Caroline Lawrence's "Roman Mysteries" series,
featuring four adolescent sleuths of the first century
A.D.
"With the Romans, we have cookbooks, letters, erotic poetry,
political speeches, natural history," notes Saylor. "We just
have an enormous amount of literary source material that
tells us not just what happened, but how did these people
really think, what motivated them, what were their
personalities like? And the great people on the world stage,
how did their personalities clash? We have a lot of drama.
There're good stories, good material."
There's also a milieu not unlike that of today. It's easy to
draw comparisons between ancient Rome and the modern West:
both can be characterized as politically fraught,
economically rapacious and culturally dominating. (Saylor
has cited disgust with the politics of America's Reagan-Bush
era as a third influence on his writing of Roman
Blood.) Historical fiction, at least for some, can be
less an act of escape than an exercise in metaphor. And it's
hard to imagine a more versatile tool for this exploratory
activity than the go-anywhere, annoy-anyone figure of the
detective. Yes, it's an anachronistic choice. But then,
playing by the rules isn't always the way to win the game. |
June 2002
Caroline
Cummins is a
freelance writer based in Berkeley, California.
