Steven Saylor on "Roma"

Steven Saylor, author of the popular Roma Sub Rosa mystery series, dubs it "the story of how Rome became Rome." USA Today's Robert Bianco calls it a "history of history--of the way fact is buried by myth and of the way societies cling to traditions even when the meanings behind them are lost to memory." It's a big, complex book that effortlessly merges legend with history and novelistic structure with the always--unexpected contours of history. It's a grand epic on a James Michener scale about the first thousand years of Rome--from its beginnings as a permanent settlement along a salt trade route to the fall of the Republic and the rise of the Empire--and the central role that two founding families play in Roman history, even as the families in question, the Pinarii and the Potitii, face reversals and transformations that wind the two lineages about one another. The book's title evokes the majestic, the mysterious, and the familiar all at once: Roma.

Saylor's Roma Sub Rosa mysteries--nine novels and two collections of short stories--follow the adventures of a Roman private detective, a "finder" with a talent for sniffing out evidence and finding his way to the thick of one historical adventure after another, whether he's investigating a mystery at the behest of a young Cicero or becoming enmeshed in Caesar's Egyptian affairs. Always scrupulous about the day-to-day details of life in the ancient world, and often basing his stories on authentic historical events, Saylor's leap from mystery to epic novel is perhaps not so unexpected as it might seem. The Roma Sub Rosa novels (or Gordianus novels, as they are also known) chart a life story, not just of Gordianus--he's a young man in the first volume, Roman Blood, and a venerable paterfamilias in the most recent, The Judgment of Caesar--but also of the Roman Republic in its waning decades. For Saylor to author a novel that establishes ten centuries of ancient history as its canvas is bold indeed, but well within his writerly powers.

To be sure, Saylor brings his trademark ability to stitch facts and fiction together to Roma, touching upon all the best known points of the Republic--its founding, its wars, its grand architectural ambitions--while examining the religious and moral attitudes of its evolving social order. Rulers are murdered and dictators elevated; freedom embraced and discarded; the city shines with triumphal splendor and suffers the ravages of unstoppable armies; and a long, close-fought culture war sees the common people ground beneath the heel of the aristocracy, and the rise of all-powerful "Decemvirs," or people's advocates, who abuse their power with much the same energy and zeal as any nobleman. America is often compared to Rome, but not until reading a work of this scope and detail can you appreciate how frighteningly close the parallels truly are.

EDGE recently had the pleasure to interview Steven Saylor about his new novel, his future plans for Gordianus, and his views on a certain HBO series that has breathed new life into the old Republic.

EDGE: How much of Roma was based on source texts and archaeological evidence versus characters and episodes you invented for the sake of the story?

Steven Saylor: It's very hard to separate the fact from the fiction, but the two families--the Pinarius family and the Potitius family--really are the first two families mentioned by Livy in his history of Rome. We have descendants of them mentioned later on in the records, so we know they existed. They are really the earliest Romans we have names for, which is why I chose them.

Now, as far as how the lineage works out, that's largely fictional. But in the very last chapter, Lucius Pinarius, who is one the three heirs of Caesar, is an actual person. So real members of the families pop in and out. We of course don't know everything about them for the entire thousand years [spanned by Roma], so I had to make up quite a bit, but they are based on actual people.

EDGE: You do set the episodes you write about in the lives of the two families against specific junctures from actually Roman history.

Steven Saylor: Oh, absolutely. Livy gives a sort of "everything straight through" [account], although he ends a little before my [novel does] --he runs out around the [time of] the war with Hannibal. I kind of wanted to hit the very highest points--that's why the story skips ahead a hundred years, or a few generations, at a time. Those eleven episodes I chose were, I thought, the most critical junctures, and I was able to get in a lot of human drama in those stories. Like the story of the girl, Verginia, who was compromised by the Decemvirs and her father sacrifices her: that's an actual story from Livy, the perfect example of Roman morality at work. If your daughter's been compromised, well, goodbye daughter! It's what the gods would expect of [a pious Roman].

EDGE: Did your experience writing the Roma Sub Rosa series prepare you for the epic novel by giving you a working understanding of Roman psychology?

Steven Saylor: I think so. This is kind of the back story for the Roma Sub Rosa series, this is kind of my Simarillion, you know, [the book in which] Tolkein has all that back story for The Lord of the Rings. This is the thousand years that lead up to the age of Gordianus.

It begins with a much more primitive psychology; by [Gordianus'] time, Rome is a much more sophisticated place, and the role of women is changing, there's much more homosexuality because of contact with the Greeks. It's funny, I looked for the gay stuff in the original sources, and it's just not there. The Romans, at the same time as the ancient Greeks, say the age of the Iliad, Troy, the Greeks in 1200 B.C., already have this very full-fledged [custom of] homosexual pairing, and the Spartans later, around 500 B.C. have their band of lovers, and so forth. The Greeks are always a lot gayer--I don't know why.

But the Romans of the same time are much more "Family Values." You just don't see [references to homosexuality] in the sources. It must have been going on, but there's certainly no culture based on it, like the Greeks had. But about the time they actually have contact with the Greeks, [the Romans] start acquiring those appetites, or they come out in the culture more, and that causes a bit of trouble. In the chapter about Scipio and Hannibal, the guy who narrates it has a huge crush on Scipio and he ends up in the cult of Bacchus, which is a kind of pansexual, religious cult that is imported from elsewhere, and the Romans actually crack down on that. The beginnings of that are not welcome in Rome--these are very foreign ideas and foreign gods. But by the time of Gordianus, it's a place where we would be much more comfortable.

Where Art Thou, Gordianus>

EDGE: I kept looking for Gordianus to pop up, and I didn't see him.

Steven Saylor: You know, I really thought in the last chapter I might somehow manage a walk-on, but it just didn't feel right. I just didn't feel comfortable doing that. So Roma stands by itself.

EDGE: Roma has been getting rave reviews. Do you think you surprised the critics with how well you acquitted yourself writing your first epic? Or do you suppose that given your recognition as an authority on ancient Rome, it was expected that you'd deliver a good read?

Steven Saylor: My reputation has been building slowly, but surely. I'm not an overnight sensation. But I've always gotten pretty good reviews. I've occasionally gotten a really serious one from The Times of London, or also from The Times Literary Supplement. I've never gotten a serious review over here--I think maybe it's because I write in the mystery genre; maybe it's because I started smaller and worked my way up. So it was gratifying to see [the review] in USA Today, because it took the book seriously. I'm hoping for a few more high-profile reviews like that, but we'll see. It's still happening right now.

EDGE: Given how familiar you are with Rome, with its history and its people, to what do you attribute the fall of Rome?

Steven Saylor: We're talking about the fall of the Republic--that's what happens at the end of Roma. After that, they've still got an empire for several hundred years, during which Rome is still expanding, and then, eventually, the empire falls.

The system of government that they worked out after the kings worked out for about five hundred years, which is longer than our Republic has lasted so far. But the real trouble comes with all the money [that] comes in, [which is shown in] the chapter about the two Gracci brothers, who try to cause a social revolution. All this trouble happens because after the Punic wars: they ruin Carthage, they wipe it off the map, and now they are alone in the Mediterranean as a still-expanding superpower. All this wealth starts rolling into Rome, immense wealth from all over the world. And [along with that wealth come] immense [numbers of] slaves, because their modus operandi is to move outward, [conquer and] enslave the populace [of each nation they invade], enfranchise some of them but enslave others and bring them back [to serve Roman masters].

So what happens in Italy is all the small farmers get run off their farms, because the big landowners buy [the farmlands] up, and bring in slave labor. Consequently, there aren't these small farmers to feed the army, and you have all these poor people in Rome looking for a handout now because they don't have jobs anymore--the slaves have taken over their jobs. So what you have is, the rich are becoming super-rich; the poor are becoming poorer. Eventually, the rich become so rich that you have people like Pompeii and Caesar who have these armies with thousands of men, and they're all private armies; they amass wealth. Caesar conquers Gaul and most of that loot, and the slaves, and the money that comes from the slaves, goes straight into Caesar's pocket. He becomes the richest man and the most powerful warlord on Earth. Well, that's not good for the Republic, to have someone like that hanging around. Eventually, there's too much power at the top, which is a bad thing. I worry about it in our society.

EDGE: There are many parallels to our society that the reader begins to grasp and to be astonished at--the constancy of human nature, the repetitions of the things people get up to.

Steven Saylor: And class conflict. We see the same conflicts from the elites and from the have-nots. The elites play the religion card; they always say, "You know, there's a reason we're in charge of society. This isn't an accident. We are the chosen people. Obviously, the gods like the way we are running things. So you challenge us at your peril. You offend us, you offend the gods--and if the gods withdraw their favor, we're in trouble because our enemies are going to come in and swarm over us." So it becomes a religious argument--the right wing is always ready to play that argument.

Now, on the other hand, you have the have-nots, and they have rabble-rousers, like the Gracchi brothers, who are always trying to change the social order. This is actually talked about by Livy and other historians. They were very conscious of how that class conflict worked. These are not new arguments in any way.

EDGE: You've mentioned Livy a couple of times, but I remember reading about some of the same historical figures in Plutarch's Lives of Noble Romans. Between those two and other sources, how did you decide who you were going to go with when they contradicted each other?

Steven Saylor: The amazing thing is how they don't contradict each other--they supplement each other. Plutarch does biographies of those early Romans; he has one of Romulus. Livy does straight history. Then there are a few other minor sources-I mention them in the Authors Note at the end, and also in the Author's Note I mention a couple of really key books that have been published more recently.

There's T. J. Cornell's The Beginnings of Rome, which is, right now, the absolute state of the art of what we know about earliest Rome. I read all those primary historians like Livy and Plutarch, but I also looked at the work of serious historians working today who have also examined the archaeological record and the ancient sources and come up with their most likely idea of what the true story is.

Ancient Gods and Winged Members

EDGE: I sure got a kick out of Rome starting off as a trade colony that is established because of a vision of a winged phallus. And it's based on a real religious item from Roman antiquity, the fascinus.

Steven Saylor: As I say in the Author's Note at the end, in the very last paragraphs, I didn't make that up--that is the most authentic thing we have about earliest, earliest Rome. The very first thing that seems like a deity instead of an animating spirit that the Romans mention in their own sources is that winged phallus. It turns up a couple of times. I grasped on to that--I hearkened back and tried to get the most archaic images of Rome, and as one of the historians [T. P. Wiseman], says, this is just not a Greek idea, it's not a Greek kind of god, so it appears to be a real Roman thing.

Maybe it's not surprising that we have the flying phallus, because the Romans were completely into the male principle of the patriarchy. Their [version of] family values is, "The progenitor of the family makes the law." And father can actually kill members of their family at will--that's legal. So perhaps it's not surprising that they're penis worshipers: that's where it all comes from, and Father Jupiter is the greatest god. They are big time into the daddy thing. It explains their empire.

EDGE: Another Gordianus book is due out about this time next year. Do you care to give any spoilers about it at this early date?

Steven Saylor: I'll just say Gordianus is back. It's a direct sequel to The Judgment of Caesar. I'm not sure if this is the final title, but I'm calling it The Triumph of Caesar, because it takes place in 46 B.C. when Caesar has finally more or less won the civil war. He's back in Rome, he's in charge--he's dictator now. He's thinking about becoming dictator for life. The remainder of the Senate isn't too happy about that.

But it's finally time for him to celebrate his triumph--the civil war has interrupted that. In the span of a single week, he has four huge celebrations to celebrate his triumph in Gaul, his wars in Asia, his war in Egypt, and his war in Africa. There's a lot of festivities and celebration; Rome is kind of in a hysterical mood, because the wars are over. There's been a lot of suffering, grief, dread... it seems like they have a breather now. But there's a lot of intrigue, too, because Cleopatra's in town, they're going to execute the King of the Gauls in the Gallic Triumph, and Caesar's wife suspects there's a plot against his life. Gordianus gets sucked into this.

EDGE: This is close to the time when the end of the Republic occurs. Will this wrap up the Gordianus series?

Steven Saylor: Not quite--I hope not, because I still have one book under contract after The Triumph of Caesar! And I do want to get to the actual assassination of Caesar, which won't happen in this book. It's still two years away, in 44 B.C. I suspect I'll want to do a book on that. One of these days I also want to do a prequel, which would be about the early days of Gordianus. I'm thinking it would be is visit to the seven wonders of the ancient world as a young man. I think I might call that The Seven Wonders--he could go around and see what remains of them. Some of them are still standing, some of them are in ruins. He ends up in Alexandria, where we have the Pharaoh's Lighthouse and the Pyramids.

EDGE: What about another epic novel in the style of Roma? Would you care to explore that format further?

Steven Saylor: Honestly, I'm at the mercy of the readers, because if Roma sells really well, I suspect the publisher might want a follow-up. If it sells so-so, then they'll probably just want me to write more Gordianus books.

I'm happy to do either one. I really loved writing Roma, I loved researching it. If I were to do a follow-up, which I suppose would be the next thousand years of Rome, that would cover the great age of the Empire and the fall of Rome, and the beginning of the Dark Ages. That would be a lot of new research for me, because I'm not so well grounded in that [era], but it would be very exciting.

EDGE: Regardless of where Gordianus goes next, we're soon going to see the end of the HBO series Rome, after only two seasons. I wonder what your reaction is to the series ending so soon.

Steven Saylor: I haven't caught up with Season Two. I've been so busy I'm way behind, so I've only seen the first two episodes of Season Two. I'm very sad that they're not doing more, that they're ending with Season Two. It's my understanding that it was not a financial success, largely because it was so expensive to make [the series]. I'm really glad that they made it, because I think it got more people interested in Ancient Rome. I think it proved the point that Rome ain't boring!