AD 224: Former Praetorian Guard Quintus Valerius travels from Britannia to visit his family in Rome. A skilled swordsman, Valerius has an unerring nose for danger and death. He is travelling with his optio Tiro — a lover of brawling and drinking from Londinium — and the woman he loves, Julia. In Gaul, Valerius receives a mysterious legacy from his long-dead father — a carnelian intaglio ring. On the road they stumble over a platoon of dead soldiers, also travelling to Rome. One of their two high-level political prisoners is dead; the other is missing.
But the mystery has only just begun.
My interest in writing the Quintus Valerius series is mainly about Roman Britain — its place in the Roman world, and how it felt to be both British and Roman at the apogee of the Roman period. What better way to show that version of ‘Roman-ness’ than to take some Brits to Rome, via tantalising Gaul?
I had already promised readers at the end of the previous Quintus Valerius mystery, The Governor’s Man, that Quintus and Tiro would visit Rome in the next book. Londoner Tiro is eager to see how Rome compares with the greatest city in the empire — his beloved home town Londinium — and Quintus wants to introduce his betrothed, Lady Julia Aureliana of the British Durotriges tribe, to his Roman family.
I also had in mind that the attempted insurrection to create a British emperor in my first book — something that actually happened later in the same century under Carausius — would be only part of a wider conspiracy stretching across the empire to Rome itself, in the follow-up. So I needed to know more about what was actually going on in Rome in the 220s.
To my great joy, I found that a terrible fire, food riots, and the assassination of the Emperor’s Chief Minister had all happened in Rome, very neatly at that time. There could be no better inspiration for a historical novelist!
But I needed my main characters to do their job, and still live to see another day in the next book, The Loyal Centurion (to be set in York and Scotland). So where could they find help in what was promising to be a bloody conflagration? I was aware that arms-carrying, and soldiers in general, were frowned on in Rome. I looked more closely into which military bodies were allowed to be stationed inside the city. What I found surprised me, but also inspired the solution to that plot problem.
My research
For information about the movers and shakers of Rome in AD 224, I relied on the contemporary historian and Roman senator, Cassius Dio. In fact, I grew so attached to him that I gave him a little cameo in the book. You’ll be pleased to hear I let him enjoy himself at a highbrow palace party, while catching up on all the latest gossip. I owe much of what I know about the real historical figures in this book to Cassius Dio. These include the boy Emperor, Alexander Severus, and his forceful, clever mother, Augusta Julia Mamaea, as well as their most senior counsellor, the famed jurist Ulpian.
There is always a tension for historical fiction writers when dealing with real people. How close to the known facts must one stick? How much licence is allowable? In this case, although facts about places of origin, roles in imperial life, and the ultimate fates of famous Romans are often recorded, less is known about personalities and motivations.
To provide some competition for the corrupt Praetorian Guard, who had long since switched from being a principled imperial bodyguard to becoming armed kingmakers in Rome, I turned to an alternative: the detached body mentioned in my first book, The Governor’s Man. These were a body of officers, the peregrini, set up by Emperor Hadrian as imperial investigators/spies/boundary police. They were stationed all around the empire, but conveniently headquartered between missions in Rome itself, at the Castra Peregrina.
Sorted.
There was a lot more research needed: Mithraism; Roman beliefs in ghosts; where you could and couldn’t legally carry a weapon; the road system and cities of Gaul; when stirrups came into fashion. Even how far south Gaulish Romans wore trousers (yes, they did!)
One final example of research, and my favourite in The Carnelian Phoenix, is Roman commercial shipping. Like most of us, I had always assumed that Roman shipping consisted mainly of the classic slave-rowed sleek galleys so beloved of Hollywood. Boy, was I wrong! Now stop me soon, because this is an area of research I could go on about endlessly. From a wide range of sources, including the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, and an obliging professor of marine archaeology in Bournemouth, I discovered the wonderful world of Roman harbours and shipping trade. I was transported, and had to be dragged away before I wrote an entirely different book.
This is a Roman corbita, a cargo vessel. They could be very big ships, sailing long distances with cargoes of hundreds of tons. No larger or more seaworthy ships were known till the 18th century. There are even records of Roman commercial ships trading as far as Viet Nam -- but that’s another story…I also had in mind that the attempted insurrection to create a British emperor in my first book — something that actually happened later in the same century under Carausius — would be only part of a wider conspiracy stretching across the empire to Rome itself, in the follow-up. So I needed to know more about what was actually going on in Rome in the 220s.
To my great joy, I found that a terrible fire, food riots, and the assassination of the Emperor’s Chief Minister had all happened in Rome, very neatly at that time. There could be no better inspiration for a historical novelist!
But I needed my main characters to do their job, and still live to see another day in the next book, The Loyal Centurion (to be set in York and Scotland). So where could they find help in what was promising to be a bloody conflagration? I was aware that arms-carrying, and soldiers in general, were frowned on in Rome. I looked more closely into which military bodies were allowed to be stationed inside the city. What I found surprised me, but also inspired the solution to that plot problem.
My research
For information about the movers and shakers of Rome in AD 224, I relied on the contemporary historian and Roman senator, Cassius Dio. In fact, I grew so attached to him that I gave him a little cameo in the book. You’ll be pleased to hear I let him enjoy himself at a highbrow palace party, while catching up on all the latest gossip. I owe much of what I know about the real historical figures in this book to Cassius Dio. These include the boy Emperor, Alexander Severus, and his forceful, clever mother, Augusta Julia Mamaea, as well as their most senior counsellor, the famed jurist Ulpian.
There is always a tension for historical fiction writers when dealing with real people. How close to the known facts must one stick? How much licence is allowable? In this case, although facts about places of origin, roles in imperial life, and the ultimate fates of famous Romans are often recorded, less is known about personalities and motivations.
I used that to my advantage. For example, the man in charge of the essential grain supply that kept Rome’s two million citizens in daily bread, Prefect of the Annona Epegathus, is known to have come to a sticky end. I merely decided why, and helped that happen. In the case of a colleague of Ulpian, a lawyer whose career is noted by Dio but whose origins and life details are speculative, I used considerably more licence.
One of the benefits of writing fiction.
One of the benefits of writing fiction.
To provide some competition for the corrupt Praetorian Guard, who had long since switched from being a principled imperial bodyguard to becoming armed kingmakers in Rome, I turned to an alternative: the detached body mentioned in my first book, The Governor’s Man. These were a body of officers, the peregrini, set up by Emperor Hadrian as imperial investigators/spies/boundary police. They were stationed all around the empire, but conveniently headquartered between missions in Rome itself, at the Castra Peregrina.
Sorted.
There was a lot more research needed: Mithraism; Roman beliefs in ghosts; where you could and couldn’t legally carry a weapon; the road system and cities of Gaul; when stirrups came into fashion. Even how far south Gaulish Romans wore trousers (yes, they did!)
One final example of research, and my favourite in The Carnelian Phoenix, is Roman commercial shipping. Like most of us, I had always assumed that Roman shipping consisted mainly of the classic slave-rowed sleek galleys so beloved of Hollywood. Boy, was I wrong! Now stop me soon, because this is an area of research I could go on about endlessly. From a wide range of sources, including the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, and an obliging professor of marine archaeology in Bournemouth, I discovered the wonderful world of Roman harbours and shipping trade. I was transported, and had to be dragged away before I wrote an entirely different book.
Jacquie Rogers
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