Book review: Roma by Steven Saylor

Picking up The Triumph of Caesar on clearance inspired me to begin seeking out the rest of Steven Saylor's Roma Sub Rosa series.  While looking for Gordianus books, I ran across Roma: The Novel of Ancient Rome.  Not part of the mystery series, Roma is historical fiction which looks in on the descendants of a particular family at certain crucial moments from before the founding of the city to the rise of Octavian through an heirloom passed down over the course of a thousand years.  It's also the forty-eighth book I read in 2015.

On the whole, this is an excellent book for an overview of Roman history.  As a novel, it has some weaknesses, however.  Most of the characters suffer as a result of the short amount of time the narrative focuses on them and, as such, fail to be fully developed.

Woman, in particular, are flat and passive, largely serving to explain the production of the next generation, and those who receive more attention aren't very well-written.  In part, I think this is due to Saylor's desire to combine a realistic narrative with the well-worn legends of Rome.  For example, the chapter which recounts the tale of Verginia also features an unmarried friend who has quickies in the alley of a crowded marketplace with her suitor.  Would a patrician maiden really engage in such casual sex in a society in which a father could perform an honor-killing after his daughter was raped and be lauded for it?  The desire to depict modern sexual relationships conflicts badly with the (probably mythical) purity of the Old Days Livy was harking back to some four hundred years later.

I most enjoyed a demythologizing chapter explaining what might be the origin of the myth of Hercules and Cacus.  The chapters describing the old Republic and how quickly political differences devolved into mass violence and bloodshed, particularly the fate of the Gracchi, make the rise of Julius Caesar and the birth of Imperial Rome seem a blessing.  Historical figures such as Sulla also feature in the Roma Sub Rosa series, and the separate genre allows Saylor to characterize them differently.  Sulla certainly appears less vile in Roman Blood than he shows himself in the chapter "Heads in the Forum."