by marthamarks | Women (Roman)
Traditionally, books about the Roman Empire have focused on men. Male characters are the stars of the show in Ben Hur, Quo Vadis, Spartacus, The Robe, and dozens of novels published more recently. Women play bit roles, and that’s not surprising since most ancient women played bit roles in their societies. Little was written by or about them during their lifetimes, which is why relatively little is known about them today.
In the last few years, however, several novels starring first-century Roman women have won great reviews and a passionate readership. My Rubies of the Viper, Suzanne Tyrpak’s Vestal Virgin, and Kate Quinn’s Mistress of Rome and Daughters of Rome all spotlight strong female protagonists who not only refuse to stay quietly in the background but aggressively step forward to control their destinies.
This is a good new phase of modern literature. Books with such characters will appeal more to today’s women (and to many men as well). And since the lives of first-century women undoubtedly were interesting in their own ways, they deserve to be told… even if we authors have to piece together details from what few archeological, literary, and historical sources we have. It’s like collecting bits of cloth to stitch into a beautiful quilt.
To see the total picture, you have to know that women living in the city of Rome during the first-century A.D. fell into three groups.
At the top of the social heap were the rich women of the patrician or equestrian classes whose names we know because they were the daughters, sisters, and/or mothers of the dictators, emperors, senators, generals, and conspirators whose names have gone down in history. They lived in mansions on the Palatine and Caelian Hills and enjoyed seaside villas in Pompeii and Herculaneum. These women were socially engaged, active in religious institutions, and often influential in the lives and careers of their sons and husbands.
Those fortunate few were surrounded by, waited on, and sustained by slaves—including many females, either home-grown or imported from conquered lands—who tended to be poorly fed, worked without pity, denied medical care, and subjected to corporal punishment and sexual abuse. What we know of their existence, based mostly on satirical writings of the time, does not suggest great happiness.
In between were hordes of free plebeian and foreign women whose names, lives, and deaths passed unnoted by history. They tended to live in slums like the notorious Subura, lacking education, sanitation, law enforcement, decent housing, and medical care.
But what’s most interesting to me about women in first-century Rome is this:
Despite the obvious differences in status, influence, and quality of life between these three groups of women, other aspects of their lives didn’t differ all that much.
- A Roman woman did not have her own unique name. Sisters received the same name, taken from the family name, and were distinguished as “first,” “second,” “third,” etc. Personal identity was almost nil.
- A woman enjoyed no civil or legal rights. Her father, her husband, and eventually even her son(s) controlled her life from the day she was born to the day she died. Even the wealthiest patrician female could not run for office, or even vote.
- A woman’s job in life was to marry (around age 14) a man selected by her father, manage his home, and bear him sons as often as she could before she died, which often happened before she was twenty. Men routinely went through several wives.
- A woman could not protect her infant daughter or sickly son if her husband decided to kill the child directly or indirectly, by exposure.
- A woman could divorce her husband but was required to leave her children with him. She had no legal claim to them.
- Only under very unusual circumstances could a woman own property in her own right. (This nugget of historical truth forms the basis of my plot in Rubies of the Viper.)
As with some societies today, first-century Rome wasn’t woman friendly.
The thing I find most fresh and appealing in the new crop of female-centered fiction set in this particular time and place is that all three segments of society are brought vividly to life. Ancient Roman novels are not just about warriors, dictators, gladiators, and private detectives any more. They’re also about women… rich, poor, slave, free, whatever.
Female characters are not add-ons or after-thoughts in these books. Their individual activities, challenges, emotions, desires, and ambitions are central and portrayed in crisp detail. As reviewers of Quinn’s novels, Tyrpak’s novel, and my own have pointed out, nothing is held back. The reader comes into a very specific time and place and sees the entire Roman culture, including women’s lives, in ways that would be unimaginable in more traditional novels.
In Rubies of the Viper, three female characters carry much of the plot: my protagonist, Theodosia Varro; her slave, Lucilla; and her friend, Flavia Domitilla, the daughter of a famous general. Another woman, Theodosia’s Greek mother, has died before the story begins, but she hangs over it like an omnipresent ghost. Together, these four represent the entire spectrum of Roman society. During the six years it took me to write this book, I worked hard to dig out and integrate details of the lives of women into the larger societal picture I was painting with words. One of the greatest pleasures I have now is when readers let me know—through emails and reviews—that I made them feel what it was like to be a woman in first-century Rome.
—text copyright © Martha Marks—
by marthamarks | Houses, Roman, Nero, Rome
In a previous post, I addressed the question of where Nero lived between the Great Fire in A.D. 64 and his suicide in 68. The answer was: the (in)famous Domus Aurea (“Golden House”). Quite a place, that!
But where did he live before the Domus Aurea was built?
It’s an interesting question, and it raises yet another that I had to address in Rubies of the Viper: where was Nero living in A.D. 56?
Here’s what my research turned up and how I dealt with that residential question:
In the years immediately before the Great Fire, his residence was a palace he’d had built on the prestigious Palatine Hill. (It’s the almost-circular area in the center of the map here.) That building provided a structural link between the Palatine Hill and the Esquiline Hill and thus was known as the Domus Transitoria. It burned in 64 and later was covered over with the even-more-sumptuous Domus Aurea.
But the Domus Transitoria was built around A.D. 60, so it wouldn’t have been in existence in the previous decade, when Rubies of the Viper takes place.
There are reports that before A.D. 60 Nero lived on the Quirinal Hill, a less prestigious part of town north of the Palatine Hill. (The Quirinal is the first hill inside the wall near the top center of the map.) But that doesn’t seem to fit with his status as a member of the Julio-Claudian family, which had inhabited the Palatine for generations. As the grand-nephew and adopted son and heir of Emperor Claudius, it’s hard to imagine Nero living anywhere but on the Palatine Hill.
So, needing to place some key scenes of my book in Emperor Nero’s first palace, I created one on the Palatine, closer to where other important scenes would take place. It was fun to combine my knowledge of Roman houses of the day with my imagination of the sort of place a party-loving teenage ruler—Nero was just 17 when he became the most powerful man in the world—would call home.
Like all Roman houses of the time, Emperor Nero’s first palace would have had an atrium featuring an opening in the roof for light and a pool in the center to catch rainwater. That atrium would have been surrounded by the usual dining, sleeping, and reception rooms, with an attached garden room, or peristyle. But my creative license expanded those everyday accommodations to be more fitting for a young emperor… with a banquet hall large enough for 90 guests plus a web of service corridors leading to storage rooms, staff offices, a kitchen big enough to accommodate the many slaves needed to cook and serve the emperor’s dinner parties, and sleeping quarters for those slaves.
As for the decor… I envisioned his first palace as impressive (especially in the eyes of the beleaguered protagonist, Theodosia), but not as over-the-top ostentatious as the two he would build in future years.
Here’s how I describe Nero’s imagined first palace in Rubies of the Viper:
Theodosia followed the liveried slave through a network of passageways to the most elegant chamber she had ever seen. Frescoed walls of purple and gold soared into a gilded dome. Fine Greek statues stood guard around the perimeter, and in the center an enormous fish of hammered gold spouted purple-tinted water into a golden pond. The white marble furniture was draped and cushioned with such opulence that someone raised with ordinary wealth would feel out of place.
…
Theodosia shivered as Scopan led her into Nero’s private dining room. The sight of another gilded room no longer impressed her, but the ostentatious number of servants in attendance on nine people made her jaw drop. Behind the three couches stood a waiter for every diner. Others moved about the room with enormous gold salvers, bowls, and pitchers. Still others stood at attention against the side walls… as if waiting to do something that someone else might somehow have forgotten. The enormous, purple-clad figure of Nero shared the center couch with two women, one of whom Theodosia identified as the Empress Octavia. Six other guests lounged on cushions that sculpted a purple arc around the table.
…
The banquet hall glowed with hundreds of lamps, but the perfumed oil that fueled their flames had long since lost its duel with the aromatic dishes on their golden platters. Gigantic vases of cobalt-blue glass—overflowing with purple and gold lilies—set off the ten trios of couches where the emperor and his eighty-nine guests had been lounging for over three hours.
These descriptions are plausible and fit the needs of my story.
—text copyright © Martha Marks—
by marthamarks | Houses, Roman, Nero, Rome
Almost everybody who reads or writes about first-century Rome knows of the Domus Aurea, the gigantic, super-ornate, and multi-storey “Golden House” that Nero had built after the Great Fire consumed much of the city in A.D. 64.
Rumors have lingered for 2,000 years that the emperor deliberately started the fire to clear land for his cozy new domus, which he didn’t get to enjoy for very long since he was forced to commit suicide a mere four years after the fire.
Nevertheless, his final palace—which sprawled across three of Rome’s seven hills—set a new standard of opulence in a city already well known for it. In designing this structure, Nero’s architect and engineer (who are known by name: Severus and Celer) introduced several new concepts.
First, they began lining vaulted ceilings with colorful mosaics, which formerly were just for floors, allowing for bright patterns and tasteful (or, more likely, titillating) scenes on every surface of a room.
Second, they plastered some interior walls with gold and gemstones, because ordinary painted frescoes, even with their customary golden accents, could not possibly be grand enough for the master of the world.
Third, they created dining rooms with rooftops that could be slid open, so diners could look up into the stars. One dining room was circular with a revolving roof (powered by slaves, of course), giving guests an ever-changing view of the night sky.
Fourth, they transplanted forests and installed fields, vineyards, pastures with livestock, and an artificial lake in the heart of the metropolis. (If you’ve ever been to the Colosseum, you’ve stood on the spot of Nero’s fake lake, which Emperor Vespasian later drained to build his amphitheater. Vespasian, a frugal man who rose to power a year after Nero’s death, declined to live in the Domus Aurea. Much of it was converted into the public Baths of Titus and, early in the next century, of Trajan.)
The most delicious comment made (in public at least) about the Domus Aurea is credited to Nero. Upon dedicating his new palace, he reportedly said: “Good, now I can at last begin to live like a human being.”
Some archeologists believe the Domus Aurea contained no sleeping quarters, which suggests its 300 rooms were intended for heavy-duty partying, not as a real residence. However, one scholar (Sir Banister Fletcher, writing in A History of Architecture) describes it as “less a palace than a series of pavilions and a long wing comprising living and reception rooms,” which rings true to me.
If anybody reading this post has the definitive answer… or just additional information about that, please leave a comment here!
My next post (see Where else did he live?) will answer this related question: Where did Nero live before the Great Fire of A.D. 64?
—text copyright © Martha Marks—
by marthamarks | HISTORICAL CHARACTERS, Poppaea Sabina, Women (Roman)
Poppaea Sabina lived her life as a patrician Roman woman on a top-tier stage in the middle decades of the first century A.D. For an author researching and writing about that time period, it would be hard to ignore her flamboyant rise and catastrophic fall.
Even though Poppaea’s role in Rubies of the Viper is small, I found her engrossing and wrote her into several scenes with a major impact on the larger story of my fictional heroine, Theodosia Varro.
Unlike most women of her day (see Flavia, Missing Woman), Poppaea Sabina’s life is well recorded in history, although some modern scholars believe that an anti-Nero bias may have influenced those reports.
Still, Poppaea’s life story is full of tantalizing tidbits.
She was born in Pompeii in A.D. 30, the daughter of Titus Ollius, who died the next year following a political purge, and Poppaea Sabina the Elder, who committed suicide in A.D. 47 as the result of more palace intrigue. During Nero’s reign, Poppaea Sabina the Younger’s first husband was executed, and after her death Nero drowned her son by that husband. Whew!
After the death of her first husband, the ambitious young widow set her cap for—and ultimately married—Nero’s best friend, Marcus Salvius Otho, thus winning a higher place in court and perfectly positioning herself to make a play for Nero. It’s at this point in time that Poppaea Sabina first appears in my novel.
While still very much married to Otho, Poppaea became Nero’s mistress, which must have caused friction between herself and her husband, and between the emperor and his long-time friend, Otho. Nero managed the situation by sending Otho to be governor of distant Lusitania (now Portugal), thus removing him from competition and giving Poppaea an excuse to divorce Otho and marry Nero.
In A.D. 62, Nero divorced the Empress Octavia (daughter of the late Emperor Claudius) and married Poppaea.
Poppaea soon bore Nero a daughter, named Claudia Augusta, but the child lived only a few months. She was pregnant again in 65 when she and, we must assume, her unborn child both died. There’s controversy over the manner of her death. Contemporary historians—perhaps with an ax to grind—reported that Nero kicked her to death following a quarrel. Modern scholars believe it’s possible she simply died in childbirth, a common occurrence in the first century. Poppaea was 35 years old at her death, which meant she had already outlived the average woman of her time.
Here are a few snippets from a Rubies of the Viper scene that features Poppaea as a young woman… before her relationships with either Otho or Nero. The occasion is a ladies-only dinner party in Rome; the women have taken note of Theodosia’s enormous, handsome slave, Stefan.
“Do you have only females at your villa, Theodosia?” asked a dainty young patrician in yellow.
The other guests howled in laughter.
“Poppaea Sabina is the only one who’d think that!” said Annia. …
“If it were mine, I’d love it! All those gorgeous men around, and no husband to spoil the fun!”
“And she pretends to be so modest.”
“You’re turning red, my dear. Are you ill?”
“They grow big in the country, don’t they? Got any more like him [Stefan] stashed away out there?”
“Hey, this isn’t fair!” said Poppaea Sabina, who had unwittingly introduced the topic. “I didn’t see him.”
“Bring him in then,” Livia said, “for Poppaea’s education.”
“Oh, Stefan may not be here right now,” Theodosia said, hoping it was true. “I told him he might go see a bit more of the city.”
Titters erupted around the table.
“He must be something special then,” Poppaea said. “What good is a bodyguard if he’s not around to guard your body when you need him?”
Livia snapped her fingers at the slave behind her couch.
“Go and see if the lady Theodosia’s bodyguard has returned from sightseeing in the city.” Her tone was droll. “If he has, tell him to come here at once.”
…
“Come here, Stefanus,” said Livia, pointing to the space between her couch and Poppaea Sabina’s. “We all want a good look at you.”
Stefan stepped warily across the room. Theodosia felt a swell of pride in him… until his eyes reached hers. They were seething.
Juno, I wish we were both anywhere but here.
Poppaea Sabina reached out and ran a single fingertip down Stefan’s arm; then she let it wander on down his leg.
“He’s magnificent! I’ve never seen a man this big so close up. Is he a gladiator?”
…
“Why not make a gladiator of him?” chirped Poppaea Sabina in her little-girl voice. Her yellow sleeve rippled as she poked a finger into Stefan’s abdomen. “Turn around, slave. Oh, just look at the muscles on his back! He’d be the best of the lot!”
…
“Tell you what,” Marcia said, “we’ll give your Otho credit for the new gladiator. He’ll surely win once the mob sees this fellow in action.”
“He’s not my Otho!” [said Theodosia.]
“Don’t be so coy. Think about it. Your fortune combined with Otho’s senatorial rank… You’ll be one of the most powerful couples in the empire. That’s not a bad swap for a single slave.”
“Maybe she wants him for something else,” Poppaea Sabina said, setting off another round of titters.
—text copyright © Martha Marks—
by marthamarks | Language, WRITING CHALLENGES
In my first post on the subject of language (So, how would they talk?), I discussed what I consider the #1 linguistic challenge facing an author of historical fiction who attempts to bring ancient people to life while writing in modern English. I promised to post again to offer other thoughts about the choices involved.
So, okay, here goes… and please remember that I’d love to hear your opinion on this subject.
As I see it, the second most challenging linguistic decision facing a novelist who writes about the distant past is how much of the original language and how many archaic dates and place names to drop into an English book. Pile it on too heavily and the text becomes as incomprehensible as “Jabberwocky.” Include too little and some may say it lacks authentic flavor.
Consider this made-up-for-my-blog snip from a non-existent novel set in first-century Rome:
When they reached the ostium, Marcus embraced the senex, who had donned a heavy pallium in preparation for his journey in the procella.
“Vale, Pater. We’ll meet again on the Nones of Iulius, without fail. Please greet Mater warmly on my behalf and give Minor a basium for me.”
After his pater had left, Marcus crossed the atrium, taking care to avoid the overflowing impluvium, and walked into the triclinium, where his amici were assembled.
“Salve, Lucius.” He slapped the miles on the back. “How was Neapolis?”
“Unusually hot this aestas. Fortunately, I was able to spend time in Stabiae. Such a pleasant little urbs!”
Anyone who has studied Latin will find that passage a quick-and-easy read, albeit a curious one. Other readers will probably roll their eyes in disgust. Much too confusing for the average English speaker to bother deciphering.
Would it help to italicize the Latin words, as shown below?
When they reached the ostium, Marcus embraced the senex, who had donned a heavy pallium in preparation for his journey in the procella.
“Vale, Pater. We’ll meet again on the Nones of Iulius, without fail. Please greet Mater warmly on my behalf and give Minor a basium for me.”
After his pater had left, Marcus crossed the atrium, taking care to avoid the overflowing impluvium, and walked into the triclinium, where his amici were assembled.
“Salve, Lucius.” He slapped the miles on the back. “How was Neapolis?”
“Unusually hot this aestas. Fortunately, I was able to spend time in Stabiae. Such a pleasant little urbs!”
To my mind, those italics don’t help. Rather, they call attention to how many “foreign” words the reader faces… and quickly paging through an entire book filled with italicized Latin words would be a major turnoff.
In writing Rubies of the Viper, I decided on a few simple linguistic guidelines. I would:
- include Latin words that have survived intact and are easily comprehensible today, such as villa, atrium, pergola, and Saturnalia.
- include a few other Latin words that were bound to come up in my story but had no obvious translation into English, such as palla and stola (common items of women’s clothing) or quaestor and praetor (titles of specific government officials). And, of course, I would try to provide enough description and/or context at first mention for the words to make sense.
- translate into English such Latin words as these from my snip above: ostium (entry door), senex (old man), pallium (cloak), procella (storm), vale (farewell, good-bye), pater (father), nones (seventh day of the month), Iulius (July), mater (mother), minor (younger, distinguished a girl from her mother), basium (kiss), impluvium (pool), triclinium (dining room), amici (friends), salve (hello, greetings), miles (soldier), aestas (summer), and urbs (city).
- translate into English the names of months and major places, such as Rome, Naples, Greece, Athens, Corinth, Britain, and Antioch. I made an exception for small towns whose names carry special historic resonance, such as Reate, Caere, Pola, and Stabiae.
So, by my own guidelines, had the passage above occurred in Rubies of the Viper, I would have written it as follows:
When they reached the front door, Marcus embraced the old man, who had donned a heavy cloak in preparation for his journey in the storm.
“Good-bye, Father. We’ll meet again on the seventh of July, without fail. Please greet Mother warmly on my behalf and give my sister a kiss for me.”
After his father had left, Marcus crossed the atrium, taking care to avoid the overflowing pool, and walked into the dining room, where his friends were assembled.
“Hello, Lucius.” He slapped the soldier on the back. “How was Naples?”
“Unusually hot this summer. Fortunately, I was able to spend time in Stabiae. Such a pleasant town!”
Most other contemporary authors who write about ancient Rome don’t use lots of original Latin either. Some drop in tidbits, like triclinium or impluvium, for flavor. Perhaps they opt to use Pater/Mater as terms of address instead of Father/Mother, or Salve/Vale instead of Hello/Good-bye. Some may choose to use the original place names (Roma, Neapolis) instead of modern English versions (Rome, Naples). They may italicize the non-English words, or not. But it’s a safe bet that all authors of historical fiction wander through the same minefield of choices before coming up with the linguistic scheme that suits them best. There’s no right or wrong answer… just the one that fits a given work of literature.
The biggest trick, of course, is knowing when to stop. Once you start dropping in Latin words (or Ye Olde English or any other archaic language), why use one original term and not another?
That was one benefit to my decision to use modern English almost exclusively. I didn’t have to make those choices more than once.
—text copyright © Martha Marks—
