The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
“Her efforts did not produce definitive change or unqualified success, but in helping to shape the events of a pivotal century, she left legible traces of a consequential life.” With typical precision, Bruce Chilton ends Berenice: Queen in Roman Judaea. Throughout...
When on 19 August 14 CE, the Emperor Augustus died, by his side was his wife, Livia Drusilla. Livia was a paragon of Roman womanly virtues, who put hardly a foot wrong in fifty years of marriage to the most scrutinised man of his time, and yet, from at least the 2nd...
What has been the reaction to Ovid as a character? People think he makes a great main character – but I think many are surprised by how miserable he is in Poetic Justice. If anyone has read him, in Latin or translation, it tends to be extracts from his great work on...
The goddess Hecate plays a crucial role in my murder mystery Poetic Justice, something I did not expect when I embarked upon my research of the poet Ovid and his life in exile. It all started when I read a pamphlet from the Museum of History and Archaeology in...
Have you ever thrown a coin into the Trevi Fountain in Rome? You probably stood with your back to the fountain, as advised by everyone around you, but when you turned back, you may well have caught a glimpse of Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa. He is the armoured gentleman...
So, we are back in Tomis – will there be another murder to be solved by the Roman love poet Ovid? Oh yes! I was chatting about this the other day with some fellow crime writers, and we decided that the ideal detective and hero for a mystery series is – a writer. There...
Fiona Forsyth, you have moved on from the Lucius Sestius mysteries to a new series. How does it feel to say goodbye to characters like Lucius? When the story demands a certain resolution then it is easy to say goodbye. I’m not going to say I cried when killing off...
Fiona Forsyth, what prompted you to choose the period that you wrote your first book in? When I was teaching, I would “bag” the Cicero speech set for A level Latin. I’ve always found his oratory powerful, and the fact that he was a politician as well as a lawyer means...
One of my most precious possessions is a small Roman coin. It is a tiny sliver of silver, a denarius minted in 43 BCE in Asia Minor for the army of Brutus: yes, that Brutus, assassin of Julius Caesar, the addressee in “et tu, Brute?”. Along with his fellow assassin...
