Death and the Poet - Fiona Forsyth

I’m delighted to welcome another scribe of Roman fiction to the writing blog today – Fiona Forsyth – as part of her Coffee Pot Book Club tour.

After reading Classics at Oxford, Fiona taught it at a boys’ public school for twenty-five years. A family move to Qatar provided few opportunities for Latin teachers, so she seized the chance to write.

Now she’s back in the UK, all the questions she asked herself about the Romans over the years are turning into novels about Ancient Rome. She’s currently working on her seventh novel.

Like all writers of Roman fiction, she has had to tussle with the challenge of trying to delve into the ancient mind when the sources are distinctly random and often biased.

Over to Fiona!

For essay 3 in Mrs Griffin’s Cicero and Catiline course, the essay title was simply “Was there a First Catilinarian Conspiracy?”

I soon discovered that this meant taking five or six contradictory sentences from ancient historians who seemed to me to be casual in the extreme and giving a careful judgement on these precious few words, considering the writers’ known biases. Secondary reading included articles from a range of scholars whose views went from “Yes, probably” to “Maybe not”, except for the one who said that not only had there not been a First Catilinarian Conspiracy there hadn’t been a Second Catilinarian Conspiracy and he was utterly fed up.

Five closely scribbled sides of A4 later I decided that no, there hadn’t and carefully I began my final paragraph with “The picture is a foggy one”. Mrs Griffin laughed.

The very essay on the First Catilinarian Conspiracy

This is the curse of the ancient historian – as the great Ronald Syme said, “In matters of literary and historical appraisement, one cannot operate with the methods of a laboratory or furnish the proof to be demanded in a court of law. The best is only the probable.”

In other words, after weighing up all the evidence carefully, you make your best guess then argue about it with another historian for the rest of your academic life.

And this, I reckon is where my novelist self has an advantage over my student self. Once I have read the sources and weighed up the evidence, I can then make it into a story, without having to put in the annoyingly clunky caveats – “it seems unlikely that all Roman historians genuinely thought Livia poisoned everyone including her own son…” or “when Tacitus tells the reader he will write without anger or passion, there is always the possibility that he is lying…”

I think I have obligations to both history and my story, which means that a lot of the time I choose a particular interpretation based on what my story needs.

Consider I, Claudius by Robert Graves – a masterpiece of historical fiction so grounded in the sources that everyone wondered if it was true. Graves’ superb portrait of Livia as the evil stepmother comes straight from the ancient historians Tacitus, Suetonius and Cassius Dio – and, come to that, the witches found in poems by Ovid and Horace. For my Roman History paper in Finals, I admit that I wrote an entire essay on Tiberius based on I, Claudius, my justification being that Graves was a considerable Classics scholar and the translator of Suetonius’ Lives of the Caesars for Penguin Classics. And yes, I did fine on that paper, thank you, it was the Plato that let me down.

When I wrote my Poetic Justice and Death and the Poet, I did not follow the path of Tacitus or Suetonius in my portrayal of Livia, because the Roman historians were downright misogynists. It was common to accuse a powerful woman of sexual excess and murderous tendencies.  Given that Livia protected her sexual reputation extremely carefully, it is not surprising that the male historians concentrated on poison instead, attributing deaths from disease to Livia’s machinations.

Roman doctors were good, but many diseases were beyond their skill and illness strikes me a far more likely explanation of a death than to imagine Livia creeping around the garden at night so that she can smear poison on the figs. I think of her as a very clever and tough woman who managed to combine being a traditional modest Roman matron, weaving and deferring to her husband in public, with being a true partner to Augustus in the immense task of running the Empire. He was extremely fortunate to have her.

The ultimate obligation is to myself and the reader.

I am passionate about the world of ancient Rome despite its horrible side. If you study history, you will be faced with appalling people doing appalling things. If we deny that, we are not facing up to humanity’s capacity for cruelty. I want my readers to love the exploration of an alien environment and I write what I think will make them passionate about the awful, violent, intriguing world of Rome.

Wise words, Fiona! Ancient Rome was no sunnily-lit picnic on a summer’s afternoon. I’m with you on Livia’s character assassination by the Terrible Trio – Tacitus, Suetonius and Cassius Dio. Perhaps the Sky series ‘Domina’ might jolt the public to reframe their image of Livia.

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Connect with Fiona
Website: https://substack.com/@fionaforsyth1
Twitter:  https://x.com/for_fi
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fionaforsythauthor
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fionaforsythauthor/
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/fionawriter.bsky.social
BookBub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/fiona-forsyth

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Death and the Poet

14 AD. When Dokimos the vegetable seller is found bludgeoned to death in the Black Sea town of Tomis, it’s the most exciting thing to have happened in the region for years. Now reluctantly settled into life in exile, the disgraced Roman poet Ovid helps his friend Avitius to investigate the crime, with the evidence pointing straight at a cuckolded neighbour.

But Ovid is also on edge, waiting for the most momentous death of all. Augustus, the first Emperor of Rome, is nearing his end and the future of the whole Roman world is uncertain.

Even as far away as Tomis, this political shadow creates tension as the pompous Roman legate Flaccus thinks more of his career than solving a local murder.

Avitius and Ovid become convinced that an injustice has been done in the case of the murdered vegetable seller. But Flaccus continues to turn a deaf ear.

When Ovid’s wife, Fabia, arrives unexpectedly, carrying a cryptic message from the Empress Livia, the poet becomes distracted – and another crime is committed.

Ovid hopes for a return to Rome, only to discover that he is under threat from an enemy much closer to home.
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Buy Death and the Poet here:  https://books2read.com/u/brx0WY  (multiple retailers)
Also available to read on KindleUnlimited.

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Alison Morton is the author of Roma Nova thrillers –  INCEPTIO, CARINA (novella), PERFIDITAS, SUCCESSIO,  AURELIA, NEXUS (novella), INSURRECTIO  and RETALIO,  and ROMA NOVA EXTRA, a collection of short stories.  Audiobooks are available for four of the series. Double Identity, a contemporary conspiracy, starts a new series of thrillers. JULIA PRIMA,  Roma Nova story set in the late 4th century, starts the Foundation stories. The sequel, EXSILIUM, is now out.

Find out more about Roma Nova, its origins, stories and heroines and taste world the latest contemporary thriller Double Identity… Download ‘Welcome to Alison Morton’s Thriller Worlds’, a FREE eBook, as a thank you gift when you sign up to Alison’s monthly email update. As a result, you’ll be among the first to know about news and book progress before everybody else, and take part in giveaways.