Article: Didius Falco has never been...
Didius Falco has never been a text-based 'tec. It wouldn't suit him, and to be honest it wouldn't suit me. I struggled with the classics. When I started writing fiction about the ancient world, I did seek inspiration back with the Latin authors - Martial and Juvenal, Horace, Ovid, Virgil, with Tacitus and Josephus for period history, especially the lives of Caenis and Vespasian in 'The Course of Honour'. But instinctively I look first to archaeology.
This goes right back to a school Archaeological Society. Ah, the thrill of sitting in darkened rooms - with boys! - as we scrutinised slideshows of excavated post-holes; post-holes that were often rather hard to discern, I fear. I diced with travel-sickness as we went by coach on field trips to the Roman cities of Chester, Lincoln and York. My home town of Birmingham never featured, and nor at that time did London. Although something has always been known of Londinium, there were serious gaps, some of which are now being filled in most exciting ways. Changes in legislation during my lifetime have encouraged big developers to report archaeological finds, and allow them to be excavated; much of Roman London lies under the 'City' - the modern financial quarter, where expensive offices are constantly being rebuilt - to the benefit of archaeology. The very existence of an arena was unknown, until a recent dig at Guildhall Yard exposed curiously curved stretches masonry which were recognised as the classic ovoid of an amphitheatre.
Discoveries like this prompted me to set 'The Jupiter Myth' in London. I could take advantage of the fact that many of my characters were in Britain at the end of my previous book 'A Body in the Bath House'. Historically, Julius Frontinus, who had played a key role in 'Three Hands in the Fountain' would now be the provincial governor, backed up by my own invention, and old favourite, Flavius Hilaris, the good civil servant. The arena would have been newly constructed (its timbers have been dated, fortunately, so we know this) and I could also explore another intriguing find of recent years. Many of us In England had seen press reports of the 'bustum' burial in Southwark, just south of the Thames. It contained the bones of a fit young woman and rich finds, some associated with the arena, leading to claims that this was 'Britain's first female gladiator'. Well, local archaeologists think that is unlikely, but it was too sexy, in every sense, to ignore completely. I see no point in bending the facts as we know them, but an author of fiction can explore the idea. Who my 'Amazonia' is you must discover from the book - but she goes right back to 'The Silver Pigs' - and she's trouble!
As for Milo's waterwheel, that was discovered right at the point when I was writing that chapter - the Museum of London archaeologists were amazed that I had managed to put it in. They are now preparing a technical book about the waterwheels on hat site, which are unprecedented finds - and they have asked permission to quote my description of how a treadmill version may have worked!
Archaeology has given me a few headaches over the years. I survived the sheer terror of descending into the still active Great Sewer under the Forum of Nerva in Rome, wearing a plastic mac, wellies, and Marigold washing-up gloves to fend off Weil's Disease (which is born in rats' pee and is frequently fatal). I have choked on a grain of rice in Libya, while my companions, unaware of the gravity of my plight (or so I tell myself), light-heartedly discussed how Agatha Christie's booksales went up immediately she died... I have bitten back frustration, looking at the fine stone theatres in Syria, knowing they were too late for me, and that because they are so fine, nobody has ever explored what earlier versions might have been on the spot. I have eaten Roman food (and not choked). I have been greeted by knobby-kneed centurions in cardboard armour and spectacles, and have not fled but have taken the opportunity to research the fact that the ear-protectors on their helmets made them a bit deaf.
London had its own awkwardness. Key Roman features like the fort and the bridge still have tantalising question marks. There was simply not space in my story to include Greenwich, where I live, despite a recent TV programme about its temple complex and the route of Watling Street. Then to describe a city vividly in a novel involves more than just positioning its buildings on a map. Archaeology tells me from their relics what kind of people were present: the governor, the army, the customs service, then potters and glass-makers, bar-keepers and wine-importers, sellers of fresh food and fast food. Historians vouch for the trade in hunting dogs and the Vespasianic influx of those supposedly civilising lawyers. Poets applaud Rutupiae oysters.
It would be a plodding old novel that simply stated these people were here. My task is to imagine the colour of their lives and how they felt about the province of Britain, which was new in the Empire and ripe for exploitation, yet where the Boudiccan Revolt had shown Rome's presence to be both tenuous and perhaps pointless. For this, the spirit of the place, my inspiration came not from archaeology but a very unlikely source. I had been invited to be guest of honour at a mystery convention in Anchorage, Alaska. Now I shall never be able to put Falco in a frozen landscape, face to face with a large moose (such a pity!) But Anchorage is perceived to be, and I think perceives itself to be, what local folk call 'the end of the road' - the place where all the people who are travelling to 'find' themselves finally come to a stop because there is nowhere else to go. I recognised at once that this could be my starting point for Londinium. The conversation between Falco and Silvanus in Caesar's Bar grew directly from that idea: it gave me the city based on archaeological fact but with a human context. It is a city of both drifters and entrepreneurs, far-flung but up-and-coming, attracting not just worthy pioneers but the crazy and feckless - and all sorts of exploiters and extortionists.
Archaeology rarely gives us pointers to crimelords and their gangs. But then, really successful gangsters don't leave evidence of their crimes...
Copyright © Lindsey Davis 2003