Interview with Bruce Macbain, author of Roman Games

Author Bruce Macbain, whose mystery Roman Games I reviewed earlier on this website, gave an enjoyable and fascinating interview, which reveals his a wide-ranging knowledge about the Roman world.

Judith: Can you give a brief description of your book and what got you interested in writing it? What do you like best about your book?

Bruce: Roman Games is a mystery that is set in Rome in the year 96 AD, the last year of the reign of the despotic emperor Domitian.

When the body of Sextus Verpa, who is a notorious senatorial informer and libertine, is found stabbed to death in his bedroom, suspicion falls on his household slaves—a potential death sentence for them all. The Emperor Domitian orders Vice-Prefect Pliny to investigate. However, the festival of the Roman Games has just begun and for the next fifteen days the law courts are in recess. If Pliny can’t identify the murderer in that time, Verpa’s entire slave household will be burned alive in the arena. Pliny teams up with Martial, a starving author of bawdy verses and hanger-on to the city’s glitterati. Pooling their talents, they unravel a plot that involves Christian “atheists,” worshipers of Isis, sleek courtiers, a vengeful concubine, and a paranoid emperor.

I chose this setting for a couple of reasons. First, because I’m such a fan of Pliny and Martial. I’ve enjoyed teaching both authors and I never tire of them. Secondly, because the despotic regime of an emperor like Domitian resonates so strongly with contemporary history. Secret police, torture chambers, paramilitary troops, state-sponsored propaganda are all too sadly relevant to today’s headlines. I see in my protagonist Pliny the dilemma of a decent man who is also, willingly or not, an apparatchik of an evil regime. When his duty collides with his values, what will he do? There must be many who have faced this same dilemma.

Judith: You are a classicist with an extensive knowledge of the Roman world which definitely shows in this book in a good way. To what extent did you find kernels of scenes directly from Roman sources such as Pliny’s letters or Suetonius? How do you integrate such sources with your own story telling?

Bruce: I always like to work as close to the sources as I can. For Roman Games there are three: Suetonius’ biography of Domitian in The Twelve Caesars, the Letters of Pliny the Younger, and the Epigrams of Martial. I urge anyone who has enjoyed the novel to dip into them—you’ll find them a delight.

The image of the tormented, paranoid emperor stabbing bluebottle flies with his stylus comes straight from Suetonius. Martial’s salty, sardonic poems are authentic (except for one that I made up) and the translations are my own. Finally, Pliny’s vast collection of letters to and from his hundreds of friends reveals him to us—warts and all—as few other figures of antiquity. We see a man who was conscientious, tolerant, curious, vain, affectionate, occasionally self-serving. I mined the letters for numerous details in the novel and, where I have put words in Pliny’s mouth, they are words that I can well imagine him speaking.

That said, this is still a work of fiction. I have blended the historical elements (I hope seamlessly) into a satisfying mystery plot. The book has an afterward in which I own up to all the fictitious bits.

Judith: Pliny, the historical man, has clearly won your heart—although you see him “warts and all.” You say you have mined his letters for the details of his character. What is an especially telling moment from his letters that typifies what you like about Pliny?

Bruce: I could mention his love letters to his wife, Calpurnia. There are three of them (VI 4, VI 7, and VII 5), written at moments when they were apart. Here’s a quote from one of them:

My obsession with longing for you is beyond belief…I spend a great part of the night awake just picturing you, and likewise during the day, at the times when I used to visit you, my feet lead me (this is the absolute truth) to your suite, and eventually I leave it feeling unwell and depressed like a locked-out lover on a deserted threshold.

There is no other Roman I know of who talks like this to his wife. And she, for her part, slept with copies of his speeches next to her in bed! (At which one simply has to smile.)

Judith: One of the more intriguing plot elements in your book involves the cult of Isis. I know you have a special interest in the religions of the Roman world. Can you give some background on the cult of Isis and describe one or two of the most exotic elements of it? Why did this Egyptian cult find such success in the Roman world?

Bruce: Statues of Isis and the remains of her temples are found in every corner of the Greco-Roman world. In ancient Egypt she was the sister-wife of Osiris and mother of Horus, but in the 4th century BC the Ptolemies redesigned her cult and gave it a new Hellenic look. The new Isis resembled the goddess Demeter and the language of her ritual was Greek. Nevertheless, traces of Egyptian exoticism were carefully maintained. Her emblem was the Egyptian cobra, among her attendant gods was the jackal-headed Anubis, and every temple had its cistern of holy Nile water.

Queen Isis was the loving, nurturing mother. She was “Miss Universe” (as an old professor of mine liked to say). Every other Greek and Roman goddess was subsumed in her. Initially, the Romans resisted this foreign cult. Tiberius expelled it from Rome and crucified its priests. But the Flavian emperors (Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian) were devotees of the goddess and built her a magnificent temple in the Campus Martius. From then on, Isis reigned supreme.

Initiation into her mysteries was an intensely moving experience, as well as a rather expensive one, as Apuleius tells us in his picaresque novel, The Golden Ass. But the reward was eternal blessedness in the afterworld, and, in this life, the privilege of sleeping in the courtyard of her temple and receiving healing dreams.

Judith: You mention the initiation as “moving but expensive.” How did one become initiated into Isis’s cult?

Bruce: Our fullest description comes from Apuleius, as I mentioned before. To summarize very briefly, Isis first summoned you in a dream. Then you would ask the High Priest to initiate you. There followed ten days of purification, including abstinence from sex, and a ritual bath (reminiscent of Christian baptism). As for the actual experience of initiation, Apuleius is a bit reticent; the things actually said and done were mysteries that could not be revealed to the uninitiated. But it’s clear that the central drama was one of death and rebirth. The hero of the tale, Lucius, clad in white robes, enters the holy of holies where he beholds the sun ablaze at midnight and meets face to face with the gods of the world below and the world above. Following the initiation, he partakes of a sacred banquet. But this wasn’t the end. The priest informs Lucius that if he really wants to be on intimate terms with Isis and her consort Osiris two more initiations are required—and for all of these Lucius pays through the nose.

Judith: I’ve always felt the Romans had a very distinctive sensibility overall. How would you compare the Roman sensibility to the modern American? Is there something in this Roman way of viewing the world that especially appeals to you and explains your choice of writing topic?

Bruce: The Romans are not always an easy people to like. The Greeks hated them. They considered them humorless, arrogant, cruel, corrupt, and utterly lacking in artistic taste: a verdict which has more than a little truth to it. So then why have I devoted so many years to studying and writing about them? A few years ago Cullen Murphy wrote a book entitled Are We Rome? And concluded that yes, pretty much, we are. I agree with him. I think the fascination that Rome has always held for us, and the enduring popularity of novels and movies set in Rome, testifies to the fact we see a lot of ourselves in them—hard-headed, practical, stubborn, unsentimental, business-oriented, and, yes, imperialistic. It is sometimes hard to look at the Romans, but just as hard to look away.

Judith: You list characteristics that we share with Romans—an impressive list of traits most people would definitely see as American. Can you discuss a specific example of a Roman activity or event that demonstrates this similarity of sensibility?

Bruce: How about just one short one. SALVE LUCRUM, “Hail Profit!” inscribed on the floor of a merchant’s house in Pompeii.

Judith: Your main character Pliny goes to a lot of trouble in a somewhat unusual way for a Roman to save a group of slaves. What effect did the widespread dependence on slavery have on the Roman mind and do you see Pliny as differing from his fellow Romans in this regard? Can you help your American readers understand some of the differences in the Roman experience with slavery and the American? I often find there are assumptions in most American readers’ minds that mislead them about Rome on this subject.

Bruce: The first thing to understand about slavery in the ancient world is that it was not race based. Although Aristotle famously said that “barbarians are slaves by nature,” there really was no theory of race in antiquity—that is a modern invention. It was a commonplace in the Greco-Roman world that any unlucky individual might find him- or herself a slave through a cruel twist of Fate. (The plots of Greek and Roman comedies and romantic novels revolve around this.) That is not to say that Roman slavery was any less cruel. In Roman law a slave was not a man, he was an instrumentum vocale: a “speaking tool.” A slave witness could only be questioned under torture, and for any slave implicated in his master’s death the penalty was a gruesome death. On the other hand, the Stoic philosophers argued that no one is a slave by nature; that slavery, while unavoidably necessary, is unjust.

We know that favorite household slaves were often manumitted by their masters. These freedmen and women took the master’s family name and sometimes became his only heirs. And many of them did quite well for themselves. A second generation freedman was considered a Roman citizen and Roman cities were filled with such people. Pliny seems to have been particularly kind to his slaves. When they were ill, he sent them for medical treatment (as opposed to throwing them out to die, as Cato recommended). He even tells us in one of his letters how he gives his slaves free run of the house during Saturnalia—and, typical of him, withdraws to a private chamber where he won’t impose on their merry-making!

Judith: Explain what the Saturnalia is and how it reflects Roman views of slavery.

Bruce: This festival was celebrated from December 17 to 23, concurrent with the winter solstice, and it provides the origin of some of our Christmas customs—gift-giving for example, and lighting candles. Like similar festivals in other cultures, it was a period of “topsy-turvy” and ritual license when masters and slaves exchanged places. Slaves could not be punished, they were permitted to gamble, and they dined lavishly at the master’s table. In every household a Saturnalia King (a sort of Lord of Misrule) was selected by a roll of the dice. This King, who might even be one of the slaves, could command the celebrators to sing, dance, and generally act like fools. This was without doubt one of the most endearing of Roman customs.

Judith: Anything else you’d like to mention?

Bruce: Can I put in a plug for my author website www.brucemacbain.com ? Visitors will find a lot of additional information there on the characters and setting of Roman Games, including an interactive map of Pliny’s Rome. In addition, there are some book reviews I’ve written for the Historical Novels Review and three short essays: Gays in the Military, Then & Now; The Scourge of Piracy, Then & Now; and Nationalism and the Olympics, Then & Now. I think readers may enjoy these.

Judith: What’s next for Pliny?

Bruce: I’m currently working on the second book, entitled The Bull Slayer. In it we jump ahead about ten years to when Pliny was governor of the province of Bithynia-Pontus in Asia Minor. Given my interest in Roman religion and ancient medicine, it won’t come as a surprise that another mystery cult and another misunderstood disease feature prominently in the plot. Pliny’s partner in detection this time is Suetonius, who did, in fact, serve under Pliny. If you’ve read or seen the Masterpiece Theater version of I Claudius, then you know that Suetonius, Robert Graves’ main source, had a decided bent toward witty and salacious gossip. I think readers will enjoy him. And I might add too that Calpurnia, now a grown woman of twenty-four occupies a major place in the story.