Review of The Golden Dice by Elisabeth Storrs

The Golden Dice is the second novel in Storr’s series about the Etruscans and their conflicts with the Romans during the early period of Roman history. At the heart of this novel is the marriage and love between the Roman Caecilia and the Etruscan general Vel Mastarna. In the earlier novel, The Wedding Shroud, Storr showed how this unlikely union came about and moved it from fear and distain to a powerful bond of complicated passion. Although this marriage still has its strains and doubts, the conflict of the story no longer arises from the relationship between Caecilia and Vel, but rather from external forces brought on by the long war between Rome and the Etruscan city of Veii. The dangers to Vel and Caecilia come from the Roman army outside the walls and from within the highest ranks of Veii’s nobility, whose distrust of the Roman woman provides an excellent excuse for undermining her powerful husband. The reader’s view into this world is widened in this book to include multiple women as narrators: Caecilia, Pinna and Semni. Since Pinna and Semni are from the lower ranks in their respective cities, Storr is able to build a vivid picture of Etruscan and Roman life from both ends of the social spectrum instead of only through Caecilia’s privileged point of view.

While Semni in Veii is of the artisan class, Pinna is a Roman whore who cleverly parlays information into an escape to a better but tenuously held position in life. Her crafty role shows us a very different woman than Caecilia’s somewhat stern and morally unambiguous one. We can walk the streets of Rome and the solders’ camps with Pinna and see the war from the “enemy” side, even while our sympathies lie with Vel and Caecilia. In this way, Storr develops our understanding of the expansionist and self-preserving motivations of both sides with good subtlety. Storr’s books contain a wealth of detail about Etruscan and Roman life. Once in a while I found obscure word choice or an overload of detail slowing my reading, but for the historically curious, Storr’s thoroughly researched books offer a rewarding read. If you want to learn about this early period of Rome’s conquests and the remarkable, luxuriant lives of the Etruscans while being engaged with a compelling story, I recommend Storr’s series.