Calabria
THE ORIGINS OF THIS NOVEL go back to a story I read many years ago in Cicero’s Brutus (85–8). Several persons of note were murdered in the Sila forest. Some slaves of the publicani involved in the production of pitch, as well as some free members of the corporation, were prosecuted for the killings. After a drawn-out trial, featuring some of the best orators of the time, the defendants were acquitted. Cicero does not say if they were innocent.
Calabria was a remote and wild place in antiquity. The Romans knew it as Bruttium. The modern name migrated from the Sallentine Peninsula in south-east Italy sometime after the Lombard invasion in AD 700. To avoid confusion, the modern usage is followed in this novel.
Calabria is a backwater of modern scholarship. The most useful study I have found is the doctoral thesis of I. Matkovic, Roman Settlement of Northern Bruttium: 200 BC–AD 300 (McMaster University, 2001); a PDF is available online (Google: Matkovic Bruttium).
The Roman colony of Temesa (or Tempsa) was a port somewhere on the lower Sabutus (modern Savuto) river. Its precise location is uncertain (Matkovic, op.cit., p.39, n.1).
Versions of the ghost story of the Hero of Temesa are found in Pausanias (6.6.7–11), Strabo (6.1.5), and Aelian (VH 8.18).
Roman Farming
The texts translated by K.D. White in Country Life in Classical Times (London, 1977) offer an enjoyable way into the subject. Much in this novel has been drawn from Cato, On Agriculture, an invaluable contemporary source. My eyes were opened to rural life and peasant farming in classical antiquity by R. MacMullen, Roman Social Relations 50 BC to AD 284 (New Haven and London, 1974), 1–27, and L. Foxhall, ‘Farming and Fighting in Ancient Greece’ in J. Rich and G. Shipley (eds.), War and Society in the Greek World (London and New York, 1993), 134–45.
The Agrarian Crisis
Modern scholars often argue that in the last two centuries BC the Roman peasants recruited into the legions were in effect fighting to dispossess themselves, as, while they were serving overseas, their farms were ruined and taken over by the rich. The classic statement of the case is K. Hopkins, Conquerors and Slaves (Cambridge,1978), 1–98. Recently the view has been repeatedly challenged. An overview of the arguments, inclining to the traditional view, can be found in H. Sidebottom, Ancient Warfare: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2004), 43–9.
Roman Imperialism
In the nineteenth century Rome was seen as a ‘defensive imperialist’, reluctantly drawn into expansion by the needs of her own safety and those of her allies. Now analysis tends to focus on the ‘expansion-bearing structures’ in her culture and society, above all the senators’ needs for military glory, as well as the profits from successful war-making. Two summaries of the modern historiography are T. Cornell, ‘The End of Roman Imperial Expansion’, in J. Rich and G. Shipley (eds.), War and Society in the Roman World (London and New York, 1993), and H. Sidebottom, ‘Roman Imperialism: The Changed Outward Trajectory of the Roman Empire’, Historia 54.3 (2005), 315–30.
The Campaign Against Corinth
The ancient references for the Achaean War, which culminated in the sack of Corinth, are scattered and poor, and often contradictory: Polybius 38.9–18; Pausanias 7.14.1–16.6; Livy, Per. 51–2; Justin 34.1–2; (Aurelius Victor) Vir. Ill. 60.1–3; Orosius 5.3.1–7; Zonaras 9.31.
Modern scholarship tends to concentrate on either the origins or the effects of the war. Among those who discuss the events, even if only in passing, are A. Fuks, ‘The Bellum Achaicum and its Social Aspect’, JHS 90 (1970), 78–89; W.V. Harris, War and Imperialism in Republican Rome 327–70 BC (Oxford, 1979), 240–4; E.S. Gruen, The Hellenistic World and the Coming of Rome (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London, 1984), 514–23; G. Shipley, The Greek World After Alexander 323–30 BC (2000), 383–6; and P. Erdkamp, ‘The Andriscus Uprising and the Achaean War, 149–146 BC’, in M. Whitby and H. Sidebottom (eds.), The Encyclopedia of Ancient Battles, volume II (Chichester, 2017), 842–4.
The Roman Army
An excellent introduction to the mid-Republican legions is L. Keppie, The Making of the Roman Army from Republic to Empire (London, 1984), 14–56. There is a more comprehensive discussion in M. Dobson, The Army of the Roman Republic: The Second Century BC, Polybius and the Camps at Numantia, Spain (Oxford, 2008), esp. 47–66.
Combat Stress in the Ancient World
There is a keen debate among modern scholars as to whether combat stress existed in the classical world. Broadly, there are two camps. The ‘universalist’ approach argues that as it exists now, so it must have existed then. The ‘specificist’ view points to the lack of unambiguous ancient evidence, and the very different conditions (physical and cultural) prevalent at the time. A sketch of both sides can be found in Ancient Warfare magazine IX.4 (2013), 70–4. A convincing example of culturally specific scholarship is J. Crowley, The Psychology of the Athenian Hoplite (Cambridge, 2012).
Quotes
The song the legionaries sing in Chapter 21 is taken from Plautus, Miles Gloriosus, translated by E.F. Watling (Harmondsworth, 1965), pp.160–1.
The various lines from Homer are from the translations of the Iliad by Richard Lattimore (Chicago, 1951), and the Odyssey by Robert Fagles (London, 1996).
Other Novels
All my novels include a couple of homages to other writers. Here I have reworked images from Christ Stopped at Eboli by Carlo Levi (Eng. tr., Harmondsworth, 1982), and Across the River and Into the Trees by Ernest Hemingway (London, 1950).