Wrath of the Furies (41 page)
Read Wrath of the Furies Online
Authors: Steven Saylor
Note that a French accent gave the victims away, just as Gordianus's accent would have given him away in Ephesus.
Our details about the massacre of 88 BCE are equally vivid. The Roman historian Appian catalogues the atrocities (
Mithridatic Wars
, 22â23, Horace White translation):
These secret orders Mithridates sent to all the cities at the same time. When the appointed day came calamities of various kinds befell the province of Asia, among which were the following:
The Ephesians tore fugitives, who had taken refuge in the temple of Artemis, from the very images of the goddess and slew them. The Pergameans shot with arrows those who had fled to the temple of Aesculapius, while they were still clinging to his statues. The Adramytteans followed those who sought to escape by swimming, into the sea, and killed them and drowned their children. The Caunii ⦠pursued the Italians who had taken refuge about the Vesta statue of the senate house, tore them from the shrine, killed children before their mothers' eyes, and then killed the mothers themselves and their husbands after them. The citizens of Tralles, in order to avoid the appearance of blood-guiltiness, hired a savage monster named Theophilus, of Paphlagonia, to do the work. He conducted the victims to the temple of Concord, and there murdered them, chopping off the hands of some who were embracing the sacred images.
Such was the awful fate that befell the Romans and Italians throughout the province of Asia, men, women, and children, their freedmen and slaves, all who were of Italian blood.â¦
Almost five hundred years later, the lament for the slaughtered continued. Augustine of Hippo (
City of God
, 3.22, Marcus Dods translation): “How miserable a spectacle was then presented, when each man was suddenly and treacherously murdered.⦠Think of the groans of the dying, the tears of the spectators, and even of the executioners themselves.”
How great was the slaughter? Valerius Maximus (
Memorable Deeds and Sayings
, 9.2.3) and Memnon (
History of Heraclea
, 22.9) speak of 80,000 dead. Plutarch (
Sulla
, 24.7) nearly doubles that number, citing 150,000. Cicero, who mentions the event in more than one oration, speaks only of “many thousands” (
Manilian Law
, 4.11).
The date of the massacre is a vexed question. A. N. Sherwin-White (“The Opening of the Mithridatic War,”
Miscellanea di studi classici in onore di Eugenio Manni
, vol. VI, Rome, 1980, pp. 1981â95) dates the massacre to late 89 or early 88 BCE, but this novel places the event in the middle of 88 BCE, the latest time allowed by Ernst Badian (“Rome, Athens and Mithridates,”
American Journal of Ancient History
1, 1976, pp. 105â28).
The horrific death of Manius Aquillius is described by Appian (
Mithridatic Wars
, 21) and by Pliny (
Natural History
, 33.14). Was Manius Aquillius really forced to sully his name with a pun, proclaiming that he was crazy? As comedians often say nowadays, “I couldn't make these things up.” Regarding this question, my thanks to Jona Lendering at Livius.org for his explication of the Greek text of Appian at
Mithridatic Wars
, 21. On another question to do with Manius Aquillius, my thanks to Gaylan DuBose for his translation of the Latin text of Granius Licianus,
History of Rome
, 35.
The story of Bouplagos, who rose from the dead, and the raving Roman general comes from Phlegon of Tralles's
Book of Marvels
(pp. 32â37 in the translation by William Hansen published by Exeter Press in 1996).
The case of Publius Rutilius Rufus (“the Roman without a toga”) is examined by Gordon P. Kelly in
A History of Exile in the Roman Republic
(Cambridge, 2006). Gossip that Rutilius was somehow complicit in the massacre is reported, but rejected, by Plutarch (
Pompey
, 37).
Mithridates's seizure of the Jewish treasury on Cos is reported by Josephus (
Antiquities of the Jews,
14.7). Mithridates's acquisition of the cloak of Alexander the Great is reported by a somewhat skeptical Appian (
Mithridatic Wars
, 117).
The whereabouts of Prince Ptolemy (Ptolemy XI by modern reckoning) after his abduction on Cos are largely mysterious, but we know that he escaped from Mithridates because he later appears as a client of the Roman dictator Sulla, who managed to put him on the Egyptian throneâif only very briefly. The maddeningly jumbled threads of Ptolemaic genealogy were brilliantly untangled by the late Chris Bennett at
www.tyndalehouse.com/egypt/
.
Was a virgin sacrificed in the Grove of the Furies? The little we know is from Julius Obsequens,
Book of Prodigies
, 56, which can be found in volume XIV of the Loeb edition of Livy. (Thanks again to Gaylan Dubose for his help with some perplexing Latin.) I discovered this rather enigmatic prodigyâwhich was to give me the title and fulcrum of my plotâwhile reading (and rereading) Adrienne Mayor's splendid biography of Mithridates,
The Poison King
(Princeton, 2010). My battered copy of this book has dog-ears, highlighting, and scribbled notes on virtually every page.
The first epigraph that precedes this novel (from the
Eumenides
by Aeschylus) is from the Herbert Weir Smyth translation, now in public domain, as revised by Cynthia Bannon and Gregory Nagy. The full text can be found at
www.uh.edu/~cldue/texts/eumenides.html
. The second epigraph, from Cavafy's poem “Darius,” is from the 1923 translation by George Valassopoulo. All other verses in this book are my own (sometimes rather loose) translations.
My thanks to my editor, Keith Kahla, for his invaluable feedback, to my husband, Rick Solomon, for his insightful comments, and to my agent, Alan Nevins, who went above and beyond the call of duty in recent months.
Lastly ⦠what about those cherries? In the very first novel of the series,
Roman Blood
(1991), the thirty-year-old Gordianus used cherries as a simile to describe Bethesda's lips. It was pointed out to me that cherries were not introduced in Rome until fourteen years later, when the cherry trees brought back from the Black Sea region by Lucullus created a sensation. To fix the perceived anachronism, those cherries became pomegranates in later editions of
Roman Blood
. To put the matter behind me, I wrote a short story called “The Cherries of Lucullus,” and in the Historical Notes to the collection in which that story appears,
A Gladiator Dies Only Once
(2005), I disclosed the papered-over anachronism in
Roman Blood
. But now, in recalling the youthful travels of Gordianus, I discover that he first encountered cherries in 88 BCEâwell before his return to Rome and the events of
Roman Blood
. Perhaps in some future edition of that book, the pomegranates will become cherries again, bringing full circle the never-ending quest for a perfect text.
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Steven Saylor
is the author of the acclaimed historical mystery novels featuring Gordianus the Finder, including
Raiders of the Nile
, as well as the national bestselling historical novels
Empire
and
Roma.
He has appeared on the History Channel as an expert on Roman politics and life. He divides his time between Berkeley, California, and Austin, Texas.
Â
Visit the author's Web site at
www.stevensaylor.com
. Or sign up for email updates
here
.
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ALSO BY
STEVEN SAYLOR
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Contents
Map of the Eastern Mediterranean
Prologue: From the Secret Diary of Antipater of Sidon
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This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.
WRATH OF THE FURIES.
Copyright © 2015 by Steven Saylor. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
Cover design by James Iacobelli
Cover paintings: (foreground)
The Course of Empire: Destruction
, 1836 (oil on canvas), Cole, Thomas, (1801â48) © Collection of the New-York Historical Society, USA / Bridgeman Images; (sky)
Eruption of Mount Vesuvius
© Granger, NYC