A Comedy of Terrors: Lindsey Davis (89 AD)
Lindsey Davis, author of A Comedy of Terrors
Today we head back almost two thousand years to the rich, rowdy, ruthless Roman world of the Emperor Domitian. This was a time when people were still coming to terms with the devastating eruption at Vesuvius and when political intrigue kept those who lived in the Eternal City in a constant state of excitement and unease. Our guide in this fascinating episode is the much-loved novelist Lindsey Davis.
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Towards the end of the first century AD the Roman Empire was approaching the height of its power. Livy had observed a generation before that Rome had grown to such a degree since its ‘humble beginnings that it is now overwhelmed by its own greatness.’
This greatness was to be found in Rome’s architecture, its culture and in the complex administrative network that bound together an Empire that sprawled across much of the European continent.
But as Livy foresaw, the vastness and might of Rome was being increasingly shadowed by issues from within. After the collapse of the Republic and the concentration of power into the figure of the Emperor, the politics had grown even more fractious and combustible.
The infamous reign of the Emperor Nero had demonstrated this . Chroniclers would later tell of how Nero ordered the assassination of his mother, terrorised his people and set his own city alight during a reign that ended with his enforced suicide.
Two decades on, during the reign of Domitian, people had yet to fully move on from the drama of Nero’s days. As Lindsey Davis explains in this episode, a succession of ‘Falso Neros’ appeared, people imitating the dead emperor and attempting to reclaim his former power.
That there was some nostalgia for Nero is perhaps explained by the reign of Domitian himself. Domitian is generally recorded as being a bad emperor: a cruel and narcissistic tyrant who acted with such indecency that a committee of his political peers found it necessary to have him assassinated.
Beyond these bare facts, though, little can be said with real clarity about the history of this time. For the novelist Lindsey Davis this silence is an opportunity. Over the past decade she has used Domitian’s reign as the backdrop for a series of thrilling detective novels, featuring her protagonist Flavia Albia.
This spring Davis has published the latest book in her Flavia Albia series. It is called A Comedy of Terrors and is set in the year 89 AD in Rome in the weekly leading up to the raucous festival of Saturnalia.
In this episode of Travels Through Time, Davis shares both her historical knowledge and novelist’s imagination as she takes us back to a compelling moment in time. Rome, she explains, was restless, opulent, comic, perilous, inquisitive, gluttonous.
Set in the aftermath of the huge explosion at Vesuvius, this was a time when great splendour and danger ran side by side.
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Click here to order Lindsey Davis’s book from John Sandoe’s who, we are delighted to say, are supplying books for the podcast.
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Show notes
Scene One: Bay of Naples, ten years after Vesuvius.
Scene Two: Syria, to witness – the (third) Falso Nero episode.
Scene Three: The Black Banquet where senators and others were terrorised and Domitian’s big ‘friendly’ banquet for the entire Roman people.
Memento: A giant Roman measure of Falernian Wine from the slopes of Vesuvius
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Presenter: Peter Moore
Guest: Lindsey Davis
Production: Maria Nolan
Podcast partner: Colorgraph
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About Lindsey Davis
Historical novelist Lindsey Davis is best-known for her novels set in Ancient Rome, including the much-loved Marcus Didius Falco series, although she has also written about the English Civil War, including in 2014 A Cruel Fate, a book for the Quick Reads literacy initiative. Her examination of the paranoid reign of the roman emperor Domitian began with Master and God, a standalone novel, leading to her new series about Flavia Albia, set in that dark period.
Her books are translated and have been dramatized on BBC Radio 4. Her many awards include the Premio Colosseo (from the city of Rome) and the Crime Writers' Cartier Diamond Dagger for lifetime achievement. Most recently she was the inaugural winner of the Barcino (Barcelona) International Historical Novel Prize.
Rome
Historical map of ancient Rome of the 1st century CE published in Italy in 1570 (WikiCommons)
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