April 3, 2025 by AdamAH

The World of An Altar of Indignities – Part XI – Terence: From Slavery to the Roman Stage

Greetings Readers and History-Lovers!

Welcome to the final post in The World of An Altar of Indignities, the blog series in which we’ve explored some of the research that went into our latest dramatic and romantic comedy set in the Roman Empire.

If you missed Part X on the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, you can read that by CLICKING HERE.

In Part XI, we’re going to take a brief look at the life and work of the ancient playwright who is central to the story of An Altar of Indignities: Terence.

We hope you enjoy…

Terence, 9th-century illustration, possibly copied from 3rd-century original

Whatever fortune brings, we will patiently bear.

– Terence

The Etrurian Players series is about the life, loves, struggles, and theatrical misadventures of a troupe of players in the Roman Empire in the early 3rd century C.E. Every book in the series revolves around the production of a particular Roman play, usually at the Gods’ command.

In the first book in the series, the multi award-winning Sincerity is a Goddess, The Etrurian Players put on a production of Plautus’ Menaechmi. Plautus was, of course, one of the great comedic playwrights of Ancient Rome, and his plays were raucous and comical, using wordplay and slapstick comedy. He really was the playwright of the Roman people. You can read our article about Plautus HERE.

For An Altar of Indignities, the choice of playwright was clear. It had to be Terence, certainly, but there were a few questions that needed answering before embarking on this story’s escapade… Which of Terence’s plays would The Etrurian Players perform? How did Terence’s life and personality differ from other playwrights, and how would that affect the story? Was the cast up to the challenge? Was I?

In the end (but really, it’s a beginning!), I chose to tackle what some believe to be Terence’s most difficult play: The Heautontimorumenos , ‘The Self-Tormentor’.

The research into this play, and the personage of Terence, has been an adventure in and of itself. What little is known of Terence hints at a short and difficult life filled with both tragedy and a degree of adulation. But, like most writers, it is the work that often speaks for the person, and in reading and re-reading Heautontimorumenos several times over, attempting to plumb the complex depths of the work’s meaning, I came to see that Terence truly was – is – one of history’s greatest, most sympathetic and insightful authors.

Engraving of Terence, though he did not live to be so old…

Obsequiousness begets friends; sincerity, dislike.

– Terence

Who was Publius Terentius Afer (c. 185 – 159 B.C.E.)?

Let’s take a brief look at the man and his origins.

According to Suetonius in his Life of Terence, Terentius was born in Carthage in North Africa between the end of the Second Punic War and the start of the Third Punic War. Generally, his birth is thought to be around 185 B.C.E, but 195 B.C.E is also a possibility.

We do not know who his parents were, but we do know that he was born into slavery, the ‘property’ of a Roman senator by the name of Terentius Lucanus who was kind to Terence and gave the young man an education and his freedom.

A page from a manuscript of Terence, written about 825 AD

Terence was apparently a handsome young man who proved to be quite astute and brilliant. After being given his freedom and education, he made his way to Rome where he ended up moving in important and influential literary circles and was accepted into the family of the Roman consul, Lucius Aemilius Paulus, the general who had conquered Macedonia.

The story goes that at a dinner party in Rome, Terence was asked to read his own work to the famous playwright, Caecilius Statius, who was so impressed that he invited the young man to join him for dinner. Suetonius relays the events of that evening:

He wrote six comedies, and when he offered the first of these, the “Andria,” to the aediles, they bade him first read it to Caecilius. Having come to the poet’s house when he was dining, and being meanly clad, Terence is said to have read the beginning of his play sitting on a bench near the great man’s couch. But after a few lines he was invited to take his place at table, and after dining with Caecilius, he ran through the rest to his host’s great admiration.

(Suetonius – The Life of Terence)

Sometime after this entrance onto the Roman literary scene, Terence became a part of what was known as the ‘Scipionic Circle’, an informal group of Hellenophile intellectuals, poets, philosophers, and politicians who gathered around Scipio Aemilianus (185–129 B.C.E), the adoptive grandson of Scipio Africanus. This circle was deeply influenced by Greek culture, particularly Stoic philosophy, and played a key role in the Roman reception of Hellenistic thought and literature.

Artist impression of the ‘Scipionic Circle’

It is with human life as with a game of dice: if the throw you wish for happens not to come up, that which does come up by chance, you must correct by art.

– Terence

In his relatively short life, Terence wrote six comedic plays which were produced between 166 and 160 B.C.E. All of them survive.

He wrote what were known as fabulae palliatae, comedies based on Greek plays, mostly by Menander, and perhaps Apollodorus. You can read more about Roman drama by CLICKING HERE.

Terence’s six plays are as follows:

Andria (The Girl from Andros) – first performed at the Ludi Megalenses (the Festival of Cybele at Rome) in 166 B.C.E.

Hecyra (The Mother-in-Law) – first performed at the Ludi Megalenses in 165 B.C.E.

Heautontimorumenos (also Heauton-Timorumenos, The Self-Tormentor) – first performed at the Ludi Megalenses in 163 B.C.E.

Eunuchus (The Eunuch) – first performed at the Ludi Megalenses in 161 B.C.E.

Phormio (about a clever slave) – first performed at the Ludi Romani (the Roman Games) in 161 B.C.E.

and

Adelphoe (The Brothers) – first performed at the funeral games of Aemilius Paulus in 160 B.C.E.

All of the plays were produced by one Lucius Ambivius Turpio, an actor, stage manager, patron, promoter and entrepreneur who had also produced Statius’ plays. He also performed the lead in most of Terence’s plays. The music for the plays was composed by a musician, or tibicen, named Flaccus.

Scene from the Roman Playwright Terence’s Play Andria (engraving) by German School.

Do not do what is done.

– Terence

Terence’s work was celebrated for its refined language, realistic characterizations, and subtle humour which were a marked departure from the more boisterous style of earlier Roman comedy, including his predecessor, Plautus. His plays adapted elements of Greek New Comedy while emphasizing dialogue that was closer to natural speech. There was less musical accompaniment than in the average Roman comedy at the time, and his meters were much simpler than those used by Plautus, something that enhanced that natural feel of the dialogue. He had an uncanny ability to keep the audience’s interest.

He also used the prologus of his plays in a way that was different to others before him. Where playwrights such as Plautus used the prologus to explain the plot of the play to come, Terence used it to address criticisms of his own work such that his prologues were rhetorical in nature.

But Terence is perhaps best known for his impressive understanding of the human condition and ability to illustrate, through his dialogue and storytelling, the complexities of human behaviour. His work is truly heartfelt.

This wish to understand the human condition is perhaps best illustrated in what might be considered Terence’s most famous quote from Heautontimorumenos:

Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto.

I am human: nothing human is alien to me.

– Terence

The Odeon of Herodes Atticus in Athens where the drama plays out in An Altar of Indignities

Using Heautontimorumenos (The Self-Tormentor) as the play for An Altar of Indignities was quite a deliberate choice.

As the translator, A.J. Brothers, said, it is “the most neglected of the dramatist’s six comedies… Yet the Self-Tormentor, for all its occasional imperfections, in many ways shows Terence at his best; the plot is ingenious, complex, fast-moving, and extremely skilfully constructed, its characters are excellently drawn, and the whole is full of delightful dramatic irony. It deserves to be better known.”

In truth, the play is so complex, so nuanced, that it required several readings to fully grasp all that Terence was trying to say. Perhaps in tackling this play, I discovered that there was something of a ‘self-tormentor’ in myself!

Nevertheless, I cannot imagine having chosen a different play to be featured in this novel for, in reading through it and developing an understanding of it, I came to admire the brilliance of Terence.

An image from a manuscript of Terence’s Heautontimorumenos depicting the characters Menedemus and Chremes

Heautontimorumenos, and Terence’s other plays, could be said to be ‘smart-funny’ as opposed to the slapstick humour of Plautus’ work. This is nicely illustrated in a review of the play by Sir Richard Steele, the 17th-18th century Anglo-Irish writer, in the Spectator (No. 502) when he aptly described the play:

“The Play was The Self-Tormentor. It is from the beginning to the end a perfect picture of human life, but I did not observe in the whole one passage that could raise a laugh. How well-disposed must that people be, who could be entertained with satisfaction by so sober and polite mirth! In the first Scene of the Comedy, when one of the old men accuses the other of impertinence for interposing in his affairs, he answers, ‘I am a man, and can not help feeling any sorrow that can arrive at man.’ It is said this sentence was received with a universal applause. There can not be a greater argument of the general good understanding of a people, than their sudden consent to give their approbation of a sentiment which has no emotion in it. If it were spoken with ever so great skill in the actor, the manner of uttering that sentence could have nothing in it which could strike any but people of the greatest humanity—nay, people elegant and skillful in observation upon it. It is possible that he may have laid his hand on his heart, and with a winning insinuation in his countenance, expressed to his neighbour that he was a man who made his case his own; yet I will engage, a player in Covent Garden might hit such an attitude a thousand times before he would have been regarded.”

Whereas Plautus’ plays had great appeal, especially among the Roman people, Terence’s plays seem to have appealed more to the upper educated classes. In fact, during the imperial period, long after his death, Terence was considered second only to Virgil as the most widely read Latin poet. His plays were read in Latin canonical schools on into the Middle Ages and beyond, and Terence himself was often quoted as an authority on human nature, including by St. Augustine who, though not always full of praise for the pagan playwright, quotes Terence thirty-eight times in his own works.

A gathering in Rome

As many men, so as many opinions.

– Terence

As praising as many were Terence and his work, he also had his detractors, and this is one reason for his use of the prologus in defending his work. Suetonius highlights some of the common gossip that swirled around Terence:

It is common gossip that Scipio and Laelius aided Terence in his writings, and he himself lent colour to this by never attempting to refute it, except in a half-hearted way, as in the prologue to the “Adelphoe”:

“For as to what those malicious critics say, that men of rank aid your poet and constantly write in concert with him; what they regard as a grievous slander, he considers the highest praise, to please those who please you and all the people, whose timely help everyone has used without shame in war, in leisure, in business.”

Now he seems to have made but a lame defence, because he knew that the report did not displease Laelius and Scipio; and it gained ground in spite of all and came down even to later times. Gaius Memmius in a speech in his own defence says: “Publius Africanus, who borrowed a mask from Terence, and put upon the stage under his name what he had written himself for his own amusement at home.”

– Suetonius (The Life of Terence)

Julius Caesar too criticized Terence, showing himself to not be the greatest of fans:

Thou too, even thou, art ranked among the highest, thou half-Menander, and justly, thou lover of language undefiled. But would that thy graceful verses had force as well, so that thy comic power might have equal honour with that of the Greeks, and thou mightest not be scorned in this regard and neglected. It hurts and pains me, my Terence, that thou lackest this one quality.

– Julius Caesar

Print from a manuscript of Terence’s work

Despite the few critics of his work, Terence’s plays have stood the test of time, being used to teach Latin in schools and influencing great playwrights. Even William Shakespeare is said to have been influenced by Terence’s comedy and scenic structure in plays such as The Taming of the Shrew, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Othello, and The Merry Wives of Windsor.

Despite the success in Rome of his six initial plays, Terence, for some reason, felt that he had to leave Rome and Italy, and appears to have made his way to Greece, the birthplace of drama:

After publishing these comedies before he had passed his twenty-fifth year, either to escape from the gossip about publishing the work of others as his own, or else to become versed in Greek manners and customs, which he felt that he had not been wholly successful in depicting in his plays, he left Rome and never returned.

– Suetonius (The Life of Terence)

Sadly, Terence seems not to have survived for long, leaving this world at far too young an age at twenty-five years (or thirty-five, depending on the birth date). It is supposed that either he died in a shipwreck on the journey to or from Greece, or that he died of illness when in Greece while seeking to increase his knowledge and skill in the home of the playwrights he had so admired.

Suetonius writes that he was to return “from Greece with one hundred and eight plays adapted from Menander”, but due to his death, or the wrecking of the ship that contained his new works, all of them were lost. And so, the six, brilliant plays of Terence’s that have come down to us today are all that we have of this wonderful, young Roman poet’s work.

Artist impression of Terence writing in Athens along the banks of the Ilissos river

It does indeed seem tragic that a poet and artist who was so lauded after his death, appeared to struggle so much in life, despite some brief, shining moments.

Naught availed him Scipio, naught Laelius, naught Furius, the three wealthiest nobles of that time. Their aid did not even give him a rented house, to provide at least a place where his slave might announce his master’s death.

– Suetonius (The Life of Terence)

In An Altar of Indignities, it is this seemingly unfinished and, perhaps, glorious but ultimately unfulfilled life of the artist that is explored, and this is in large part due to Terence and his masterpiece, Heautontimorumenos.

It has been an adventure and a privilege to write about Terence, and explore his life and works. I think it fitting then to end with a quote by one of Terence’s most renowned admirers from the world of Ancient Rome:

Thou, Terence, who alone dost reclothe Menander in choice speech, and rendering him into the Latin tongue, dost present him with thy quiet utterance on our public stage, speaking with a certain graciousness and with sweetness in every word.

– Cicero

Thank you for reading.

Well, that is the end of The World of An Altar of Indignities. The curtain has fallen.

If you would like to read the plays of Terence for yourself, you can download a complete, FREE version for any device from Project Gutenberg by CLICKING HERE. To read Terence’s masterpiece, Heautontimorumenos (The Self-Tormentor), you can do so on-line HERE.

We hope you have enjoyed this blog series, and that you enjoy An Altar of Indignities if you read it. If you have read it, please leave a review on the Eagles and Dragons Publishing website or on the store web page where you purchased the book. Reviews are a wonderful way for new readers to find this dramatic and romantic comedy of ancient Rome and Athens!

If you missed any of the posts in this eleven-part blog series, you can read all of them on one web page by CLICKING HERE.

An Altar of Indignities: A Dramatic and Romantic Comedy of Ancient Rome and Athens is available in ebook, paperback and deluxe hardcover editions from all major online retailers, independent bookstores, brick and mortar chains, and your local public library.

CLICK HERE to buy a copy and get the ISBN# for the edition of your choice.

Brace yourselves! The Etrurian Players are back!

October 15, 2024 by AdamAH

New Release! – The Etrurian Players are Back!

Greetings Readers and History-Lovers!

Eagles and Dragons Publishing is thrilled to announce the release of Book II in The Etrurian Players series!

The title is An Altar of Indignities: A Dramatic and Romantic Comedy of Ancient Rome and Athens and it is an embarrassing and touching story of family and friendship, creativity, and the discomfort that humans experience as life inevitably changes.

The story takes place in the Roman Empire in the year 205 CE…

Brace yourselves! The Etrurian Players are back!

The Gods are well aware that mortals have a habit of taking themselves far too seriously. This is especially true of The Etrurian Players, the greatest theatrical troupe in the Roman Empire.

Basking in the glories of their resounding success in Rome, Felix Modestus and his players find themselves on the sacred island of Delos when Apollo decides it is time to check Felix’s growing hubris with a new and potentially deadly mission: he must show the people of Athens that Romans are just as capable of theatrical greatness as the Greeks!

Faced with this titanic task, Felix once again enlists the help of his oldest friends, Rufio and Clara, who travel from their farm in Etruria to Athens for the great Panathenaic festival when the precarious production is destined to take place.

As the company attempts to prepare for the performance, their efforts are constantly hampered by haughty critics, a rival theatre troupe, wailing children, wild animals, and the pleasures of Athena’s polis.

Will The Etrurian Players overcome distraction to win over the people of Athens? Will they survive the trials and judgement of Apollo? Or will they succumb to the humiliation and self-doubt that lurks around every creative corner?

Only by believing in themselves and helping each other can they survive and prove once again that The Etrurian Players are worthy of praise and the Gods’ favour.

If you like dramatic and comic stories about wild artists, persistent shades, and unbelievable episodes with goats, monkeys, and dogs, then you will howl and cry at An Altar of Indignities!

Read this book today for a theatrical misadventure in Roman Athens that will leave you asking the Gods ‘What were they thinking?’.

If you haven’t yet experienced The Etrurian Players series, be sure to check out Book I first, the multi award-winning title, Sincerity is a Goddess: A Dramatic and Romantic Comedy of Ancient Rome.

If you are feeling down about the world at the moment, The Etrurian Players series is just the ticket you need to feel good and know that there is indeed hope for us all!

An Altar of Indignities is now available in ebook, paperback and deluxe hardcover editions from all major online retailers, independent bookstores, brick and mortar chains, and your local public library.

CLICK HERE to buy a copy or get ISBN# information for the edition of your choice.

You can also purchase the ebook directly from Eagles and Dragons Publishing by clicking HERE.

We’re so excited to share this dramatic and romantic comedy with the world, and we’re thrilled that you’re joining us on the adventure!

Thank you for reading!

September 18, 2021 by AdamAH

Mythologia: Exploring the World of Gods, Goddesses and Heroes

Greetings Readers and History-Lovers!

After a long Summer break, we’re finally back on the blog to bring you more entertaining information, topics of conversation and, of course, more books!

I hope that this post finds you all happy and safe, despite the ongoing crises plaguing our world.

During the past several months, I’ve been busy delving into worlds of gods, goddesses and heroes. What better way to get a respite from the modern world and its troubles than to explore Greek and Roman mythology?

And what an escape it has been!

I’ve always enjoyed mythology, and as I’ve grown older and begun to write my own stories, I’ve realized that it would be wonderful to retell many of these fabulous myths in a way that would allow us to get to know these gods, goddesses, and heroes on a more personal level.

The goal with the Mythologia series from Eagles and Dragons Publishing is to re-create a mythical world in which the reader can suspend all disbelief and experience these epic tales in a new and exciting way, right alongside the immortals and demigods whom we have read and heard about for ages.

This series is also a lot of fun for me to write, because anything goes. I don’t need to be constrained by historical timelines or detail as much as with other series, though I always make an effort to set the stories in their known, geographical locations. You can’t keep a good historian down! I get ideas from the seeds and scattered mentions by ancient authors in various texts, and then let my imagination run wild.

The Council of the Gods by Raphael, c.1517, Villa Farnesina, Rome

Why mythology, and why now?

That’s a tricky question. I suppose that in the last year, during this modern plague, I’ve found comfort in mythology, a resonance in the stories that has helped me to get through in some way.

This series was always intended to be an escape, an exercise in the suspension of disbelief. This past year seemed like the perfect time for that.

However, it is also worth mentioning that even though myth is comprised mostly of stories of gods, goddesses, and heroes, those stories deal with very human feelings and trials which we all face in one form or another. They are stories of love and loss, of hope and of deep fear. They are stories of jealousy, of curiosity, of wanting to belong and of wanting to be better than ourselves.

The Gods know we’ve all faced our share of challenges in the last year and a half or so. That is part of the reason for which I have gone back to the Mythologia series. It has comforted and inspired me.

I also just love mythology as a religious and storytelling tradition that has spanned ancient Greek and Roman culture. It’s the very foundation of epic storytelling in the West.

The Mythologia series can be read in any order, but the first book, Chariot of the Son, deals with the Phaethon myth.

The Fall of Phaethon (Sebastiano Ricci 1659-1734)

He [Zeus] recalled the Fate [Moira] foretold a time when sea and land and heaven’s high palaces in sweeping flames should burn, and down should fall the beleaguered bastions of the universe.

(Ovid, Metamorphoses 1. 252)

Why the Phaethon myth?

I forget what I was researching at the time, but I came across a description of one version of the tale and remember being really saddened by it. I felt strongly that this was a story that I could tell, a story that would be extremely moving for readers of all ages.

There are a few versions of the Phaethon myth, including Hesiod’s Theogeny of the 8^th or 7^th century B.C., and versions by Apollodorus and Pausanias in the second century A.D. In these, Phaethon is often the son of Eos and Kephalos.

The version that touched me the most is by the Roman poet Ovid (43 BC – AD 17/18) from Book II of his work, Metamorphoses. This work is a continuous narrative of myths in fifteen books which has shaped much of our view of mythology to this day.

You can download a free version of Ovid’s Metamorphoses on the Project Gutenberg website HERE.

With Chariot of the Son, I wanted get to know the people who, unbeknownst to Phaethon, make up the family – Clymene and Helios, his parents, an Oceanid and a Titan; his sisters, the Heliades; the Titan Prometheus, and others.

Also, knowing that the story has a tragic end, I wanted to get inside this young god’s heart and mind to try and experience the reasons why he wanted so much to drive the Sun’s chariot across the heavens.

As I thought about his burning chariot and the scorching of the world that created the Sahara desert, it occurred to me that this story has some very human themes such as wanting to belong, the need for love and approval, and the urge to prove oneself.

It is also a myth that is not often explored, and so I set out to tell it as I saw it. I hope I have done this tragic tale justice.

We are, after all, reminded of Helios and Phaethon when we look up at the sun in the daytime sky, or see a picture of the burning expanse of the Sahara desert.

The Sahara Desert – Created by the burning of the world when Phaethon drove his father’s chariot

Perhaps what I love most about the myths is that they enable us to feel and see our world and history with wonder, and that is a precious thing.

I love this book and writing it was, quite literally, a dream-like experience.

Stepping into such an ancient world where these mythic characters experience things on a very human scale has been a wonderful experience that I hope you will enjoy.

Though the books in the Mythologia series are labelled in a specific order, they can all be read individually as stand-alone stories.

Chariot of the Son is, of course, the first book in the Mythologia series, and it is available for 0.99.

Just go to the book’s page on the website HERE. You can also go to the Buy Direct page on the Eagles and Dragons Publishing website to get your copy.

Stay tuned for the next post on Greek mythology in which we will take a brief look at the myth of Pelops and Hippodameia.

Thank you for reading.

September 28, 2019 by AdamAH

A New Eagles and Dragons Series Novel!

We’re excited to announce the official launch of Isle of the Blessed, Book IV in the #1 bestselling Eagles and Dragons historical fantasy series.

Fans of this series have been waiting quite a long time for this book, but now the wait is over.

Sound the cornu and slam your gladii against your scuta!

Isle of the Blessed – Eagles and Dragons Book IV

At the peak of Rome’s might, a dragon is born among eagles, an heir to a line both blessed and cursed by the Gods for ages.

Emperor Septimius Severus’ war against the Caledonians has ended with a peace treaty. Rome has won.

As a reward for the blood they have shed, many of Rome’s warriors have been granted a reprieve from duty, including Lucius Metellus Anguis, prefect of the now famous Sarmatian cavalry.

The Gods seem finally to have granted Lucius a peaceful life as he builds a new home for his family upon an ancient hillfort in the south of Britannia. Lucius now finds that, after years of war and brutality, the most elusive peace, the peace within, is finally within his grasp.

But heroes are never without enemies, and Lucius, Rome’s famed Dragon, has many.

After an argument with traitorous local politicians, and a quest in which he is confronted by a dark goddess, Lucius realizes that his pastoral idyll is at an end. When war erupts in Caledonia once more, he is called away only to be assaulted on all fronts by his most deadly enemy.

The choices presented to Lucius by the Gods, his allies, and his friends are clear and terrifying. He can hand victory and power over to the wickedest men in the Empire, or he can fight for his life to create the world he believes in.

Will Lucius’ enemies and the powers of darkness overwhelm and destroy him? Or will he find the strength to survive the trials he faces and protect the people he loves?

This time, not even the Gods know…

We hope you like the sound of this one. It promises to take you on an adventure in the Roman Empire that you won’t forget, and the editorial team and beta readers have told us that this is Adam’s best book to date!

You can learn more and find all the links to get your copy ON THIS WEB PAGE.

Isle of the Blessed is available in e-book format at all major on-line retailers, and currently in paperback from Amazon.

If you haven’t read any books in the Eagles and Dragons series, you can start the series for FREE with the full-length novel, The Dragon: Genesis, which you can download by CLICKING HERE.

Here’s to a new adventure in the Roman Empire!

Happy Reading!

January 15, 2017 by AdamAH

The World of Warriors of Epona – Part IV – Battle Line: The Gask Ridge Frontier

When most think of the Romans in Britannia or Caledonia, almost always the first thing that comes to mind is Hadrian’s Wall.

But there is another frontier that many people may not know of. You may have heard of some of the forts or camps that make up a part of this frontier, such as the legionary base at Inchtuthil.

Roman re-enactor watching the frontier

I’m talking about a line of forts and camps known as the ‘Gask Ridge’.

Research on this particular frontier has been less in depth than either the Antonine or Hadrianic walls. However, over the past ten years or so, the Gask Ridge has received its due attention thanks to the efforts of Birgitta Hoffmann and David Woolliscroft who have spearheaded the Roman Gask Project.

The importance of this frontier cannot be over-emphasized.

Gask Ridge Forts (Wikimedia Commons)

The Gask Ridge frontier has seen action in every one of Rome’s Caledonian campaigns and some of the research even shows that it was the first chain of forts in northern Britain, predating the other walls.

Some believe it is the first such frontier in the Empire!

It consists of a long line of forts, watchtowers, and temporary marching camps that run from the area of Stirling, on the Antonine Wall, past Doune, along the edge of Fife and up into Angus, all the way to Stracathro.

This is a very impressive line of defence built by Rome with the intent of holding the Caledonii at bay, and separating the highlands from the flatter plains leading to the North Sea.

Artist Impression of Caledonian Warriors

In writing Warriors of Epona, the trick was finding out which forts may have been in use during the campaigns of Septimius Severus in the early 3rd century A.D.

The forts of the Gask Ridge were used mostly during Agricola’s campaign in the late first century, and then by Antoninus in the mid-second century.

Roman road along Gask Ridge in Perth and Kinross

The Romans definitely knew how to pick a strategic location along the perfect line of march, so it’s likely marching camps would have been reused in later campaigns. But some of that is supposition.

One site that we know was built as part of the Severan campaign was the legionary fort at Carpow, on the banks of the Tay. With a large part of a legion stationed there, the supply chain could be maintained by sea with Roman galleys coming up the Tay. It was also at this time that some believe the first Tay Bridge was built when Severus ordered the creation of a boat or pontoon bridge to the Angus side of the river.

Aerial view of Horea Classis site (Carpow)

Carpow was a large base of operations intended to make a statement – Rome was going to stay this time! Severus was a military emperor who liked to prove his point. He was in Caledonia to finish what other Roman emperors had started, just as he did in Parthia.

The Gask Ridge plays a key role in Warriors of Epona, especially the forts that may have seen re-use during the third century, among them the forts at Camelon, Ardoch, Fendoch, and Bertha, the latter being where Lucius Metellus Anguis establishes his forward base.

Ardoch Roman camp remains

Of course, one of the exciting things about writing historical fiction, after the research, is filling in the gaps and exploring possibilities.

Because research on the Gask Ridge is relatively new, we can certainly look forward to learning more from Hoffmann, Woolliscroft, and everyone else on the Roman Gask Project team who are leading the charge to further our knowledge of this ancient frontier.

One thing that I have discovered over the years is that even though the history and research are very important, at the end of the day, in fiction, the story must come first.

With Warriors of Epona, history and story have come together nicely, and that has been pure magic!

Cheers, and stay tuned for the fifth and final part of The World of Warriors of Epona.

Aerial view of Fendoch and the Sma’ Glen from the south with the fort on the low plateau in the right foreground.

If you are interested in reading more about the Roman Gask Frontier, or about the Romans in Scotland, do have a look at the following resources:

The Roman Gask Project: http://www.theromangaskproject.org/

Rome’s First Frontier: The Flavian Occupation of Northern Scotland. By D. J. Woolliscroft and B. Hoffman. Pp. 254. ISBN: 0 7524 3044 0. Stroud: Tempus. 2006.

Warriors of Epona – Eagles and Dragons Book III is one sale now!

But remember! If you have not yet read any of the Eagles and Dragons novels, and if you want to start off on an adventure in the Roman Empire, you can pick up the #1 Best Selling prequel novel, A Dragon among the Eagles. It is a FREE DOWNLOAD on Amazon, Apple iTunes/iBooks, and Kobo.

March 19, 2016 by AdamAH

A Journey to Hell with Special Guest, Glyn Iliffe

Greetings everyone!

This week, I’m pleased to welcome author Glyn Iliffe back on Writing the Past.

It’s been a couple of years since I interviewed Glyn on the old website around the time of the release of the fourth book in his series, The Adventures of Odysseus.

This time, Glyn is back with a special guest post that I know you will find fascinating!

He has just released book five, The Voyage of Odysseus, which I am reading right now and cannot put down.

Homer’s Odyssey is one of the foundational works of western literature, and the story of Odysseus’ journey back home after the Trojan War is one that has fascinated people for ages.

One of the terrifying elements of this story is the hero’s journey into Hades, and that is what Glyn is going to talk about today.

Katabasis – The Descent into Hell

By Glyn Iliffe

According to Benjamin Franklin only two things in life are certain: death and taxes. The latter we can grumble about and try to dodge, but death is a different question. You might say it’s the question. Being aware of the finite nature of our existence is what separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom and, essentially, makes us human. Death – and what lies beyond it – is the great unknown. The anticipation or fear of it has shaped every culture across the world and throughout time.

To understand the psychology of a culture you need look no further than its art, and a lot of art focuses on death. Enter any Catholic church and you will see depictions of Jesus on the Cross. The tombs of the ancient Egyptians are filled with hieroglyphs illustrating the journey into the afterlife. Indeed, the reason we know so much about our ancestors is because of their obsessions with death, culminating in the desire to take their treasures with them into the next world, or leave monuments to the lives they led before death took them. But the clearest insights into a culture’s views on death come from its stories.

In particular, there is one type of story that appears again and again in the texts of different civilizations from different eras: the descent into Hell. I’m thinking here of a physical journey to the underworld, rather than a symbolic or psychological descent into madness or suffering. Possibly the earliest is Gilgamesh’s visit to Utnapishtim. The Egyptians had the Book of the Dead. The Roman poet Virgil told of Aeneas’s visit to his death father, Anchises; and in the Renaissance Dante’s Divine Comedy describes one of the most memorable and terrifying visions of Hell ever depicted. The most defining katabasis of all, for Western culture, was that of Jesus Christ, who spent three days in Hell after taking mankind’s sins onto himself on the Cross.

The term katabasis comes from the Greek words κατὰ ‘down’ and βαίνω ‘go’, and it is the Greeks we must thank for the most numerous and vivid myths on the subject. In the case of Orpheus, the greatest of all poets and musicians, the journey was undertaken for love. When his wife died after being bitten by a viper, he descended into the Underworld and so charmed Hades and Persephone – King and Queen of the Dead – with his music that they agreed to release her back to him. There was one condition, though: that Orpheus walked ahead of his wife and did not look at her until they had both reached the world of the living. In his anxiety after reaching the upper world, he turned to look at her before she had crossed the threshold of Hades. She disappeared in an instant, and this time it was forever.

A less tragic visitation was made by Heracles, the greatest of all Greek heroes. As a penance for slaying his own family in an episode of madness (induced by the gods, of course), Heracles was forced to serve his weakling cousin, King Eurystheus, for twelve years. Eurystheus set him several labours, the twelfth of which was to capture Cerberus, the three-headed hound of Hell. Hades agreed to let Heracles attempt the feat, but only if he fought without weapons. Despite the fearsome nature of the beast, Heracles succeeded and carried Cerberus back to his cousin. Eurystheus was so frightened he agreed to set no more labours if Heracles would take the hound back!

Teiresias speaks to Odysseus

The most famous katabasis features in Book 11 of Homer’s Odyssey. Odysseus descends into the Underworld to seek the ghost of Teiresias, who will tell him how to find his way home to Ithaca. There he encounters his dead mother and many of the heroes who died during the Trojan War. Chief among them is Achilles, who in life had been the greatest of all the Greek warriors and covered himself in martial glory. But in Hades he is a mournful phantom, scornful of what he had achieved on the battlefield:

‘…We Argives honoured you as though you were a god: and now, down here, you have great power among the dead. Do not grieve at your death, Achilles.’

‘And do no make light of death, illustrious Odysseus’ he replied, ‘I would rather work the soil as a serf on hire to some landless impoverished peasant than be King of all these lifeless dead.’

Odysseus comes away from the Underworld without learning the way back home, which makes the reason for his visit to such a bleak and terrifying place seem pointless. But was it pointless? Indeed, why do some heroes have to descend to Hades? What’s the meaning underlying these myths?

Though later Greeks softened their ideas, in the Bronze Age they believed one thing: that death was followed by an eternity of misery and regret in Hades, relieved only by forgetfulness. Knowing this, many sought the one form of immortality available to them – a reputation that would be honoured from generation to generation. This could only be achieved in battle, by defeating enemies and accumulating honour. This is the driving force for many of the characters in my own novels about the Trojan War.

The katabasis, though, is about symbolic immortality. Importantly, the hero does not reach Hell by the usual route (death). Instead, he seeks to enter the Underworld as a mortal, fulfilling a quest that requires him to take or retrieve something of great worth, such as an object, a person or a piece of knowledge. Interestingly, Odysseus does not return with the knowledge he went in search of, but emerges with something of possibly greater worth: an understanding of the value of life. By achieving his quest the hero proves himself to be exceptional, and by overcoming a figurative death he also becomes more than just mortal. He is reborn into a new life, similar to the Christian baptism ceremony, where the lowering into and rising up again from water is symbolic of death and rebirth.

Wilfred Owen

Such deep themes have inspired many modern retellings of the katabasis. Though the themes are no longer Greek, such stories are still reflective of their own times. Wilfred Owen was an officer in the Manchester Regiment during the Great War. His poetry is full of hell-like visions from the mud and slaughter of trench warfare, but in Strange Meeting there are clear parallels with Odysseus’s descent into Hades:

Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,
Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.
Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared
With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,
Lifting distressful hands, as if to bless.
And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall,
By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.

The speaker, like Odysseus with Achilles, tries to comfort the dead man; but like Achilles, the unhappy spirit will have none of it:

‘Strange friend,’ I said, ‘here is no cause to mourn.’
‘None,’ said that other, ‘save the undone years,
The hopelessness.’

The twist comes at the end, where the dead man informs the speaker ‘I am the enemy you killed, my friend’. Though only a glimpse of a descent into Hell, and one from which we don’t know whether the “hero” returns, Owen nevertheless plays on Homer’s suggestion that death is hollow and empty, and that any kind of life is rich by comparison.

A more recent katabasis appears in Phillip Pullman’s The Amber Spyglass, in which Lyra enters the Land of the Dead to rescue her best friend, Roger, who has been murdered. This already has echoes of Orpheus and Eurydice, but there are also other allusions to Greek mythology in the Harpies that patrol this terrible underworld, as well as the phantom-like figures of the dead that populate it. But there are heavy Christian references, too. Like Christ, Lyra leads the lost souls to a form of redemption. Through Lyra’s katabasis Pullman tries to offer an atheistic view of what lies beyond death – very different from traditional descents into Hell – but ironically still relies very heavily on Christian beliefs about redemption.

In The Voyage of Odysseus I retell the story of Odysseus’s long and arduous journey home to Ithaca. The previous books in the series have attempted to draw the full story of the Trojan War into one narrative, focussed on Odysseus. As a fan of Greek mythology, it has always been my intention to be faithful to the original myths and make them accessible, regardless of what the reader may or may not already know about the story. And yet it will always be my take. This is particularly true of the scene in which Odysseus enters the Underworld.

I have had a fear of Hell since childhood. This was probably instigated by seeing Hieronymus Bosch paintings, and reinforced in my teenage years by Dennis Wheatley novels. The notion that Hell is not merely a place of suffering, but a place where the relief of light, love and peace do not exist, is even more frightening. I have incorporated these fears in my retelling of Odysseus’s katabasis – as well as my terror of enclosed spaces!

The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch

Glyn Author Photo

Glyn Iliffe studied English and Classics at Reading University, where he developed a passion for the stories of ancient Greek mythology. Well travelled, Glyn has visited nearly forty countries, trekked in the Himalayas, spent six weeks hitchhiking across North America and had his collarbone broken by a bull in Pamplona. He is married with two daughters and lives in Leicestershire. He is currently working on the concluding book in the series.

Connect with him on Facebook, or visit his website at www.glyniliffe.com