>Be me
>Smell the olives and sweat coming off of my tanned, freshly-oiled muscles as I pull my oar through the waves
>Decide to troll Centurion M. Alterius and cheekily do an offbeat heave to his rhythmic "ho"
>Receive a whack on the back of my head with Alterius' vine staff (the decimum since this morning)
>Grumble "Me in Pompeii liburna volo" to myself
>Receive another whack from Alterius
>About to call his mother an ambulatrix when someone on deck shouts:
>"PORT-A SIDE-A!!!"
>Look portside and see an assailing trireme on a path to intercept
>Can see the wood grain of the ship's smiling battering ram, it's so close
>Take one final breath and-
>CRACK!!! cum vi severa!
>The next breath I take is from the sea as I bob like a vino cortice on the surface
>Blood and bodies, screaming and dying, to the left and right of me
>Ol' Bracca is trying to climb back on the boat with only one arm left
>Bracca's other arm floats by me in farewell
>Look up to the sky, the sun is brilliant and blinding
>About to shield my eyes when a shadow falls over my face
>The enemy's boarding ramp is arcing through the sky, and comes crashing down onto the ship's deck.
>Grab Bracca's arm, and climb back onto the ship
>Nothing but mayhem on board
>Centurion Alterius is lying dead as a porta nodo at my feet
>Kneel down beside him
>Pat his cheek with Bracca's hand
>"TE NVNC SPECE KEK!"
>Relieve him of his helmet with its transversal crest of horse hair and put it proudly on my head
>Run into the fray of spears and sidle up beside ol' Bracca in the rank
>He asks "Is that my arm?"
>About to give it back to him when a hasta comes shooting forward
>Beat back the first thrust with Bracca's arm, but it gets impaled on the blade and goes flying out of my hands
>About to tell Bracca sorry when another thrust of the hasta takes me in the gut
>Die painfully
>But it’s a good death as Sol Invictus looks down upon me from a clear blue sky
ITT: Stories of ancient Rome
Other urls found in this thread:
robertgraves.org
twitter.com
so what are some fiction novels based in ancient Rome that are actually good?
Good question. I haven't gotten far into that subgenre, and from what I've seen, I don't particularly care too.
Of them, "I, Claudius" is purported to be the best, and its author Robert Graves one of the better historical fiction writers; but even he doesn't make a convincing Rome. Modern writers try to comprehend Rome, but then make no effort to encapsulate its spirit. It's tiresome and annoying.
>"PORT-A SIDE-A!!!"
Virgil's The Aeneid
Le Guin’s Lavinia
Not a novel but Ibsen's play Emperor and Galilean
shit off cunt
Aside from I, Claudius and Claudius the God, don't forget Graves' other novel set in the Roman period, King Jesus.
>Over the heather the wet wind blows,
>I’ve lice in my tunic and a cold in my nose.
>The rain comes pattering out of the sky,
>I’m a Wall soldier, I don’t know why.
>The mist creeps over the hard grey stone,
>My girl’s in Tungria; I sleep alone.
>Aulus goes hanging around her place,
>I don’t like his manners, I don’t like his face.
>Piso’s a Christian, he worships a fish;
>There’d be no kissing if he had his wish.
>She gave me a ring but I diced it away;
>I want my girl and I want my pay.
>When I’m a veteran with only one eye
>I shall do nothing but look at the sky.
John Williams' Augustus
Too ancient for you?
OP didn’t seem to ask for imperial Rome
bump
Death of Virgil by Broch.
I meant give us a green text of your own
I don't care for his style. His writing has too modern a dialect to be able to transport me into the character, which he is narrating in FIRST PERSON.
Every paragraph I'm thinking to myself: "this fucking larp, man."
thanks for bump
bump
wouldn't it be more of a larp if graves was putting on an old dialect?
Point taken. There are ways, however, to make it undistracting.
"The Agony and the Ecstasy" by Irving Stone is a fair model of this. Irving Stone portrayed a pious and artistically minded Michelangelo. He pulled it off so convincingly that the reader accepts the character at first meeting, and never once questions it. It's remarkable.
One of the elements involved is the mental disposition of a character who lived in an era that isn't modern. A modern mind is cluttered, agitated, and distracted; in short, it is does not do subtlety and soft feeling all too well -- an excellect example is the Hollywood dramatics, in whose terms most modern writers think.
Irving Stone, although a modern writer, had a certain lightness in his heart, which translated very well into a character that was spirit and lightness.
You could argue that Claudius was hardly spirit and lightness, and so Robert Graves didn't have to portray him that way; but the point is: a writer must be able to distance himself from the assumptions and habits (perhaps he can't, and perhaps that's why Graves is unconvincing) of a modern mind.
well we know stone admired graves. and you know r.g. wasn't modern at all.
when he wrote historical novels he'd throw himself back into the right period, and live very much in that period the whole time he's writing it. he'd have some ancient evidence like to have a coin or a piece of statue, or an old tile or anything of that sort and he'd finger it and "i think i get something out of it in an odd way" (and he was often proved right). as a matter of fact the island he lived on was all roman country. and he always wrote in pen & ink.
he wrote a poem about it, 'to bring the dead to life'.
I didn't know Stone admired Graves. I'd be interested to see what he said, if you have a link.
Even if he did admire him, it is my opinion that he surpassed the admired man.
Graves' techniques are interesting to note. They no doubt serve some purpose. What purpose, what authenticity, what creative spark that entails is another matter.
all i found is his dedication in here: robertgraves.org
>Graves' techniques are interesting to note. They no doubt serve some purpose. What purpose, what authenticity, what creative spark that entails is another matter.
either way it takes away from your cluttered modern mind, habits & assumption theory, doesn't it?
Unrelated to the thread, but have you read Wolf Hall, user? What did you think?
>either way it takes away from your cluttered modern mind, habits & assumption theory, doesn't it?
I don't believe it does. If one could alleviate their agitated modern mind by fingering ancient trinkets, and pursuing archaeological case study, then it would be the antidote to psychological therapy rather than psychotropic drugs.
The problem is deeper and more fundamental than that.
Although it is striking that Graves went through all the effort in pursuit of a certain affect. It is even more striking that the effort was through materialized means of an environmental sort. This only strengthens my opinion that he was an agitated extrovert (I do not mean "extrovert" in the social sense) that had to look outside himself for the substance and essence of things, rather than within oneself.
This also highlights Graves' disconnect with Michelangelo, in relation to the quote; his disconnect with Michelangelo, and his disconnect with ancient Romans. Ancient Romans saw the world outside themselves as one sacred animated body -- how that is experienced is difficult to do justice to unless it has actually been experienced. But the sacred animated body outside is merely a reflection of the sacred man inside oneself.
How that experience can be conveyed through characters is a matter of important consequence, if one has the intention of pulling off an authentic historical novel. Irving Stone had the requisite elements of character and soul to do it justice. Graves did not.
I haven't. But I just looked it up, and going to give it a download.
How'd you like it?
i also mentioned he lived in that period the whole time he's writing it. how someone lived & how they thought are mutually inclusive, all novelists know this. i think psychologists know this. and you know, graves believed in that primitive magic that the greeks knew about (as did romans, for that matter, they had their penates). i think there's no such thing as THE roman view of the (external) world. you're waffling on about god knows what at the end there
You seem upset. I don't know why.
I've hit a nerve? Either way we can end it here I suppose.
? where did that come from
and all right...
Well said, and this is one of the main reasons so much of genre fiction sucks while it could have not sucked.
For OP, try Yourcenar's memoirs of Hadrian.
>you're waffling on about god knows what at the end there
We were having a civil conversation about differences, which is rare on Yea Forums. I wasn't being rude about the dozen different things I disagreed with you on. Shame you decided to do so.
Thanks, and I am OP.
Just looked up Yourcenar and he's a French writer. Sold. Going to give this a download.
oh right i didn't realise 'you're waffling on about god knows what' was out of line. and i think yourcenar's a she.
>John Williams' Augustus
Very good book.