Book News

So the big book news, I think, is that the 12th installment of the Marius’ Mules series – Sands of Egypt – is released today…

Winter, 48 BC. Caesar and his small force are trapped in the Egyptian city of Alexandria. Caught up in the dynastic struggles of the House of Ptolemy, the consul has sided with the clever and ruthless Queen Cleopatra. Her brother and fellow monarch Ptolemy XIII languishes in the palace, a hostage of Caesar’s, while a huge army under the command of the Egyptian general Achillas closes on the city to free him.

With both the future of this ancient land and the safety of Caesar and his men at stake, Fronto and his friends face the terrible task of holding an unfamiliar city under siege, in the desperate hope that reinforcements will reach them before the enemy break in.

But Egyptian reinforcements gather too, and with the interference of the youngest princess, Arsinoë, the future is far from written. Trapped, besieged and outnumbered, time is running out for the Romans, as shadows loom across the sands of Egypt.

The book is available from Amazon here in paperback and kindle format, here on Google Books, here on Kobo, here on iBooks, here on Nook, and here for any other digital need.

But because I’m a little bit prolific, and one book to throw your way seems too little, how’s about I draw you to this too, which is now out in kindle format, with paperback to follow:

You like Roman fiction? This is for you. A collection of short stories from some of the very best Roman writers, including both myself and my partner in crime Gordon Doherty. And for my part, you Praetorian fans, the story is one of our friend Rufinus, set between the last book (Lions of Rome) and the next (The Cleansing Fire)

You can buy it on Kindle at the moment right here and here’s the blurb:

“Greater than the sum of its parts… Rubicon has something for everyone: action, humour and historical insight.” Michael Arnold

Ten acclaimed authors. Ten gripping stories.

Immerse yourself in Ancient Rome through a collection of thrilling narratives, featuring soldiers, statesmen and spies. Read about some of your favourite characters from established series, or be introduced to new writers in the genre. The stories in Rubicon are, like Rome, diverse and intriguing – involving savage battles, espionage, political intrigue and the lives of ordinary – and extraordinary – Romans, such as Ovid, Marcus Agrippa and a young Julius Caesar.

This brand new collection, brought to you by the Historical Writers’ Association, also includes interviews with each author. Find out more about their writing processes and what attracts them to the Roman world. View Ancient Rome through fresh eyes. Rubicon is a feast of moreish tales and a must read for all fans of historical fiction.

Authors & Stories Featured in Rubicon:

• Nick Brown – Maker of Gold
• Gordon Doherty – Eagles in the Desert
• Ruth Downie – Alter Ego
• Richard Foreman – A Brief Affair
• Alison Morton – Mystery of Victory
• Anthony Riches – The Invitation
• Antonia Senior – Exiles
• Peter Tonkin – The Roman
• L.J. Trafford – The Wedding
• S.J. Turney – The Praetorian

Praise for Rubicon:

“Rubicon is a declaration of intent to intrigue, inspire and entertain. For me, this collection of stories extols the camaraderie that exists amongst the historical fiction bother and sisterhood. It perfectly encapsulates a shared passion for the subject of Rome in all its abundance and varied manifestations, taking the reader on a guided tour through the familiar and the strange. Leading us wide-eyed through a genre which has never lost its lustre. 
This is the fiction equivalent of a box of chocolates, a celebration of diverse Rome stories drawing upon all the riches of that most extraordinary and enduring of civilisations. It is a treasure trove of tales, showcasing a wealth of talent.
I have been entertained by authors whose work I know and love, and I’ve discovered new voices too, writers whom I look forward to getting to know better. Indeed, if the purpose of this collection is to delight, distract and to whet the reader’s appetite, leaving us eager for more, it is a resounding success.
Rubicon is a rare treat which I thoroughly enjoyed. I don’t know what the official collective noun for Roman short stories is, but in this case I think it’s a triumph.” Giles Kristian.

And I tell you what, folks… the news doesn’t end there! Here’s some lovely little titbits that I KNOW some of you have been waiting for:

• I have signed the contract for the audio versions of Praetorian: Lions of Rome, as well as for book 5, as yet unwritten. Book 4 is already in production and will be out soon, so more on that in due course.
• I’ve also signed a deal with the interactive audio guide company Bardeum, which produces immersive audio tales that guide you round historical sites. Next year you’ll be able to lose yourself in one of my tales as you walk the hill of the Palatine in Rome.
• I’ve just completed the contract for the release of both Caligula and Commodus in the United States. Yes, the Damned Emperors will soon be available in the US too!
• And currently, three of the four Praetorian books are available on kindle in the UK for the bargain price of 99p. That means you can own the whole set for less than £5.50. Now’s the time to get them (which you can do here)

• Next year you’ll be able to read my first non-fiction work, a book on the great Roman general Agricola, through Amberley publishing. The man who made Roman Britain is a figure of fascination for me. It’s also, believe it or not, the first time I’ve written a book about the Romans in my own country!

And that’s book news for today. Hope that’s enough for you, folks.

Simon.

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New books!

Grab your wallet/purse and make space on your bookshelves. Here are some recent and upcoming books you won’t want to miss:

Well, I have to start with my own, don’t I. Commodus is released next Thursday (13th June). The second book of the Damned Emperors series is published by Orion and will be released in hardback, audio and ebook format that day.

“Rome is enjoying a period of stability and prosperity. The Empire’s borders are growing, and there are two sons in the imperial succession for the first time in Rome’s history. But all is not as it appears. Cracks are beginning to show. Two decades of war have taken their toll, and there are whispers of a sickness in the East. The Empire stands on the brink of true disaster, an age of gold giving way to one of iron and rust, a time of reason and strength sliding into hunger and pain.

The decline may yet be halted, though. One man tries to hold the fracturing empire together. To Rome, he is their emperor, their Hercules, their Commodus.

But Commodus is breaking up himself, and when the darkness grips, only one woman can hold him together. To Rome she was nothing. The plaything of the emperor. To Commodus, she was everything. She was Marcia.”

Pre-order Commodus here

And my good friend and partner in crime Gordon Doherty has the first book of his new epic series Empires of Bronze out on that very same day. Son of Ishtar rolls out in paperback and ebook format on Thursday 13th of June. I’ve read it, too. It’s ace.

“Four sons. One throne. A world on the precipice.

1315 BC: Tensions soar between the great powers of the Late Bronze Age. The Hittites stand toe-to-toe with Egypt, Assyria and Mycenaean Ahhiyawa, and war seems inevitable. More, the fierce Kaskan tribes – age-old enemies of the Hittites – amass at the northern borders.

When Prince Hattu is born, it should be a rare joyous moment for all the Hittite people. But when the Goddess Ishtar comes to King Mursili in a dream, she warns that the boy is no blessing, telling of a dark future where he will stain Mursili’s throne with blood and bring destruction upon the world.

Thus, Hattu endures a solitary boyhood in the shadow of his siblings, spurned by his father and shunned by the Hittite people. But when the Kaskans invade, Hattu is drawn into the fray. It is a savage journey in which he strives to show his worth and valour. Yet with his every step, the shadow of Ishtar’s prophecy darkens…”

Pre-order Son of Ishtar here

Another friend and comrade, Alex Gough, has just seen his first book in a new series released too. Book 1 of the Imperial Assassin series, The Emperor’s Sword, was released by Canelo yesterday, the 6th June in ebook format thus far. Once again, I had the chance to read this before release and lovers of Roman military fiction will really enjoy this.

“A desolate wasteland. A mission gone wrong. An impossible goal. A gripping new series of Ancient Rome

Roman scout Silus is deep behind enemy lines in Caledonia. As he spies on a raiding party, he is abruptly discovered by an enemy chief and his son.

Mounting a one man ambush, everything quickly goes wrong. Silus must run for his life, the head of the enemy leader in his hands. Little does he know the price he will pay…

As Silus is inducted into the Arcani, an elite faction of assassins and spies, he must return to Caledonia, back into the wilderness, and risk everything in the service of his Caesar. The odds don’t look good.

Failure is not an option.”

Buy the book here

I would say that if you’re a historical fiction reader and you haven’t come across Ruth Downie’s Ruso books, then you must have been hiding in a cave for the past decade. While we wait for book 9 in the series, Ruth has treated us to a 150 page novella, which will be release in paperback and ebook format on July 9th.

“It’s AD 123 and the sun is shining on southern Gaul. Ex-military medic Ruso and his British wife Tilla are back after a long absence – but it’s not the reunion anyone had hoped for.

Ruso’s brother has left him in charge of a farm he has no idea how to manage, a chronic debt problem and a gaggle of accident-prone small children. Meanwhile his sister Flora has run away to rescue her boyfriend, who’s accused of murdering a wealthy guest at a party.

Can Ruso and Tilla save the boyfriend from the murder charge – or should they be saving Flora from the boyfriend? Will any of the guests tell the truth about the fatal party before it’s too late? And meanwhile, how long can Ruso continue to lie about what’s inside the bath house?”

Pre-order the book here

And last but not least, fans of Robert Low will probably have already read his fab recent Roman epic ‘Beasts beyond the wall’. Well the second book in the series, The Red Serpent, is out on July 5th.

“At the edge of the empire, the hunters become the hunted…
They’re back – Drust, Kag, Ugo, Sib and some new faces – as dirt-ridden and downbeat as ever.

Drawn to the edge of the Roman world and the blasted deserts of the Syrian frontier, they are presented with a mysterious riddle from their old companions, Dog and Manius. In the scorching heat, plots and rumours breed like flies on a corpse.

To survive, Drust and the others must face all challengers along with Mother Nature’s rage. Sometimes they’ll stand and fight; sometimes they’ll run as fast as they can and pray to the Gods. For it is a mad and violent world, and they must be equal to it…”

Pre-order it here

Eventful times

Ever wanted to hear why I write what I write? How it came about? My inspiration for certain things? Ever want to ask questions or just chat or perhaps buy books or get them signed? Well there’s a few opportunities coming up this year, and I thought I’d blog just to keep you all up to date.

The first one’s coming up in March.

So it costs £15 to become a Friend, which you can do HERE. For your 15 pounds you not only get to help support a volunteer run library, which is worthy on its own, but you get to come to this and other events, and at this one you get all this:

• Beer from the keg, with the first drink free
• Sausages from a local excellent manufacturer
• A talk from yours truly, in costume, as well as a Q&A
• A short dramatization of part of Caligula, performed by local actors
• Music
• A raffle with some great prizes
• A Roman fun quiz
• Signed books
• The opportunity to pop out for a beer with me afterwards and talk books and history

I highly recommend becoming a friends, as other events are worthwhile too. Last year they had the wonderful Imogen Robertson. Bedale, North Yorkshire, just off the A1 on Weds 6th March. Hope to see you there. It’ll be a great night.

Then after Bedale, there’s Selby Library in May, in which I’m doing an evening alongside Sharon Bennett Connolly.

Just £5 for two talks, refreshments and a book signing. And perhaps Sharon and I can answer a few questions for you too.

And then thirdly, in June there is Eboracum festival

That’s in York, from Friday 31st May to Sunday 2nd June. A weekend of Roman reenacment and parades, events and more, which will include a number of authors including yours truly in an author marquee to sell and sign books and talk the hind leg off a donkey. If you want to stay in York for the weekend’s festivities, get onto booking accommodation early, as it fills up and gets expensive really quickly.

So there you go. Three different events to come see  me at, and I’d love to see you at them all.

Colossus: Stone and Steel by David Blixt

Every now and then you discover a book that has somehow completely passed you by. I generally like to think I’m aware of the better releases in the Roman genre. I write in it, so I keep my eye on it, of course. I became aware of Blixt and his books through mututal connection. I write books with the historical fiction collective known as H360. So does David. We’ve not worked on a project together yet, but there is that connection, and I discovered in looking at his Verona series that he also has a Roman series.

Now the H360 team don’t take on bad writers, so my interest was truly piqued. I opened the book not knowing what to expect. Sometimes I will read a book purely on the author’s name, sometimes on the title and sometimes (yes I know they say you shouldn’t) on the cover., without reading even a basic blurb. Consequently I had no idea what Colossus: Stone and Steel was about other than it was Roman and written by David Blixt.

Pleasant surprise time. Stone and steel drew me in and kept me reading at any given opportunity until I hit the end and wished I had time to start the next book. Stone and Steel was simply an excellent book.

We start with excitement and atmosphere in first century Judea. The characters are fictional but very realistic and strong, and I was being quickly drawn in when I read a name, made instant connections and realised we were reading about the writer Josephus, one of my fave personalities in ancient Rome. In fact, I had toyed with writing the story of Flavius Josephus myself, and it was a project in a shelf somewhere. Glad I never tried, because I couldn’t do him the justice Blixt does.

You know why? Because this book is partially about Vespasian and the Flavian family, and Rome and its pernickety emperors and implacable consuls. But it is more about the Jewish people in Roman Judea and their struggles against sometimes Rome but more often each other. And while I know imperial Rome quite well, my familiarity with ancient Israel is less than fragmentary. So this book really struck me perfectly. It was at once familiar and strange, Roman and Jewish, imperial and rebellious. Blixt shows a deep understanding of the time and culture and displays a most impressive ability to portray this in fiction.

So now you know this is about the Flavians and Josephus and the Jewish War. And for those who  know the history I will also add the name Jotopata. This is the tale of brothers and friends and family on both sides in a war that no one really thinks can do any good. This is a tale of internecine warfare, of the unstoppable war machine and the uncrushable Jewish spirit. It is the story of a brutal siege and of cultures clashing.

Essentially, Stone and Steel is well-written, beautifully researched, clever, informative, atmospheric and a must read for every fan of the genre. The characters are fully fleshed-out, the action exciting, the history accurate. The book ranks up easily along with the very cream of Roman fiction. I heartily recommend it.

Read Blixt’s book. You won’t regret it.

Competition Time

Do you want to win a collection of Roman goodies?

Do you?

Well here’s your chance. One lucky winner can get their hands on this amazing prize:

And all you have to do to win this prize is to upload to my Facebook Page a photo of you with a copy of Caligula somewhere interesting. That’s right. Just post your pic here, and you’re in with a chance to win. It can be a hardback, paperback or ebook with the cover showing, I don’t care. Here’s my feeble effort, but I have to try, coz if I won, the postage would be REALLY cheap…

I know. The expression. I look like an axe murderer. But that’s just the terrifying thought of having to let this lot go: Here’s what’s in the prize:

Signed copies of the first three Praetorian novels

Roman ‘as’ coin of Caligula, obverse Caligula with head bare, reverse Vesta seated.

CD of the album ‘Bloom’ by the excellent band ‘Caligula’s Horse’ AND the DVD of the classic BBC series ‘I Claudius’. Note that the DVD is region 2…

A bottle of excellent red wine made from the same Aglianico grape and in the same locale as the ancient Falernian wine, the slopes of Mount Falernus in Campania.

AND… Caligula himself as used in my various promotional photos over the year

That’s the prize. I hope I win it! But it’ll probably go to one of you lucky people. The winner (the most interesting pic) will be chosen by an independent celebrity, and not myself, to avoid any preferential treatment. The winner will be drawn on Friday 21st of December, so get thinking and photographing. And, of course, if you haven’t bought and read Caligula yet, now is the best time ever.

Good luck everyone.

Caligula – from the horse’s mouth

Mad, bad and dangerous to know. Well, actually, that was Lady Caroline Lamb describing Lord Byron. But it got your attention…

So I don’t often blather about my own books on this blog, but today is release day for the paperback of Caligula. And while like every author I love books to sell for obvious reasons, this is the first book I’ve sold that you can readily buy in bricks-and-mortar bookshops. And the success of Caligula will determine how many sequels I get to write. Caligula is out there, and Commodus is coming in spring, but there could be two more. If you lovely people buy Caligula, that is.

Caligula. A new telling of an old, old story.

Rome 37AD. The emperor is dying. No-one knows how long he has left. The power struggle has begun.

When the ailing Tiberius thrusts Caligula’s family into the imperial succession in a bid to restore order, he will change the fate of the empire and create one of history’s most infamous tyrants, Caligula.

But was Caligula really a monster?

Forget everything you think you know. Let Livilla, Caligula’s youngest sister and confidante, tell you what really happened. How her quiet, caring brother became the most powerful man on earth.

And how, with lies, murder and betrayal, Rome was changed for ever . . .

So now is the time. If you like your Roman history, try Caligula. And watch out on my social media for the next week for one heck of a competition to win some AMAZING goodies. Wander in to your local book store and order it. Or go online and buy it. Christmas is coming up. I bet your dad would love to read a juicy tale about Rome’s most infamous emperor. Heh heh heh.

Caligula is available in paperback (or hardback) with free worldwide delivery from Book Depository here.

The kindle edition is available here (UK and Commonwealth only, sadly not in the US)

Also available as an Audible audio book here. And really, it doesn’t get better than in the lovely tones of Laura Kirman.

That’s it, lovely people. All I have. Now off to potentially plot two more damned emperors.

🙂

Vale

Lemures – a short story for the Halloween season

Caius Attius Flaccus stood in the atrium of his villa and shuddered. Something ran up his spine like ice on bare flesh, making him quail and quiver on the spot.

He snarled at his own failings and took a step closer to the small impluvium pool, looking down into the gathered rainwater, disturbed by the occasional drip from the atrium’s sloping tile roof. A sad, slightly misshapen, warped face looked back up at him, and he resisted the urge to look away. Most often he looked away – almost always, in fact, he looked away – for that rippling reflection caused more than just a shudder.

The left ear was fine. A beautiful ear, even.  A classic example that would look fitting on a statue by Myron. The right? The right was a gnarled, curled thing. A hideous misshapen item, twisted at a young age with white-hot tongs. The nose was fine but, though his eyesight was more than adequate, those orbs were hard  to look at, pale and watery and with virtually no iris visible – the  result of having spent the first eleven years in a dark closet. The lips were thin, the bottom one jagged and mangled from all the biting where it had sobbed its woes into the ragged flesh, helping to endure the endless beatings.

And its skin… its skin so pale as to be almost translucent. The only colour to it was the veins criss-crossing that sallow parchment that coated its bones.

It was hideous.

He knew that, of course; knew he was unsightly and monstrous in the eyes of the world. On the odd occasions when Gaius was required to step outside the sumptuous villa and into the heart of the eternal city, no matter how much he kept to his litter and the four Numidian slaves, nor how much he played on the fact that he had been elected a pontiff this season and could cover his misshapen body and unsightly head with the white toga, the public would inevitably catch sight of him. Children would scream and women would hustle their young ones away from this despicable creature. Sometimes he wondered what he would have looked like if he’d been left to grow up like a normal boy. After all, all his deformities had been thrust upon him…

There it was again – that strange deep, guttural grating noise that had first caused him to stop as he passed through the atrium. How odd. Was one of his neighbours having works done at their domus at this time of night?

He spat reflexively at the biter taste of a name on his tongue and moved around to another side of the small pool, waiting until the ripples dwindled to look down into its damning depths.

Lucius Attius Flaccus. His father. If ever a man had needed another father, it was this poor, deformed soul. But he’d been stuck with Lucius, husband of Cornelia. He’d been a swine from the first day Caius remembered, and likely long before then. He had, after all, killed his wife when their baby boy was not quite two years old, flying into a rage over some imagined insult and beating her to death with a bust of his illustrious grandfather, smashing her skull to a pulp so that the brains had to be cleaned from every surface in the room. The bust had been sent to be re-chiselled, because he’d hit her so hard that he’d shattered the marble nose.

His mother. The only person who could have protected him from a monster of a father. None of the slaves would help, not that many lasted more than a season before the brutal beatings robbed them of their lives.

There was that odd grinding noise again, like the quern stones of Eurysaces’ bakery down the road. It really was odd. It must be coming from the direction of the Esquiline because he’d moved that way around the pool, and this time the sound was louder. Whoever it was was clearly most inconsiderate.

Outside, he could hear the traditional rites of the Lemuria – the exorcism of the restless dead from the homes of good Romans with prayers and offerings of beans – being carried out in other houses. But because no good Roman could observe a religious practice without the appropriate amount of debauchery, this hallowed rite was too often carried out in haste to make way for a lavish feast and possible an orgy with dancing girls, roasting oxen, prostitutes at a finger’s beckon and all the lascivious depth of Roman nobility!

Ha! Roman nobility! Caius’ father had been considered the very epitome of Roman nobility, even  as the neighbours were watching buckets of his wife’s brains being ferried outside and slopped into the drains.

Well Caius had carried out his own rite of exorcism three years gone, and had felt untroubled ever since. Certainly, he’d felt no urge to don a silly costume and start an orgy…

The grating again! Somehow it seemed even louder than the sounds of Rutilius’ debauched get-together next door.

The moon began to insist itself upon him in the dark reflection of his ruined face, and Caius moved to the third side of the impluvium pool to move out of its blinding silver light. His seething dark heart, born of so many years of imprisonment and stygian gloom, filled with spite as he remembered that night of the casting out.

The villa owners of Rome waved their expensive Arabian incense and spoke words to the counsellor Gods, offering beans and gold – for beans alone seemed so Plebeian to some of these people. They spoke the words by rote and offered set prayers handed to them on scraps of vellum. Not one of them had met the lemures – the spirits of the restless – who supposedly haunted their houses. And so they went about it as a common ritual.

Caius had had to do it for real. His lemure had been living, breathing and swinging knotted ropes. His father had been all too real. And he had not used beans to exorcise him.

One night, lurking in his dark alcove, Caius had finally summoned up the strength to do something about his predicament. Eleven years of torture had been enough. He had snapped. He had gone insane, yet was lucid enough to recognise the fact. He had scraped away the mortar and removed a brick from the wall of his cellar-prison, and when the slave had come to deliver his drab, pale dinner, he had hit the poor bastard with the brick, stoving in his skull. It was a low thing to do. The slave had really deserved saving, not a painful murder. But some things had to be done, and he had known the slave would not help him and risk offending his master. A slave rarely lasted six months in this villa.

Caius had emerged from the cellar with one single goal in mind. He’d found his father whipping a whore to death in his office. Caius cared not for the whore, of course, but the knowledge that his father was meting out yet more arbitrary agony had snapped his already fraying senses, and he’d had pulled an unlit torch from the wall, walked into the room, and begun the business of turning his father into little more than a piece of ragged meat.

He had not stopped the beating until his father was utterly unrecognisable. There was not an inch of skin left unmarked, and the head had gone, now just a wet mess of pink and white splayed across the bed. The whore had died in the process, catching many of the blows meant for her abuser. Caius had slowly returned to his senses, and had then begun the business of tidying up, with neither remorse nor regret tainting his heart.

Curiously, it had been the day of the Lemuria festival that day too, and apart from the slave assigned to feed and muck out Caius the villa was empty of staff, leaving the master of the house alone to abuse his whore unobserved. By the time the house’s major domo and the staff had returned just before First Watch the next morning, Caius had buried the smashed, pulped remains of his father and the broken whore under the flagstones of this very atrium, depositing the excess soil in the peristyle garden, disposing of the blood-and-brain-soaked upholstery in one of the ubiquitous piles of trash in the alley beside the domus. The room had been cleaned and dried and bore no sign of the bloody violence that had been perpetrated there, by a master against his whore or by a son against his father. The broken slave had gone into the ground with them, too, and it had been a work of supreme irritation putting the brick back into the cellar wall and cramming the powdered mortar around it, and then locking the cellar door from the inside and pushing the key back beneath it.

He had been found. He had been looked after. For three weeks the city was on alert, looking for the missing Lucius Attius Flaccus. But he had gone. Many said he had eloped with a whore, but those who knew Lucius and his dark tendencies doubted this. Caius had been consoled. His last living relative had gone and while he would inherit the domus, they commiserated, it would obviously be no replacement for a father. Idiots. If only they’d known.

Over the next half year, Caius had set his seal on his ownership of the Domus Attius. He became the master of his demesne. He treated his servants and slaves well, and they gradually overcame their fear of his physical deformities to accept him as a master with a great deal more respect than they’d shown his father.

There was that damned noise again! People had no consideration during a festival. It was almost certainly late night work in the bakery. He would have such a word with Eurysaces tomorrow! The jumped-up little ex-slave clearly did not know his boundaries.

Caius had changed things in the domus. He would not live in the room where his father had abused and murdered whores. He would not work in that office. The house had to be cleaned and redecorated.

But the most important change had been here in this very atrium.

For he would not have a statue of his despicable father glowering at him as he passed, standing so close to the secret burial place of the man it depicted. For Lucius had commissioned a life-sized replica of himself the year before he died, and it had stood proudly at the side of the atrium, watching as his son buried his mortal remains beneath the flags.

The statue had gone straight away, but not permanently. One never wasted good marble, after all. In response to a lifetime of abuse by the bastard, Caius had commissioned one of the better young artists of this generation to re-carve the statue into a smaller, more delicate one of Nemesis – the goddess of rightful vengeance.

He turned and smiled at Nemesis. It had been three years since he had buried the bodies and had that form reshaped. Three bodies, three years. Three years this very night, in fact.

His brow folded into a frown. There was something distinctly odd about the statue tonight. Perhaps it was his imagination, fuelled by the dancing lamplight? No, there was definitely something odd. For Nemesis was not a smiling goddess. And the somehow twisted face of the statue was grinning – a maniacal rictus that could not in any way be described as happy. Her eyes seemed tiny and set deep in a harsh face. This Nemesis was, frankly, hideous. As hideous as he himself.

He realised far too late where he had seen those features before.

The whore!

The whore his father had been abusing. The whore he had inadvertently – yet uncaringly – beaten to death as collateral in his father’s demise. The whore who was now the statue. The whore who was now Nemesis!

The marble hand closed around his throat.

Caius felt a panic the like of which he’d never before experienced. Only briefly, though. For that cold, unyielding marble hand gripped his windpipe and jerked him forward so that his head cracked against the grinning face. He chipped one marble tooth and three real ones.

He screamed.

There was no one around tonight. He always allowed the staff festival nights to themselves. And with the sheer noise emanating from other villas, no one heard or cared. He screamed and screamed, the shrieking descending first to a gurgle and then to a moan as the marble grip smashed his face into the whore’s horrifying visage again… and again… and again.

Finally, his body twitching in what he knew to be its death throes, Caius realised the statue had let go, and he had collapsed to the ground. His remaining eye stared up in blind, panicked confusion at the statue that had killed him. Once more it had revert to its divine polished glory. It was no longer the whore his father had abused and he had beaten to death. It was Nemesis, the lady of righteous vengeance, staring down at the bloody, dying heap of her murderer.

He felt cold. In the morning, the slaves would find him again, like they had three years earlier. But this time, he would be dead, having apparently battered his own brains out on a statue that had once been his father.

With a sigh, Caius Attius Flaccus expired atop the very slab that covered his erstwhile victims.

To some extent, it was a relief.

Happy Halloween, everyone (or if you’re an ancient Roman and it’s March, Happy Lemuria!)