By Paul Carrier
Rome, 70 B.C. Pompey and Crassus are serving as consuls. Julius Caesar and Cicero are young men on the make. And Decius Caecilius Metellus, who commands the vigiles (police and fire brigade) in the poorest and toughest district in the city, is investigating the murders of a former slave and a foreign merchant.
So begins The King’s Gambit, the first volume in John Maddox Roberts’ SPQR mysteries, which are set in ancient Rome. ("SPQR" is a Latin acronym for "The Senate and People of Rome.") Decius’ task becomes even more complex when a rich freedman who had been the murdered merchant’s business associate is strangled in his bed.
Decius is droll and a tad cynical, but principled and conscientious as his inquiries bring him into contact with every class of Roman society, from the city’s highest patricians to promising young thug Milo and the ruthless Macro, who controls the city’s most notorious gang and uses it to do the bidding of patricians.
The murder investigation plays itself out against the backdrop of Roman politics, as the consul Pompey jockeys to acquire a new military command when his consular term is up and a general named Lucullus scores impressive victories over Rome’s enemies to the east.
Powerful forces in Rome are conspiring against Lucullus, possibly in a treasonous alliance with Mediterranean pirates. Decius comes to believe that the conspirators’ schemes are somehow responsible for the spate of murders in the Subura district that is patrolled by his vigiles.
Decius narrates the tale as an older man looking back on his early career, which occurred during what proved to be the waning days of the Roman republic. It quickly becomes apparent, from asides that Decius tosses into his flashbacks, that he remains a democrat at heart as he reminisces about the republic from his perch as a citizen of the empire under Augustus.
Recalling the Senate as it existed before the emperor reduced it to a rubber stamp, Decius concedes that it was “a sewer of corruption” that nearly ruined Rome “at least as often as it has decided nobly and wisely.” And yet, he says, “I still prefer the old system to that currently, and I hope temporarily, prevailing.”
Not only is Decius a democrat, but he’s a democrat with a dry sense of humor.
Explaining, for example, that he has long had his breakfast in bed, Decius recalls that his father, who ate breakfast while standing, decried Decius’ morning routine as “a barbaric practice, fit only for Greeks and Orientals.” So, Decius suggests, “perhaps I played an unknowing part in the downfall of the Republic.”
Rome in winter, Decius tells us at a later point, is like “a great, sleepy animal that spends most of the season dozing in its den” because Italians “need the warmth of the sun to stir us to our customary level of frenetic, if oftentimes unproductive, activity.”
For my money, Gordianus the Finder, Steven Saylor’s fictional detective who also plies his trade in ancient Rome, is a more fully developed character than Decius Caecilius Metellus, but keep in mind that The King’s Gambit is the first novel in the SPQR series. Perhaps Decius becomes more three dimensional as he matures and the series progresses.
A handy feature of The King’s Gambit, not always found in mysteries littered with the sometimes confusing lingo of ancient Rome, is a 14-page glossary of terms. Some, such as “flamen” (a high priest) are unknown to 21st-century readers. Others, such as “toga,” are obvious, but benefit from a glossary’s clarification. Not only is the glossary helpful as a point of reference while reading the novel, but it’s just plain fun to peruse if you have an interest in ancient Rome.
