By Paul Carrier
The subtitle of Steven Saylor’s Empire is telling; it describes this 584-page opus as "the novel of imperial Rome," not a novel set in that period.
That's a bold claim because it implies a comprehensive approach to the long-lived Roman empire. To a great extent, Saylor delivers; he certainly has a broader reach than many writers whose works of fiction set in ancient Rome cover a far more limited period of time.
What Saylor has done, consistent with Roma, his earlier novel on Rome’s founding and the development of the Republic, is to examine an unusually large swath of Roman history in a single volume. In this case, his time machine carries us through a century of the empire's history, from 14 to 141 A.D. That's a long period of time, but only a fraction of the empire’s lifespan.
The broad sweep allows Saylor to touch upon the reigns of several emperors, starting with Augustus, the first ruler to hold that title; his adopted son and heir, Tiberius; the degenerate Caligula; the unlikely Claudius; the self-absorbed Nero; the paranoid, power-mad Domitian; and eventually on to the reigns of two of the so-called good emperors: Trajan, the empire's first foreign-born leader; and Hadrian, of Hadrian’s Wall fame.
The spine of the novel, the structure that carries it over such a long period of time, is the same one Saylor used in Roma: tracking succeeding generations of a noble Roman family, the Pinarii. On hand from the city’s founding through the development and decline of the Republic in Roma, the Pinarii carry on in Empire, witnessing, and sometimes participating in, the triumphs and tragedies of imperial Rome.
Thus, the novel opens with young Lucius Pinarius as he is about to become an augur, an official who predicts the future by reading omens. Thanks to his friendship with Claudius, a cousin and member of the imperial household, Lucius meets Augustus late in the aged emperor’s life.
When Tiberius succeeds Augustus, Lucius and his family, including twin sons Titus and Kaeso, are banished to Egypt. The twins return to Rome when Caligula is in power. Titus proudly serves as an augur, like his father before him, while Kaeso turns his back on official Rome by converting to Christianity.
And so it goes, with additional generations of Pinarii giving the reader a glimpse into both the annals of the family and the history of the empire. We are on hand when Praetorian Guards assassinate Caligula and Claudius becomes emperor; when much of Rome burns in 64 A.D. during Nero’s reign; and when the newly completed Colosseum (then known as the Flavian Amphitheatre) opens 16 years later.
As the author of a dozen mystery novels set in ancient Rome, Taylor is intimately familiar with the period, and he uses that knowledge to work history lessons, large and small, into the narrative. (Ever heard of a “scurra”? Me neither. He was a guy who livened up the elite’s dinner conversations by regaling guests with gossip and jokes.)
The plotting is, by necessity, episodic, because the extended time frame only allows us to spend a bit of time in any one period. But even with its long view, Empire has a narrower focus than Roma, which embraced about 1,000 years in the life of early Rome. Although the empire survived long after 141 A.D., Empire draws to a close at that point in time.
Saylor does not so much provide a fresh view of the well-trodden ground of imperial Rome as humanize its key figures, be they admirable or horrific. Empire repeatedly reminds us that, beneath the grandeur and power of ancient Rome, there bubbled a cauldron of treachery, ambition and lust, for both power and sex.
No one, not even seemingly all-powerful emperors and self-important members of their families, was immune from the recurring violence that settled so many rivalries in that time and place. It would do Saylor an injustice to claim that Empire wrote itself, but there’s no denying that the author had a treasure trove of salaciousness, depravity, egomania and bloodletting to work with in crafting this captivating tale.
