By Paul Carrier
The 10th installment in Lindsey Davis' Marcus
Didius Falco series starts off innocently enough, with "informer" Falco
and his business partner landing a lucrative but none-too-exciting job
ferreting out tax cheats for the Emperor Vespasian in 73 A.D.
But that wouldn't make for much of a novel, now would it?
True to form, our intrepid detective's focus quickly shifts to more violent escapades. Falco finds himself investigating the stabbing death of Leonidas, a famed lion whose job it was to lunch upon doomed criminals during the Roman games. Leonidas belonged to Calliopus, a supplier of gladiators and arena beasts who has been feuding for years with Saturninus, an equally unscrupulous competitor.
Things go from bad to worse. After Leonidas is killed, possibly by Saturninus' star gladiator Rumex, someone presumed to be from the Calliopus camp releases a leopard from Saturninus' menagerie. Then poisoned feed fells one of Calliopus' ostriches. And Rumex is murdered in his sleep.
Falco and his partner, the emperor's disabled chief spy Anacrites, redouble their efforts and expand their investigation, but without success. To make matters worse, imperial bureaucrats have found a way to shortchange Falco for his work as an auditor. And when Falco schedules a public reading of his poetry, no one shows up. Exhausted and frustrated, he sets off for North Africa with live-in girlfriend Helena Justina and their infant daughter, hoping to find Helena's wayward brother, who has eloped.
North Africa, as it happens, is the home turf of the warring entrepreneurs, Saturninus and Calliopus. Their cutthroat business practices are growing worse as they gear up to make a killing - financially and literally - once construction of the Amphitheatrum Flavium (what we know as the Colosseum) is completed. Will Falco find new leads while he's in North Africa on family business?
Still unmarried but lovingly shacked up, Falco remains impoverished but resourceful in Two for the Lions as he tries to make enough money to buy his way into the middle rank of Roman society. That would allow him to marry Helena, a senator's daughter, and relocate to a respectable home.
On that score, Falco's track record is not good. His previous attempt to formally move up in the Roman world was unfairly rebuffed by no less a heavyweight than the emperor's son Domitian. Which may help explain the cynicism and scathing humor that, fortunately, remain Falco's trademarks in Two for the Lions. I say fortunately because half the fun of a Falco mystery stems from our hero's fondness for wisecracks and snide musings.
When I first picked up an earlier Falco novel many years ago, I set it aside after only a few pages; Falco's outlook struck me as too modern for 1st-century Rome. But when I later gave that book another chance, I found the concept of a smart-alecky gumshoe in Ancient Rome intriguing. I still do.
Romans are raised from infancy to be wary of all things Greek, Falco tells us at one point, to avoid becoming infected with "louche habits like wearing beards and discussing philosophy." A tipsy priest at the Temple of Hercules is a charlatan who is "only interested in scrutinizing entrails if they came in a bowl with bacon and celery, nicely doused in a wine sauce." When Falco seems on the verge of being mauled by that escaped leopardess, he notes: "My luck with the female element had never been good."
Davis drops plenty of historical minutiae into her Falco novels, ranging from the serious to the comic. In the latter category, we learn that the Emperor Claudius considered passing a law allowing Romans to fart as needed, without fear of embarrassment.
The author also offers up such detailed physical descriptions that the reader has half a mind to book a trip back in time. The Greek-speaking city of Apollonia "is a long habitation" so close to the beach that "in really rough weather floods crash into the glamorous temples near the water's edge. The handsome peristyle houses of the Hellenistic traders and landowners are for the most part more judiciously set back."
In many ways, Davis' version of the ancient world is familiar to 21st-century readers,, despite the exotic languages, strange customs and unusual religious beliefs. The private homes of the wealthy are "ostentatiously lavish," Falco points out during his travels, but as is usually the case with "the vulgarly rich," there is "little sign of life" at these palaces. Sounds like the well-manicured but soulless McMansions of our own time.
