MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

In the past few decades, several mystery series have appeared, each following a fictional private detective of ancient Rome. This presentation will focus on Steven Saylor’s Roma sub Rosa series, featuring Gordianus the Finder and set during the reign of Sulla and his successors, on the eve of the Empire period; Lindsey Davis’s well known initial series featuring Marcus Didius Falco, set in the first century of the Common Era; Davis’s more recent series featuring Falco’s adopted daughter and female investigator Flavia Albia; and Ruth Downie’s Medicus series, featuring Gaius Petreius Ruso, an army doctor in Britain during the time of Hadrian.

The series have several elements in common. All series exist in multi-volumes, attesting to the popularity of these stories. Their authors, two of them British, are historians or librarians, who bring historic detail into the narratives. The detective protagonists are common folk, who often work for patricians or even high government officials, permitting the authors to cast a light on life of different classes of the time. The detective protagonists all have a family life, which too is developed over the course of the series as a running subplot, similar to that of fictional detectives of more recent detective fiction. All the series bring in references and historic characters somewhat known to the average reader (rather than events and figures of the more arcane periods of Roman history). And the settings are not limited to the capital of the Roman Empire, but also areas under Roman dominion: Falco is quite the traveler, with books in his series involving travel to Britain, Spain, and the eastern Mediterranean; Ruso, too, returns to his family home in Gaul, as well as visiting other parts of Britain from his military base at Chester.