Review Steven Saylor's The House of the Vestals
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 The House of the Vestals: The Investigations of Gordianus the Finder by Steven Saylor Paperback, 272 Pages Doherty, Tom Associates, LLC, August 1998 ISBN: 0312964528 |
Contents
- Death Wears a Mask
- The Tale of the Treasure House
- A Will Is A Way
- The Lemures
- Little Caesar and the Pirates
- The Disappearance of the Saturnalia Silver
- King Bee and Honey
- The Alexandrian Cat
- The House of the Vestals
- The Life and Times of Gordianus the Finder
- Historical Notes
The first story, Death Wears a Mask, is set at the theater where Saylor and a ten-year old, abandoned, mute boy named Eco are sitting on the makeshift wooden benches of the temporary theatre structure, watching a friend, Statilius, perform unremarkably in the Plautine comedy A Pot of Gold. Someday, Gordianus hopes, there will be a permanent stone theater, but for the moment, Roman moralists fear a permanent structure would make the Romans more decadent -- more like the Greeks.
While the actors perform, a murder is committed backstage. Eco figures out the who and the why, but since Gordianus fails to understand the boy's hand signals and pantomime, the Finder must find the answer for himself. After reaching the same conclusion as Eco, Gordianus determines to prevent further wasted labor by providing proper reading and writing lessons for the boy. In addition, with the prodding of his bossy concubine and future wife, Bethesda, Gordianus adopts Eco.
The next story is Bethesda's -- or, more accurately, Herodotus'. Tale of the Treasure House is the story of Rhampsinitus of Egypt, a king who was richer than Midas and just as greedy. A woman solves the mystery using her intuition. Through her compassion she tricks the king out of punishing the thief. The cunning Bethesda solves one mystery of her own, that of missing silver gifts, in The Disappearance of the Saturnalia Silver. This time it's her experiences as a slave that lead her to the less than obvious conclusion.
As is fitting a detective of Gordianus' renown, he solves the mysteries in the remaining stories. Cicero refers Lucius Claudius, a generous and wealthy patrician, to Gordianus in A Will Is A Way. Bored, Lucius was slumming in the tawdry streets of the Subura when he was called to witness the signing of a deathbed will simply because he was available. When he later sees the dying man wandering the streets, he hires Gordianus to figure out what is going on. The plot isn't particularly surprising, but the friendship that forms between Lucius and Gordianus is rewarding.
Roman techniques of beekeeping and beliefs in ghosts give Gordianus insight into the accidental killing and the torment in King Bee and Honey and The Lemures. Egyptian cat worship contrasts with Roman attitudes towards felines in Gordianus' tale about his youthful adventures in The Alexandrian Cat. The adventures of Caesar and the pirates provide background for a copycat crime in Little Caesar and the Pirates.
See #2 on Thursday's -cide words to learn.
Historical fiction has to provide background material for readers. A problem good writers (and Saylor is more than that) face is how to provide such information without laying it out too obviously. Failure to weave it in subtly leads to "info dumping" which breaks both mood and the smooth flow of the tale. Unlike the other eight stories, the title story, House of the Vestals, is perhaps too complicated for a short story. In a longer piece the background could be seamlessly interwoven, but it isn't, and so The House of the Vestals suffers seriously from sounding like a history lecture. With only the most meagre of pretenses to incorporate the information into the story, it begins:
What do you know about the Vestal Virgins? said Cicero.Other weaknesses of this story are that important historical figures are introduced only fleetingly and insinuations are made but not given time to smolder. Perhaps this is a deliberately discordant ending -- like the one in Last Seen in Massilia.
"Only what every Roman knows: that there are six of them, that they watch over the eternal flame in the Temple of Vesta, that they serve for no less than thirty years, during which time they take a vow of chastity...."
Fortunately, while House of the Vestals is the last story, it isn't the last chapter. Saylor provides a chronology of events in Rome and in Gordianus' life and a look into the mind of the creator -- a short chapter on Saylor's historical methods when creating fiction.
