Review: Last Seen In Massilia
Last Seen In Massilia
By Steven Saylor
St. Martin's Minotaur
October 2000
288 pages
0-312-20928-2
In Steven Saylor's historical mystery, Last Seen In Massilia, Gordianus the Finder and his son-in-law Davus travel north from Rome to Massilia (Marseilles) in 49 B.C., on personal business. Although the city is under siege and starving because of an alliance mistakenly made with Pompey instead of Caesar, the two Romans are well-fed by the portly, green clad scapegoat, Hieronymous.
When Hieronymous' father lost his business, he applied to the leaders of Massilia for the necessary permission to kill himself. Orphaned, Hieronymous had no means of support, so he made a bargain with the priests of Artemis to become their scapegoat in exchange for a life of luxury. His price would be death on the suicide cliff at a date the priests would decide. Honoring contracts was as important to the Gauls as dignity and reputation were to the Romans, so there would be no going back on the deal.
Since the native Massilians -- even the slaves -- shun him, Hieronymous enjoys any company, including that of the Romans. He neither inquires into nor cares why they are there. The other local residents of the besieged partisan city do care, though, including the hooded priest who guesses why they have come to Massilia: to find Gordianus' son, Meto.
Gordianus had received an anonymous letter about his son (an apparent Pompey supporter who was really a spy for Caesar) saying he had been killed.
Gordianus: I send you sad news from Massilia. Your son Meto is dead. Forgive my bluntness. I write in haste. Know that Meto died loyal to his cause, in the service of Rome.Skeptical, Gordianus and his bodyguard son-in-law want to see for themselves. The closest Gordianus seems able to come to learning his son's whereabouts is a man who claims to have seen the young man, but on closer examination, seems unable to tell lemurs (ghosts) from living people.
At a dead end in his attempt to unravel his son's fate, yet stuck in the besieged city, Gordianus is hired to find what happened to a young woman whom Gordianus thought he'd seen leaping and Davus thought he'd seen being pushed from the suicide cliff. A third mystery Gordianus solves is how Hieronymous' father came to lose his business.
Despite the complexity of the various mysteries Gordianus must solve, Saylor's writing is, as usual, clear, with well-researched historical details included unobtrusively. Because Saylor crafts plots so well, it is difficult to predict the outcomes. Gordianus' climactic act, ill-prepared for by saying that as he aged he started acting more like a child (i.e., compulsively):
A curious revelation had come to me when I decided to enter Massilia by tunnel: with age I seemed to have grown not less impulsive, but more so, not more cautious, but less. Was it because, from accumulated experience, I no longer needed to tortuously think a thing through before I acted? Or had I simply lost all patience with slow reason and fearsome hesitation, and come full circle to act as a child acts -- as gods act -- from pure, spontaneous willfulness?might even be called shocking. Perhaps the reason for Gordianus' heartlessness will unfold in the next installment of Saylor's Roma sub rosa series.
Further Information
Steven Saylor Links | Massilia Resources
Caesar's Civil War Book II (in English) | Caesar's Civil War Book II (in Latin)
Quiz
The URL for this feature is
http://ancienthistory.about.com/library/weekly/aa082900a.htm
This feature is copyright © 2000-2004 N.S. Gill.
Also on this site
