Book launches over and successfully with many thanks to friends who helped. The poetry book looking good, everyone very appreciative. Now it’s off to Bouchercon next Wednesday. The big event of the crime fiction year, this absolutely massive convention is this year in San Francisco with over 2,000 attendees, a quarter of them authors.
Imagine all those authors vying for attention! But other authors tell me they thoroughly enjoy it and it is productive for them, with the aim not so much to sell books at it but to catch the attention of potential readers in the expectation that they will buy when they get home.
It’s a packed schedule with five streams of panels going at the same time over four days plus authors in continuous conversation, one-author statements and interviews and activities in the craft room. Add to that social events in the evenings. It threatens to be utterly exhausting on top of the jetlag and biological clock disorientation of longhaul flights but also very exciting.
The panel I am on is called Bitter Wine at 3pm on the Friday in Room Seacliff C. It is about the need for historical accuracy in historical mystery novels among other aspects. With me are Candace Robb, Rebecca Cantrell and Caroline and Charles Todd so we range from Ancient Greece through the English Middle Ages to 20th century Europe. Sounds like a great panel and great discussion. Moderator is Oline Cogdill.
What I wasn’t prepared for is to find another author siting their novel in precisely my time and place yet there he is. Australian author Gary Corby is launching “The Pericles Commission” at Bouchercon and appearing on a panel with Steven Saylor, Lindsay Davis and John Maddox Roberts all with famous series in Ancient Rome.
Gary’s novel sets off from the assassination of Ephialtes in Ancient Athens in 461BC and features Pericles just like me. Good to know someone else is as keen on this bit of history as me. It will be interesting to see how he has handled it and what he has come up with to fill the many gaps in the historical record, one of the most difficult aspects of writing historical fiction.
I’m looking forward to meeting lots of new people and making new friends, all enthusiastic about the same things I am. Can’t wait. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Showing posts with label ancient athens. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ancient athens. Show all posts
Friday, October 8, 2010
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
OF ANCIENT POLITICS AND THE DOUBLE LIFE
Lets look at what I’ve been reading lately and why. I tend to avoid reading books very close to my period. Well, yes, because of the risk I might find myself plagiarising unintentionally but also because, on the one occasion I broke this rule, I suddenly found I was confusing the reality from my own research with the other author’s fiction – which may have been based on sound research or invented. Best to stay clear.
But I found the politics of 5th century Athens becoming more and more important in my sequel, so I became keen to see how other authors deal with this. Then I registered that Robert Harris’ series about Cicero’s life – Imperium and Lustrum, were straight historicals rather than histmysts so little risk of pollution. So far I’ve read only Imperium and exciting it is. Raw power politics with menace and not much else but very compelling, a real page turner.
The same author’s Pompeii I hadn’t liked at all. Uninteresting cardboard characters, unbelievable plot sequences, solid undigested lumps of Pliny the Younger (and Elder) plonked on the page, little real understanding of how such a town would work – no thanks. Now here was the real thing – Republican Rome red in tooth and claw. Fascinating.
But could I learn anything from it? Maybe not. As a histmyst writer, any political background has to serve and be integrated with the crimes the hero has to solve, though some of these may have a political motive. But the pace and excitement? Can I achieve that? Lets see. But, for now, I’m dying to get into Lustrum.
Then, by chance, I came across a bargain price copy of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, a novel I had never read before. Apart from the glowing quality of the writing and gradually tiring of Wilde’s epigrams and aphorisms in the mouth of Sir Henry Wotton, what’s fascinating here is Dorian’s double life and the way it reflected Wilde’s own and the whole novel almost forecasts Wilde’s own future life and downfall. Lets stick to the double life for now.
My hero, Lysanias, inherits the estate of his uncle, a wealthy aristocrat in ancient Athens, and all the social expectations that implies yet he has been brought up his father in a distant colony as an artisan, a carpenter, and developed sympathies with craftsmen and workers.
Now that’s very convenient for me as author (indeed why I invented the device) for Athens is split politically between the aristocrats and the radical people’s party and to be able to investigate his uncle’s death, Lysanias needs to be able to talk to individuals on both sides and get answers.
So I invented it for story reasons but did it occur to me because my own life carries elements of similarity? Times when I have worked for a PR agency promoting the cause of, say, property developers while, in my spare time active in community organisations campaigning against specific projects of such people or even involved in plays attacking their whole ethos. Whether that was a cause, obviously it must have helped me to write effectively what it feels like to have that ambivalence, having to balance two different ways of thinking and understanding.
That was fine in No.1. How does it work now when there are people on both sides who know of his connections with their opponents? That’s what I’m working out at the moment.
But I found the politics of 5th century Athens becoming more and more important in my sequel, so I became keen to see how other authors deal with this. Then I registered that Robert Harris’ series about Cicero’s life – Imperium and Lustrum, were straight historicals rather than histmysts so little risk of pollution. So far I’ve read only Imperium and exciting it is. Raw power politics with menace and not much else but very compelling, a real page turner.
The same author’s Pompeii I hadn’t liked at all. Uninteresting cardboard characters, unbelievable plot sequences, solid undigested lumps of Pliny the Younger (and Elder) plonked on the page, little real understanding of how such a town would work – no thanks. Now here was the real thing – Republican Rome red in tooth and claw. Fascinating.
But could I learn anything from it? Maybe not. As a histmyst writer, any political background has to serve and be integrated with the crimes the hero has to solve, though some of these may have a political motive. But the pace and excitement? Can I achieve that? Lets see. But, for now, I’m dying to get into Lustrum.
Then, by chance, I came across a bargain price copy of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, a novel I had never read before. Apart from the glowing quality of the writing and gradually tiring of Wilde’s epigrams and aphorisms in the mouth of Sir Henry Wotton, what’s fascinating here is Dorian’s double life and the way it reflected Wilde’s own and the whole novel almost forecasts Wilde’s own future life and downfall. Lets stick to the double life for now.
My hero, Lysanias, inherits the estate of his uncle, a wealthy aristocrat in ancient Athens, and all the social expectations that implies yet he has been brought up his father in a distant colony as an artisan, a carpenter, and developed sympathies with craftsmen and workers.
Now that’s very convenient for me as author (indeed why I invented the device) for Athens is split politically between the aristocrats and the radical people’s party and to be able to investigate his uncle’s death, Lysanias needs to be able to talk to individuals on both sides and get answers.
So I invented it for story reasons but did it occur to me because my own life carries elements of similarity? Times when I have worked for a PR agency promoting the cause of, say, property developers while, in my spare time active in community organisations campaigning against specific projects of such people or even involved in plays attacking their whole ethos. Whether that was a cause, obviously it must have helped me to write effectively what it feels like to have that ambivalence, having to balance two different ways of thinking and understanding.
That was fine in No.1. How does it work now when there are people on both sides who know of his connections with their opponents? That’s what I’m working out at the moment.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
THE NOT SO PETTY CRIMINALS OF ANCIENT ATHENS
It seems that petty crime was no rare thing in Ancient Athens. There was even a section of the market area called ‘Thieves’ Market’. It may have been what we would call a flea market, where second-hand clothing and other goods are sold but one that also forms a channel for getting money for stolen goods. I bought a bicycle in one such in Dublin some years back, no questions asked. Of course, no bikes in ancient times, so what forms of theft were there?
You could be mugged, of course. If you weren’t carrying money or things you’d just bought in the market, they’d take your clothes and leave you to go home naked. They might even make you spit out any small change you had tucked away in your cheek (yes, that was normal in a time before the invention of pockets). On the longer routes to other towns and villages in Attica, these would be highway robbers.
If you went to the baths or the gym, as the wealthier men did frequently, you paid someone to keep an eye on your clothes, if you had sense, or a ‘cloakstripper’ would be rummaging them for any money or valuables you might have left with them. And, doubtless, if you carried your money in a purse or satchel on a strap over your shoulder, that could be grabbed and made off with by any number of street urchins.
No use reporting it to the police – there weren’t any. The Scythian guards patrolled the central areas to keep order and might nab any blatant wrongdoer they spotted but, in the narrow lanes between market stalls, they couldn’t be everywhere. Law rested really on victims grabbing (arresting) the thief before he got away and taking him to the authorities.
Not much hope of that if the mugger was threatening you in a deserted alley with a club or a knife and there were two of him. Mind you, if you came upon a burglar on your own property, you could take action even to killing him and be seen as justified – that’s if it’s at night: by day, you could only kill him if he resisted. Always, villains had to be caught in the act or such crimes were difficult to prove.
But, if wealthy houses had no ground floor windows and the street door was guarded by a porter with a dog, how did burglars gain access? Simple. They dug a hole through the wall. Either from a lane beside or from inside an adjoining house.
In the main, houses were built of sun-baked mud bricks, so not too difficult to chisel away at them when folks are all out, say, at a big religious festival or maybe all asleep. Over the relatively low rooftops and down into a courtyard may have been another way in but not such as easy way out.
However, it wasn’t only the professional criminal that indulged in illegalities. The number of laws and inspectors relating to weights and measure, false coinage, and quality of foodstuffs gives a pretty good idea that such offences were rife. But there are always ways round these things, like two sets of weights, one for when the inspectors are around, the other when they’re not.
You only have to look at the non-round shapes of coins that have been unearthed by archaeologists to realise how much clipping of the metal at the edges must have gone on even though value of a coin was determined by its weight. If a customer had doubts, there was a public slave stationed in the market place specifically to test coins and weights.
What punishments did culprits face? Well, stallholders faced a fine but, as today, probably not high enough to be a real deterrent. It’s possible there was an equivalent of the medieval stocks and also a wooden device round the ankles that hobbled a culprit in the hope that the public ridicule that went with these would be enough to put people off.
In the case of more serious theft, it was the death penalty. In Athens, that meant being shackled to a board somewhere outside the city gates and being left to starve to death. Pretty grim.
You could be mugged, of course. If you weren’t carrying money or things you’d just bought in the market, they’d take your clothes and leave you to go home naked. They might even make you spit out any small change you had tucked away in your cheek (yes, that was normal in a time before the invention of pockets). On the longer routes to other towns and villages in Attica, these would be highway robbers.
If you went to the baths or the gym, as the wealthier men did frequently, you paid someone to keep an eye on your clothes, if you had sense, or a ‘cloakstripper’ would be rummaging them for any money or valuables you might have left with them. And, doubtless, if you carried your money in a purse or satchel on a strap over your shoulder, that could be grabbed and made off with by any number of street urchins.
No use reporting it to the police – there weren’t any. The Scythian guards patrolled the central areas to keep order and might nab any blatant wrongdoer they spotted but, in the narrow lanes between market stalls, they couldn’t be everywhere. Law rested really on victims grabbing (arresting) the thief before he got away and taking him to the authorities.
Not much hope of that if the mugger was threatening you in a deserted alley with a club or a knife and there were two of him. Mind you, if you came upon a burglar on your own property, you could take action even to killing him and be seen as justified – that’s if it’s at night: by day, you could only kill him if he resisted. Always, villains had to be caught in the act or such crimes were difficult to prove.
But, if wealthy houses had no ground floor windows and the street door was guarded by a porter with a dog, how did burglars gain access? Simple. They dug a hole through the wall. Either from a lane beside or from inside an adjoining house.
In the main, houses were built of sun-baked mud bricks, so not too difficult to chisel away at them when folks are all out, say, at a big religious festival or maybe all asleep. Over the relatively low rooftops and down into a courtyard may have been another way in but not such as easy way out.
However, it wasn’t only the professional criminal that indulged in illegalities. The number of laws and inspectors relating to weights and measure, false coinage, and quality of foodstuffs gives a pretty good idea that such offences were rife. But there are always ways round these things, like two sets of weights, one for when the inspectors are around, the other when they’re not.
You only have to look at the non-round shapes of coins that have been unearthed by archaeologists to realise how much clipping of the metal at the edges must have gone on even though value of a coin was determined by its weight. If a customer had doubts, there was a public slave stationed in the market place specifically to test coins and weights.
What punishments did culprits face? Well, stallholders faced a fine but, as today, probably not high enough to be a real deterrent. It’s possible there was an equivalent of the medieval stocks and also a wooden device round the ankles that hobbled a culprit in the hope that the public ridicule that went with these would be enough to put people off.
In the case of more serious theft, it was the death penalty. In Athens, that meant being shackled to a board somewhere outside the city gates and being left to starve to death. Pretty grim.
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