Tag: history

Questions about the quaestiones

Work on a new family of stories has sent me on a hunt for information about Roman criminal courts in the first century of the Principate. More specifically, I’ve been investigating the relationship between the old standing jury courts (quaestiones perpetuae) and newer tribunals such as the court of the Prefect of the City (praefectus urbi).

The standing jury courts were established during the Republic to try specific crimes (e.g., treason, bribery). They could be quite large–in the later Republic, a jury court might have over 50 jurors, including senators, equestrians, and Tribunes of the Treasury.[note]Andrew Lintott, The Constitution of the Roman Republic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 160.[/note] The jury courts survived the transition to the Principate, though from Augustus’ reign onward most jurors came from outside the senatorial order.[note]John Crook, Law and Life of Rome, 90 B.C. — A.D. 212 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967), 71.[/note] As time went on, the jury courts had to compete with other tribunals. The Senate itself heard cases of treason and extortion by provincial magistrates,[note]For a good overview of the Senate’s judicial work, see Richard J. A. Talbert, The Senate of Imperial Rome (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 460-487.[/note] and the Prefect of the City adjudicated criminal cases from Rome. It’s not clear when the City Prefect first acquired judicial duties, though Richard A. Bauman argues it might have been the reign of Nero.[note]Richard A. Bauman, Crime and Punishment in Ancient Rome (London & New York: Routledge, 1996), 77.[/note]

For a time, the jury courts co-existed alongside the court of the City Prefect. It seems there was a certain tension in this arrangement, as this passage from Tacitus shows:

Valerius Pontius suffered the same degradation [sc., exile] for having indicted the defendants before the praetor [i.e., bringing the case before a jury court] to save them from being prosecuted in the court of the City Prefect, purposing meanwhile to defeat justice on some legal pretext and subsequently by collusion.[note]Tacitus Annals 14.41.[/note]

It’s a shame Tacitus doesn’t offer a more detailed explanation for why Pontius was so keen to maneuver cases into the jury courts, but he may have hoped their chronic congestion would allow the defendants to evade justice.[note]Bauman, 77.[/note] Also, John Crook argues in passing that the jury courts were open to ‘gerrymandering,’ but he doesn’t provide any evidence in support of this contention.[note]Crook, 72.[/note] Presumably, he means that an unscrupulous litigant (or someone acting on their behalf) could have manipulated the selection of jurors to ensure a desirable verdict, but it would be interesting to see what evidence we actually have of this practice.

My new protagonist will likely come into contact with the Roman courts from time to time, so I need to nail down the relationship between the traditional jury courts and the court of the City Prefect. If you know of any books or articles that might help me in my quest, please let me know!

A historical hatchet job

While browsing the stacks of Memorial Library the other day, I came across a copy of Toby Wilkinson’s The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt. To be honest, I’d been avoiding it for some time. When it was published, Wilkinson made it very clear that he wrote the book with an agenda in mind. He believes that scholars and the general public tend to view pharaonic culture with “misty-eyed reverence,” and his book is an attempt to shatter their rose-tinted spectacles. Despite my misgivings, I had a sense of morbid curiosity about the book. So when I saw it on the shelves, I decided to take a gander at it and see if my fears were grounded in reality.

I decided to start out by seeing what he had to say about the end of the 20th dynasty, which is the period I write about in my fiction. Not surprisingly, his account focuses on the travails of Amenhotep and Panhesy (which form the backdrop of The World Inverted) since that’s the best-documented episode from an otherwise shadowy era. And when I say that it’s the “best-documented episode,” I mean we have a handful of random documents that refer to it in varying levels of detail. But we still know next to nothing about it, and scholars still debate the basic sequence of events.

You would never guess that from Wilkinson’s book, however. He presents a clear narrative that begins when a group of “hungry, desperate, and frustrated” Thebans remove Amenhotep from the high priesthood of Amun because of his “intransigence.” Amenhotep reluctantly appeals to Ramesses XI for help (“[g]roveling to the pharaoh was an unwelcome prospect for Amenhotep, but he knew it was the only path back to power”), and the king dispatches Panhesy, the Viceroy of Kush, to restore the ousted prelate.

But when Panhesy arrives, he brings “the roughness of military justice” with him, complete with summary executions. He also takes control of the royal granaries, which leads Ramesses to grow concerned since he can “sense Thebes and the south slipping away.” He dispatches General Piankh to dislodge Panhesy, but Piankh ends up ravaging Thebes in the requisite “orgy of destruction.”

Piankh’s rule in Thebes is characterized as a “military junta” that rules “with a rod of iron,” and of course Wilkinson quotes Piankh’s famous letter to his wife where he asks her to kill two policemen and throw their bodies into the river.  When Piankh dies, his ‘junta’ chooses Herihor (“a mature and capable leader in [Piankh’s] mold”), and Piankh’s widow swiftly marries him in a “brilliantly calculated move” that allows her to retain power.

It’s all very gripping, but Wilkinson has fleshed out the bare facts with a healthy amount of conjecture. We have no idea why Amenhotep was removed from office. We also don’t know Panhesy’s exact role in the affair. Far from being Amenhotep’s savior, he was probably the one to drive him from office (a statement made a few years later records that a certain event occurred “when Panhesy came and suppressed my superior (Amenhotep) though there was no fault in him.”). There’s also no evidence that Panhesy appropriated royal granaries. As Aidan Dodson points out in Afterglow of Empire, the evidence suggests that Panhesy eventually returned to favor, so there’s no reason to assume that his association with the royal granaries indicates anything untoward.

Similarly, we know very little about Piankh. Characterizing him as “an army man through and through, brusque, determined, and ruthlessly efficient” is a bit of a stretch given the lack of any firsthand accounts of his character. While there is some evidence that there may have been some sort of skulduggery going on (including the Nodjmet letter mentioned above), it’s almost impossible for us to draw firm conclusion. We have no idea why he wanted the policemen dead—there’s certainly no evidence that they were “mutter[ing] against the junta!”

All this would be fine if Wilkinson were writing historical fiction. But he isn’t; he’s writing something that purports to be history. I realize that he’s writing for a popular audience and therefore comes under more pressure to liven things up, but I think he should have made it clear where the facts end and his conjecture begins. In the endnotes that accompanied the bit I read, he simply mentions that the end of the 20th dynasty is a “hotly debated topic” and alludes to the disagreements over whether Herihor succeeded Piankh or vice versa.

Thankfully, there’s an alternative if you’re interested in the darker side of pharaonic civilization. Pascal Vernus’s Affairs and Scandals in Ancient Egypt is more limited in scope (he focuses on the end of the New Kingdom), but it does a nice job of examining societal turbulence without resorting to sensationalism.

Obsidian and Blood

I’m not going to beat around the bush: Aliette de Bodard’s “Obsidian and Blood” series is awesome, and you should read it.

There are currently two books in the series: Servant of the Underworld and Harbinger of the Storm. Set in the Aztec Empire several decades before the Spanish conquest, the books are told from the perspective of Acatl, the High Priest of the Dead. In Servant, Acatl’s estranged brother is implicated in the disappearance of a priestess, and Acatl must prove his innocence. In Harbinger, the political maneuvering that follows the death of the Revered Speaker (i.e. the Emperor) almost brings about the end of the world.

For me, the best part of the series is its historical accuracy. De Bodard clearly did her research, and it shows. At the same time, she’s skillful enough to make the world of the Aztecs come alive without resorting to a bunch of awkward info-dumps. There’s a fine line between “well-researched” and “pedantic,” and de Bodard walks it with grace.

Since this is fiction, a certain number of historical liberties were inevitable. To her credit, de Bodard discusses them in the Afterword instead of just sweeping them under the rug. I particularly liked how she dealt with the issue of names. Most of her characters are upper-class Aztecs, and upper-class Aztecs tended to have names that would strike a modern reader as terribly unwieldy. Instead of just making stuff up, de Bodard uses the shorter names borne by less-exalted Aztecs. For deities, she usually alternates between the Aztec name and its  English translation. All and all, she does an excellent job of finding the middle ground between accuracy and accessibility.

The third book in the series, Master of the House of Darts, will be released in October. I’m sure it’s going to be awesome. I’ll definitely be adding it to my Kindle the moment it becomes available.

De Bodard also has a nifty blog that’s worth a gander. In addition to fascinating reflections on the writing process, she also posts awesome-looking recipes. Someday, when I actually have a real kitchen, I might actually try them out.

Truth in fiction

I was rudely awakened this morning by the fire alarm.  As I waited outside for the all clear to return to my cozy bed, I decided to download a sample of Wilbur Smith’s Warlock on my iPhone.   Warlock is a fantasy novel set in ancient Egypt and I had been meaning to check it out for some time, but I never managed to get around to it until now.

By the end of the first page, it became apparent that artistic license was going to be the order of the day.   I had hoped that Warlock would be a work of historical fantasy on par with Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, but Smith took so many liberties with the past that it had a negative impact on my ability to enjoy the story.

Now I get the fact that this is a novel and not a history textbook.  I also understand that artistic license is often necessary.  But if you’re going to set your work in a real-world society, I think you have to adhere to a certain basic standard of authenticity.  Populating your version of ancient Egypt with people named “Lostris” and “Memnon” is like writing a story about feudal Japan with characters named “Tiffany” and “Bartholomew.”  If you’re going to fudge that many details, why not just go all the way and set your story in a wholly fictional world of your own creation?

Let me make one thing clear, though: I’m not saying that Warlock is a bad book because it lacks authenticity.  It’s just not the sort of book I want to read.   I think I’ll download something by C. J. Sansom instead…