The destruction of the Republic of Rome – and the birth of the Roman Empire – is literally the background to Den of Wolves and the Empress of Rome series.  I begin each chapter in the books with a very brief précis of what was essentially the leading news story for the indicated date.  These events are placed for historical context only and readers do not need to be familiar with them in order to enjoy the novels.  ‘Empress of Rome’ is the story of what may (or may not) have been playing out behind the great moments of Roman history – and behind the great Roman men.

The following provides some more information on the times for interested readers.

The great dictator Julius Caesar long polarised Rome, but the anger of those who hated him eventually grew so large that he was murdered in March 44 BC.  His highborn assassins called themselves ‘the Liberatores’ – a party of aristocratic senators who believed that Caesar plotted to end the Roman Republic by founding a Julian dynasty.  But when the Liberatores did not extend murder to Caesar’s family and supporters, Caesar’s friend and Consul, Marcus Antonius, seemingly took charge of negotiating a truce with them.  An amnesty was declared in the Senate following a motion called by the great orator, Cicero.  But at Caesar’s funeral, Marcus Antonius – or Antony as he is known – turned the eulogy into a public shaming of the Liberatores before emotion charged Rome.  This ensured an irrevocable schism between those who had loved Caesar and those who had murdered him.  Antony read out the terms of Caesar’s will and revealed that the dictator left much of his wealth to the people of Rome.  This flew in the face of the killers’ assertions that Caesar had been plotting his own monarchy.  Public opinion turned violently on the Liberatores, forcing those still living to flee the city.

Made inviolable thanks to a permanent bodyguard made up of Caesar’s veterans, Antony demanded the Senate award him the Legateship of Cisalpine Gaul (modern Northern Italy) – a post held by Brutus, one of the most prominent assassins.  When Brutus refused to give up the province, Antony amassed legions against him and Rome was returned to civil war.  While Antony was away fighting, Caesar’s twenty year old great-nephew and adopted son, Octavian, returned from Illyria to claim his “inheritance”.

Already a brilliant politician in a man so young, Octavian won the support of the Senate, and most importantly, Cicero.  When it was learned that Antony had secretly travelled to Egypt and met with Caesar’s lover, Queen Cleopatra, Octavian had the Senate believe that Caesar’s apparent dynastic conspiracy was now being played out by Antony.  With Egypt as the vital source of vulnerable Rome’s grain supply it was said that Antony meant to make himself Rome’s king by controlling the grain through the Egyptian queen.  Antony was denounced by the Senate as an enemy.  Veteran troops of the late dictator that had not already joined Antony’s cause flocked to Octavian’s colours in his dead uncle’s name. 

His forces reduced by the prolonged besieging of Brutus in Cisalpine Gaul, Antony suffered a defeat by Octavian’s forces in the spring of 43 BC.  But the convenient deaths in the battle of that year’s two sitting Consuls made the Senate suspicious of Octavian’s own actions.  When the Senate unexpectedly awarded Brutus the supreme command of all forces loyal to both men, and then refused Octavian a Triumph, the twenty year old defiantly re-entered Rome at the head of his own troops and compelled the shocked Senate to bestow the Consulship on him.

Never beaten easily, Antony escaped to the forests to form an alliance with Lepidus, another of Caesar’s former lieutenants.  Together planning to seize power, they marched towards Rome with a massive force of Roman infantry and cavalry behind them.  But the young Octavian betrayed his own Senate supporters at a secret meeting with Antony and Lepidus on an island in the middle of a river.  The three rival leaders of Rome’s great legions joined together to form a ‘Second Triumvirate’.  (The ‘First Triumvirate’ was an illegal union between Caesar, Pompey and Crassus, which lasted from 60 – 53 BC before splitting into civil war.)  The now subservient and powerless Senate declared the three men joint rulers, supreme to the position of Consul, for the term of five years.   To solidify the alliance, Octavian married Antony’s step-daughter, Clodia.  The Roman Republic, terminally ill under Caesar, was now in its death throes.

The Triumvirs then united against their likely rivals for power.  Sextus Pompey, surviving son of Caesar’s vanquished enemy, Pompey the Great, was holed up in Sicily with legions loyally behind him.   But his threat was considered the lesser to that posed by the aristocratic Liberatores, whom the Triumvirs decided to move against first.  Those Romans loyal to the assassins that had not fled East were now subject to a reign of terror.  The net of proscriptions, confiscations and executions was cast far wider than the band of killers; the Triumvirs used the opportunity to settle old scores and increase their personal wealth.  Among the famous Romans who fell was the great orator Cicero.  His severed head and hands were nailed up in the Forum, his protruding tongue pierced with hairpins that belonged to Antony’s firebrand wife – and Octavian’s mother-in-law – Fulvia.  Following final defeat in Greece at the Battle of Philippi, Brutus committed suicide along with many of his fellow Liberatores in October 42 BC.  

With the threat of Sextus Pompey still contained within Sicily for the present, the administration of the Roman world was divided between the three Triumvirs.  Lepidus, considered the weakest man, took Africa.  Octavian held the western provinces, including Italy, and also took the responsibility of securing lands for the veteran soldiers.  This was an onerous, yet deceptively useful task; the loyalty of the legions would depend heavily on his success on their behalf.  Antony claimed the lands of the East, which again caused him to meet with Cleopatra in Egypt.  If Antony and the queen had not been lovers at their original meeting two years earlier, they fully succumbed to passion in late 41 BC – much to the scandal of Rome.

In his efforts to find land for the veterans, Octavian seized estates from many non-Roman Italians, creating considerable unrest.  He then divorced Clodia for the flimsiest of reasons in order to make the overtures of peace with Sextus Pompey.  He married Pompey’s cousin, Scribonia, a woman five years Octavian’s senior.  But this gave Octavian a new kind of enemy in Fulvia, his outraged former mother-in-law.  Now fearing for her husband Antony’s political position while he was away from Rome in the East, loyal Fulvia joined forces with Antony’s brother, Lucius.  Fulvia used her own wealth to raise enough disaffected Italians to make eight legions.  This army briefly invaded Rome while Octavian was elsewhere.  But in the winter of 41-40 BC, while faithless Antony lay with his Egyptian queen, Fulvia and her forces were starved into surrender at the siege of Perusia.  Fulvia was then exiled to the Greek city of Sicyon. 

In the years that followed Octavian proved an unstoppable political will.  Allies became enemies and all enemies were defeated – Sextus Pompey, Lepidus and Antony among them in their turn.

In my background reading for the Empress of Rome series I have consumed a number of books to which I owe a great debt:

The Annals of Imperial Rome by Tacitus (translated by Michael Grant) - Penguin Classics

Un-put-downable, this still reads like a bestseller.  Be prepared for heartbreak, however, when you discover that the chapters concerning Sejanus’s reign of terror and Caligula’s descent into madness have been lost to the mists of time.

The Twelve Caesars by Suetonius (translated by Robert Graves) - Penguin Classics

The perfect companion piece to Tacitus, it fills in his missing chapters.  And how.  Unashamedly drenched in scandal, gossip and ghastliness this Latin classic has been known to make readers laugh out loud.  It’s a hoot.

A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities edited by William Smith

The work of 19th Century classics scholars remains unsurpassed.  This weighty tome is cited by a number of other modern authors who also write about Rome, including Robert Harris and Steven Saylor.  It’s exhaustive and brilliant.  The second edition, published in 1873, is the one to have.

Livia: First Lady of Imperial Rome by Anthony A Barrett  - Yale University Press

Agrippina: Sister of Caligula; Wife of Claudius; Mother of Nero by Anthony A Barrett  - B T Batsford

Caligula: the Corruption of Power by Antony A Barrett - B T Batsford

Three brilliant books by the one author. To read them after Tacitus and Suetonius is perhaps a little anticlimactic because he takes the argument that some of the events described by the ancient historians may be apocryphal.  Spoilsport!  In writing the ‘Empress of Rome’ series I celebrate some of the stories that Barrett debunks because, well, it makes for a considerably more gripping tale, frankly.  No doubt I’ll meet Anthony Barrett one day and as soon as I’ve told him how much I admire his three works, he’ll go on to express a rather contrasting view of my own labours.

The Romans: their Life and Customs by E Guhl & W Koner - Senate Books

I wish I knew more about these two fine scholars – perhaps a reader will enlighten me?  This book is so exceedingly useful that I don’t know where to begin in praising it – extraordinary details on the minutiae of Roman domestic life.  My cheap paperback edition dates from the mid-90s but it looks to me like it’s been reprinted from plates that could well be late 19th Century.

From the Gracchi to Nero: a History of Rome from 133BC to AD 68 by H H Scullard - Methuen

Excellent.

The Romans by R H Barrow - Pelican Books

Ditto.

The World of Rome by Michael Grant - Cardinal

Gladiators: the Bloody Truth by Michael Grant - Penguin

Nero: Emperor in Revolt by Michael Grant - American Heritage Press

Cities of Vesuvius by Michael Grant - Weidenfeld & Nicolson

Michael Grant translated Tacitus for Penguin, and was among the 20th Century’s most widely read classics scholars.  These are but four terrific books from a lifetime’s output.

Sexual Life in Ancient Rome by Otto Kieffer - Abbey Library

Not quite as sordid as its title promises – which no doubt disappointed many when they stumbled upon it in decades past.  But I thoroughly enjoyed it – full of intriguing tidbits.

Working IX to V: Orgy Planners, Funeral Clowns, and Other Prized Professions of the Ancient World by Vicki Leon - Walker & Company

An exceptionally well researched laugh riot – I loved it.

Ancient Rome on Five Denarii a Day by Philip Matyszak - Thames & Hudson

A brilliant idea – I wish I’d thought of it.  This cheeky little satire on Lonely Planet books is actually extremely useful.

Encyclopedia of the Roman Empire by Matthew Bunson - Facts on File

Lots of useful facts at your fingertips.

Roman Mythology by Joel Schmidt (translated by Susan Taponier) - Grange Books

All there is to know about the gods of Rome.

A History of Private Life: from Pagan Rome to Byzantium edited by Paul Veyne (translated by Arthur Goldhammer) - The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press

Just wonderful.