Book rec! I recently finished the third instalment in Steven Saylor's excellent Roma Sub Rosa series, Catilina's Riddle. This mystery series is set during the late Republic in ancient Rome. The protagonist is a fictional sleuth named Gordianus the Finder. Saylor uses real historical events as the backdrop of each novel. Catilina's Riddle is about Lucius Sergius Catilina and the Catiline Conspiracy.
It's a very pro Catilina, anti Cicero take.
Among other important political questions, the book asks: what if Catilina was hot? Like really, really hot?
This is the historical fiction we deserve.
“Catilina says, ‘A man’s palate was meant to experience every possible flavor, or else a tongue is good only for talking.’”
This struck me as vaguely obscene.
Gordianus is wary but we stan.
One of Catilina's men (a double agent for Cicero) wants to hide Catilina in Gordianus' house. He's worried about the effect this will have on his wife.
What would happen if I allowed Catilina himself to visit the farm, as Caelius desired? What sort of effect would that have on Bethesda? Catilina was well into his forties, barely younger than I, but he was famous for having the energy of a man half his age. And for all the insults that had been hurled at him, no one had ever called him ugly. In his own way he was as good-looking as Marcus Caelius, or had been once, for I had not seen him close at hand in many years. Beauty is beauty no matter what the gender. Beauty brings universal pleasure to the eye….
Are we still talking about Bethesda?
More than handsome, he was quite remarkably attractive, with an appeal that seemed to emanate from within him in some invisible way, outwardly manifested by the playfulness that lit his eyes and the smile that came so readily to his lips.
Catilina arched an eyebrow. The gesture was typically patrician, but together with his chin-strap beard and unruly curls, it gave his face the shrewd look of a satyr contemplating an unprotected sheep.
I did smile, and even laughed a little, for the first time that day. I was suddenly at ease, as I realized with surprise. The change in my mood was because of the cool shade and flowing water, the respite from Aratus’s scowl and from the sight of Meto’s delight in the stream, I told myself. It had nothing to do with Catilina’s smile.
My favourite character, Gordianus' adopted son Meto, is a Catilina fanboy.
Meto drew nearer with a crooked smile on his face, a bit flustered at meeting such a notorious character. Catilina extended his hand, and Meto took it, rather too eagerly.
A subplot in this book is that Meto, sixteen, has come of age and will don the toga for the first time. But Gordianus still sees him as a little boy. He's not taking any chances around Catilina, who has a reputation for corrupting young men. In the baths:
I was not quite sure I wanted Meto displaying himself naked in Catilina’s presence. In matters of the flesh, Catilina’s appetites were said to be voracious and his self-restraint nonexistent.
But Catilina isn't left wanting. He has an extremely hot young lover named Tongilius.
His standards, at least, were rigorous, to judge from the sight of Tongilius in the nude. The young man’s sleek, well-knit athlete’s physique was of the sort to make boys jealous and older men sadly nostalgic, or else lustful. As I discovered in the baths, he was one of those handsome, charming youths who became more haughty with their clothes off than on. There was a trace of self-conscious preening in the way he lifted his well-muscled arms from the water, raised his chin, stared into the middle distance, and pushed the shimmering hair back from his forehead, like a sculptor smoothing and molding his own perfection.
Catilina seemed to approve of this gesture, for he watched it intently. Though their eyes did not meet, they smiled at the same moment, in such a way that I suspected that a secret touch had been exchanged beneath the water.
Meanwhile at the Senate House, Cicero tries to drag Catilina but makes his revolution sound lit.
“...what would Catilina and his boys do without their debauched socialites and whores to tuck them in at night? Perhaps, Cicero pondered, their notorious practice of dancing naked at parties had only been conditioning for the cold nights to come by the campfire.”
While hiding out at his house, Catilina tries to loosen Gordianus up and low key set him up with his boyfriend because he's all about free love.
“Tongilius is beautiful,” I acknowledged.
“Yet you do not desire him?”
“That would hardly be proper, would it, since I am your host and Tongilius is your companion?”
“Now who plays games with words, Gordianus? My point is this: if you have an eye for beauty, why do you not act on it? How can you resist?”
Please Gordianus enjoy my beautiful boyfriend, I insist.
“Catilina, you are incorrigible.”
“No, insatiable perhaps, but eminently corrigible. I am always ready to learn something new and to be corrected when I’m mistaken. You’d do well to follow my example, Gordianus. In this matter, as in others.”
“The unreasonable restraint you show in your relationships with beautiful young men.”
There are so many bath scenes in this book I lost track. But there's one with Gordianus and Catilina where instead of taking a cold plunge, they decide to cool off by taking a naked moonlit walk. Catilina does this all the time of course.
“We would take a long walk around the block, naked and steaming, letting the wind dry us. It’s delicious, isn’t it? Rome is full of naked statues which offend no one’s dignity; why should a naked man? You might think it would have caused a scandal, but it didn’t. Would you believe that no one ever complained?”
“Had you not been so good-looking, they might have,” I said.
I looked up at his heaving chest and the muscular arms crossed over it, his flat belly, his sturdy legs and the pendulous sex between.
“You are resplendent in your nakedness, Catilina!” I said, laughing and trying to catch my breath. I gazed at him openly, and not without envy. “Truly, like a statue on a pedestal.” I felt a little drunk, not on wine any longer but on moonlight and the peculiar novelty of being naked out of doors. The wind had dried the steam from my body, but I was covered with a fresh sheen of sweat from the exertion of the climb.
Yes, it must be…the climb.
When Cicero has a group of Catilina's men executed for treason, Catilina is sent into exile and goes on the run. Gordianus' wife thinks it's too dangerous to harbor a group of wanted fugitives, but Gordianus won't let his hot friend go down like that.
“Wife, think of handsome Catilina and the beautiful Tongilius. Would you have them wither to skin and bones for want of a few bites from Congrio’s kitchen?”
Woman, think of how sexy these men are! We must help them even though it’s certain death!
Meto is all too eager to help.
“Food!” said Meto. “I almost forgot. What can we take to them?”
It's all fun and games and naked moonlit walks until little Meto runs away from home to join his fave in the revolutionary battle.
“What is he doing here? He’s only a boy!” I whispered.
“But he wants so desperately to be a man, Gordianus. Can’t you see that?”
“Please, Catilina, don’t tell me that you’ve seduced him, too.”
He paused for a long moment then smiled wistfully. “All right, I won’t.”
