Falco: The Official Companion (A Marcus Didius Falco Mystery)

by Lindsey Davis

Istria Istria

  Narona Viol, Croatia

  Pola Pula

  Pucinum Sovinjak

  Salonae Split

  Gallia (France)

  That’s as in ‘Caesar divided Gaul into three parts’, which every schoolboy is compelled to know … The Gauls have a crazy standard of values. They are wine-mad and spend like lunatics in the quest for liquor … [IHM]

  Arelate Arles

  Cavillonum Châlon-sur-Saône

  Durocortorum Reims

  Gesoriacum Boulogne

  Lugdunum Lyons

  Massilia Marseilles

  Mosa River Meuse

  Narbo Narbonne

  Rhodanus River Rhône

  Valentia Valence

  Vienna Vienne

  Germania Libera (east of the Rhine)

  Endless tracts of territory where ‘free’ meant not only free from Roman commercial influence, but with a complete lack of Roman law and order too … [IHM]

  Castellum Mattiacorum Mainz-Castel

  Flevo Lacus The Zuiderzee

  Lupia Flumen River Lippe

  Germania Superior and Inferior

  (west of the Rhine)

  Geographically, what Rome calls Germany is the eastern flank of Gaul. Sixty years ago, Augustus had decided not to advance across the natural boundary of the great River Rhenus, a decision forced out of him by the Quinctilius Varus disaster … Even so long after the massacre, I myself felt extreme reluctance to spend time where it had occurred … [IHM]

  Argentoratum Strasbourg

  Asciburgium Asburg

  Bonna Bonne

  Borbetomagus Worms

  Castrum ad Confluentes Koblenz

  Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium

  Cologne

  Gelduba Gellep

  Moenus River Main

  Moguntiatum Mainz

  Mosella River Moselle

  Novaesium Neuss

  Noviomagus Neumagen

  Rhenus River Rhine

  Rigodulum Riol

  Vetera Xanten

  Hispania (Spain)

  I had never been to Barcino. I had no idea what Barcino was storing up for me … [DLC]

  Astigi Ecja

  Baetis River Guadalquivir

  Barcino Barcelona

  Cartago Nova Cartagena

  Castulo Caslona

  Corduba Cordoba

  Empuriae Empuries

  Fretum Gaditanum Straits of Gibraltar

  Gades Cadiz

  Hispalis Seville

  Iluro Mataro

  Italica Santiponce

  Malaca Malaga

  Montes Mariana Sierra Morena

  Sisapo La Bienvenida

  Tarraco Tarragona

  Turris Caepionis Chipiona

  Valentia Valencia

  Italia

  Antium Anzio

  Arretinum Arezzo

  Augusta Taurinorum Turin

  Baiae Baia

  Bedriacum Tornata (though often called Cremona)

  Bruttium Calabria

  Buxentum Policastro di Santa Marina

  Cape Colonna Capo Colonna

  Capreae Isle of Capri

  Capua Santa Maria di Capua Antica

  Circeii San Felice Circeo

  Cosentia Cosenza

  Croton Crotone

  Formiae Formia

  Fregellae Ceprano

  Fundi Fondi

  Herculaneum Hercolano

  Lactarii Montes Lattari Mountains

  Lanuvium Lanuvio

  Latium Lazio

  Lepini Montes Volscian Mountains

  Magna Graecia ‘Greater Greece’ (Southern Italy)

  Melita Malta

  Misenum Capo di Miseno

  Neaethus River Nieto

  Neapolis Napoli/Naples

  Nola Nola

  Norba Norma

  Nuceria Nocera

  Oplontis Torre Annunciata

  Ostia/Portus Ostia Antica/Fiumicino

  Paestum Paestum

  Pompeii Pompeii

  Praeneste Palestrina

  Puteoli Pozzuoli

  Ravenna Ravenna

  Rhegium Reggio

  Roma Rome

  Salernum Salerno

  Satricum Le Ferriere

  Scylacium, Gulf of Squillace

  Sila Plain La Sila

  Stabiae Stabia

  Surrentum Sorrento

  Sybaris Corigliano

  Tarentum Tarento

  Tarracina Terracina

  Tibur Tivoli

  Tusculum Tusculo (Frascati)

  Veii Veii

  Velia Velia/Elea

  Volsiniensis Lacus Lake Bolsena

  Vulturnus River Volturnus

  Pontus and Bythinia (Turkey)

  Pessinus Ballihisar

  Syria

  Abana River Barada

  Antiocha Antioch

  Beroia Aleppo

  Bethel Beitin

  Emesa Homs

  Epiphania Hama

  Mount Hermon Mount Hermon (Jabal al Sheikh)

  Orontes River Orontes

  Palmyra/Tadmor Palmyra

  Sidon Sidon/Saida

  Tiberias Lacus Lake Tiberias/Sea of Galilee

  Tyre Tyre

  The Decapolis

  … a Greek federation in central Syria … whichever order you flog around these ten gracious metropolitan sites, she’s bound to be in the last town you visit … [LAP]

  Abila (Seleucia) (not officially in the league) Hartha

  Canatha Qanawat

  Capitolias Beit Ras

  Damascus Damascus

  Dium, Dion ? Aydoun

  Gadara, ‘The Athens of the East’ (for Athens, see Greece)

  Umm Qais

  Gerasa Jerash

  Hippos Sussita

  Pella Tabaqat Fahl

  Philadelphia Amman

  Scythopolis (Nysa) Beth Shean

  Tiberias Tiberias

  Map of Rome, City and Vigiles Jurisdictions

  People like to point out that the line around this map appears to be the Aurelian Walls, which were built later than the First Century. Please take the word of a bureaucrat: when Augustus defined the fourteen regions, their outer boundaries were indicated by a line on the map. Rome always had an outside edge, which administrators could ink in, between the gates, just as we do here.

  Jurisdictions of the Vigiles Cohorts in Rome

  Coh I Regions VII & VIII (via Lata, Forum Romanum)

  Coh II Regions III & V (Isis and Serapis, Esquiline)

  Coh III Regions IV & VI (Temple of Peace, Alta Semita)

  Coh IV Regions XII & XIII (Piscina Publica, Aventine)

  Coh V Regions I & II (Porta Capena, Caelimontium)

  Coh VI Regions X & XI (Palatine, Circus Maximus)

  Coh VII Regions IX & XIV (Circus Flaminius, Transtiberina)

  Falco’s Rome

  Imperial Rome was continually forced to juxtapose her splendid monuments to an incoherent confusion of dwelling houses at once pretentious and uncomfortable, fragile and inordinately large, separated by a network of gloomy, narrow alleys. When we try to reconstruct ancient Rome in our imagination, we are ever and again disconcerted by the contrast of modern spaciousness with primitive medieval simplicity, an anticipation of orderliness that is almost American with the confusion of an oriental labyrinth.

  CARCOPINO

  Aerial view over Rome, from the south east [Rome Reborn]

  It is very important to me to give a sense of a city in flux. There was a conscious decision to mend the destruction of the civil wars, when buildings that were central to the Roman psyche had been lost from a once-famous skyline. New monuments began to rise too. It makes a good background for crime novels. As the city changes, people see an opportunity to shake up their lives, to strive for something better, by fair means or foul …

  Roma Resurgens

  Vespasian’s campaign to restore the city and empire was called Roma Resurgens. Rome itself was to be rebuilt, its most famous
monuments meticulously restored while carefully chosen additions to the national heritage would be positioned at suitable spots: a Temple of Peace, nicely balancing a Temple of Mars; the Flavian arena; an arch here; a forum there; with a tasteful number of fountains, statues, public libraries and baths. [PG]

  Creating Falco’s Rome starts with the physical: the temples and fountains, the astonishing height of the gimcrack apartments, the arrogance of the sophisticated slaves who barged along the highroad, the drips on my head where my road dived under the gloom of an aqueduct … [SB] I have learned which buildings were contemporary, though sometimes I slip up; people are most helpful in alerting me. I add colour either through the people present or, so often, through smells – for which, apparently, I am famous: stale garments and fresh tempers, a sweet tang of myrrh among the sour reek of brothels, a fresh hint of oregano above the old and indelible reek of the fish market. [SB]

  Chariot race scene

  Falco’s love of Rome

  Falco is completely devoted to his home city. Nowhere is this so apparent as when he leaves it and grows homesick. He romanticises: I was sick of stones in my shoes and the raw smell of camels’ breath. I wanted glorious monuments and dubious fish that tasted of Tiber grit, and to eat it gazing over the river from my own grubby nook on the Aventine while waiting for an old friend to knock on the door. I wanted to breathe garlic at an aedile. I wanted to stamp on a banker. I wanted to hear that solid roar that slams across the racecourse at the Circus Maximus. I wanted spectacular scandals and gigantic criminality. I wanted to be amazed by size and sordidness. I wanted to go home. [LAP] Stuck in Britain, in A Body in the Bath House and The Jupiter Myth he shows his homesickness several times, especially when comparing the civic deficiencies of Londinium with Rome.

  Here, in a bit of a jumble, because I see no way to be more organised, are places we have seen with him.

  The Aventine Hill

  The Aventine was partly in the Thirteenth region, where Falco lives, and partly the Twelfth, where Helena’s family are.

  Once it had lain outside the pomerium, the official city boundary that had been ploughed out by Romulus. That original exclusion had allowed the positioning here of shrines that possessed for our forefathers a remote, out-of-town mystique; in the quieter squares of the modern Aventine they still maintained their historical air of privacy … We who lived here now could still see the river and the distant hills, or in open spaces feel close to the sky and the moon. [OB]

  The Aventine today is a very quiet, gracious suburban area. The big church of Santa Sabina dominates on the northern side, alongside which are the Gardens of the Orange Trees, where I like to go to look at the view across the river or sit in the sun. In Roman times, plebeians were allowed to buy freeholds on the Aventine, which is why I gave it that teeming character. You can still climb up from beside the Circus Maximus on the Clivus Publicius.

  There were many great temples, including those of Ceres, Diana, Venus, Isis, the Sun and Moon, Mercury, the seasonal god Vertumnus, and Liberty, which was where freed slaves traditionally congregated to celebrate their liberty (wearing the Phrygian caps that much later were associated with the French Revolution). Minerva, goddess of reason and the arts, had a temple here, home of the Writers’ and Actors’ Guild. The Bona Dea, whose mystical, orgiastic cult was reserved for women and notorious among men, had a grotto on the Aventine.

  Fountain Court

  (which had never possessed a fountain and wasn’t a court) … [SB]

  This is an invented location. I cannot place it on a map. You will not find it on the modern Aventine.

  Streetscene [Rome Reborn]

  Stay in Rome or any other big, sunny city. Go to the alley at the back of your hotel. Stand quietly in the narrow space between tall, multi-occupied buildings; listen to people you cannot see, as they go about their lives nearby. Look at the washing lines, discarded crates and gutter-litter. Sniff, if you dare. Here; you’ve found it.

  Of all the groaning tenements in all the sordid city alleyways, the most degrading must be Fountain Court. It was five minutes off the great road from Ostia, one of the most vital highways in the Empire, but this ulcerous spot in the armpit of the Aventine could have been a different world. Up above, on the double crests of the Hill, were the great temples of Diana and Venus, but we lived too close to see their lofty architecture from our deep, dark warren of aimless, nameless lanes. It was cheap (for Rome). Some of us would have paid the landlord more just to have him hire a pair of competent bailiffs to evict us into the fresher air of a better street … [VC]

  It is narrow, dank and dirty, full of dubious smells, morose people and decrepit small businesses: we know the laundry, a funeral parlour, barber’s, basket weaver’s, baker’s, a rope-maker, ink-making and poultry-keeping. People lead sorry lives: Even in the dead of night there was usually some husband receiving brain damage from an iron pot, a pigeon being tortured by delinquent youths, or an old woman screaming that she had been robbed of her life savings … [PG] And they are imbued with curiosity: You couldn’t squeeze a pimple in Fountain Court without three people telling you to leave yourself alone. [TTD] It might be good to think there is local loyalty, but Falco says everyone who lives there is trying to leave.

  He and Petro revisit for a mournful scene: This was a lonely place, a sordid place, a noisy, half-derelict heart-breaking location … But in this backstreet byway a man who lay low could be ignored by the world. [ST] In Nemesis, the apartment which has been so many kinds of refuge comes into its own again.

  Falco’s apartment

  You won’t find this, either – just be grateful!

  A striking discovery of my early research was that, with land at a premium and a poverty-stricken multitude, Rome was not all white marble temples and mansions, but full of crowded apartment buildings. Two apartments per storey, two or three rooms per apartment, two and a half families per dwelling and as many as five or six people to a room. Sometimes there were fewer occupants, but they ran a business, like the mirror-polisher and the tailor. Sometimes one room contained an old lady, who had been the original tenant, now almost forgotten among the rumbustious invaders to whom Smaractus had sublet parts of her home ‘to help her with the rent’. [TTD]

  One of these tenements, crumbling and exposed like a bombed building in my childhood, hangs tentatively on the Capitol today. Archaeology has produced many, with identically arranged flats and cramped common areas, generally with commercial premises at ground level, like Lenia’s Laundry. After the Great Fire, Nero decreed that six was the maximum number of storeys allowed.

  From the beginning, we are under no illusions; Falco has two rooms on the sixth floor of a dank tenement where only the dirt and dead bedbugs were cementing together the walls. [SP] I allude to both ancient and modern literature, beginning with Juvenal’s If the alarm goes at ground level, the last to fry will be the attic tenant, way up among the nesting pigeons, with nothing but tiles between him and the weather. Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe is a lessee in Los Angeles: I had an office in the Cahuenga Building, sixth floor, two small rooms at the back. One I left open for a patient client to sit in if I had a patient client … I looked in the reception room. It was empty of everything except the smell of dust. Three hard chairs and a swivel chair, flat desk with a glass top, five green filing cases, three of them full of nothing, a calendar, and a framed license on the wall, a washbowl in a stained wooden cupboard, a hatrack, a carpet that was just something on the floor, and two open windows with net curtains that puckered in and out like the lips of a toothless old man sleeping: not beautiful, not gay, but better than a tent on the beach.

  Fumbling to provide a Roman equivalent, I gave a nod to this famous passage, using archaeology: There was an outer room in which a dog might just turn round, if he was a thin dog with his tail between his legs. A wonky table, a slanty bench, a shelf of pots, a bank of bricks I used as a cooking stove, a gridiron, winejars (empty), a rubbish bucket (full). One way ou
t to the balcony for when you got tired of stamping on the cockroaches indoors, plus a second opening behind a curtain in bright welcoming stripes; this led to the bedroom. [SP] Under the floorboards is Falco’s wine stash. That small balcony outside becomes the scene of many poignant moments in the series. He pees off it illegally. A gecko lives on the ceiling, tolerated, unlike the cockroaches. A tile on the outside landing advertises Falco.

  Even when he and Helena obtain better conditions, Falco retains his apartment. It is his office while he lives opposite. It provides Petronius with a temporary home, shelters Justinus and will be a refuge for Albia. Every time Falco returns, it provides moving nostalgia for him and us.

  The Eagle Laundry, Fountain Court

  Many Roman dwellings incorporated commercial premises … the cut-price, clothes-stealing wash-shop which occupied the ground floor of our building. [IHM] We see Lenia’s laundry in many of the books, often briefly. It provided that particularly fascinating detail: human urine was used by fullers – to fix dyes – and by laundries; Vespasian imposed a lucrative tax on it (see Historical Characters).

  Flora’s Caupona

  Flora’s made the average seedy snack shop look chic and hygienic. It squatted on the corner where a dingy lane down from the Aventine met a dirty track up from the wharves. It had the usual arrangement with two counters, set at right angles for people in the two streets to lean on reflectively while they waited to be poisoned. The counters were made from a rough patchwork of white and grey stone … each had three circular holes to take cauldrons of food. [PG] Sinister stews in anaemic hues, thickened with what seemed to be a mix of lentils and pavement dust. As the lukewarm pots fermented, from time to time half a gherkin or a lump of turnip would pop up through the slime, then softly sink to its death. [SA]

  You can see remains of street bars at archaeological sites. Flora’s has the staple furnishings: tables and benches, a barrel outside, a rack of amphorae, a shelf of beakers and a price list of wines written on one wall. At the back is a kitchen, where the waiter lives; sometimes lodgers hire tiny rooms upstairs. A horrible cat called Stringy lurks, with a fat brindled tail and an unpleasant leer; when first seen he is sturdy but later becomes older and emaciated. I love describing the food, a chance to dwell on ghastliness – and to remember a favourite snack bar when I was a civil servant; the paint-stripper Brie sandwich with grey mayonnaise was unforgettable.

  A caupona waitress, expecting a large tip