Naevius crouched and inspected Paullus’ leg. ‘Stop making such a fuss. It is nasty, but you will live.’
Naevius leapt to his feet, snapped to attention.
The prefect of the Bruttians had entered the ruins. More soldiers guarded him.
‘Did they confess?’ Orestes asked Naevius.
‘Yes, sir. I heard every word.’
Orestes looked at Paullus. ‘Are you badly hurt?’
‘It is nothing, sir.’ Naevius answered for him.
‘Centurion, take the survivors into custody. They will be charged with murder. The law will take its course, but there can be no doubt about the verdict.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Then it is over,’ Orestes said. ‘The killings are at an end. No evil stalks the hills. The Hero of Temesa has returned to the depths of the sea.’
Epilogue
Patria
Three Years Later
612 Ab Urbe Condita (142 BC)
UBI TU GAIUS, ego Gaia: the wedding vow was so ancient no one really knew what it meant. Paullus slipped a ring on her finger, a band of iron set in gold. Some doctors claimed a fine nerve connected the ring finger to the heart.
Minado was veiled. She looked different. Her hair was teased into an elaborate coiffure with six braids of artificial hair. Then she lifted her chin, and she looked the same, and Paullus was happy.
‘Ubi tu Gaius, ego Gaia.’ She said the words, and they were man and wife.
‘Feliciter!’ The guests wished them good fortune as Paullus led her to the couch.
There had never been a wedding like it in Temesa, not one graced by the presence of two senators of consular standing. The place of honour was taken by Lucius Mummius, the conqueror of Corinth. This year he was serving as one of the two censors. Elected every five years, in the eighteen months they held office the censors were empowered to revise the rolls of Roman citizens, and to both admit and remove men from the equestrian order and the senate. A position of immense power and prestige, it was the pinnacle of a political career in Rome. Seated by his side, Lucius Aurelius Orestes might have considered himself overshadowed. Dignitas was everything to a senator. Yet they were close friends. Orestes had served as legate to Mummius in the east, and they were bound by ties of amicitia. And both were patrons of the groom.
‘Thank you,’ Paullus said to Mummius. ‘Without you—’
The great man made a small gesture of demurral. ‘Her father showed the loyalty and courage of a citizen of Rome. It was only right the formal status was conferred on him and his family. The same held true of Onirus.’
Orestes smiled. ‘It was lucky Onirus had been a camp servant with the army. Even so, the guards were in two minds about admitting him when he came to me in Consentia. If they had not, things would have turned out very differently.’
Paullus acknowledged the truth of this, and Mummius proposed a toast to Good Fortune.
When they had drunk, Mummius asked Paullus if he was sure he had not bid too much for the right to fell timber and tap pitch in the mountains around Drys, Laboula and Sestion. Wedding or not, public business was never far from his mind, and auctioning such contracts were part of the duties of the censors.
‘I do not think so, if the gods are kind. The Sila is a wild and dangerous place. It needs a man who knows its vastness. But there are profits to be made, and without any fraud or loss of honour.’
Mummius nodded weightily. ‘As I have said, now you wear the gold ring of an equestrian, a political career in Rome is open to a man who won the civic crown. Military glory brings many votes. There are those of us who would be honoured to support you.’
‘Thank you again, but no, I am content to remain in my home town, to raise a family.’
‘You may be called to the standards again.’
‘If so, I shall do my duty.’
Servants brought in the first course: snails and anchovies with salad, washed down with wine from Tarentum. It was good quality, but nothing ostentatious. There would be lamb to follow, before the apples and nuts.
Paullus looked round the room. It was decked with luxuriant greenery and spread with rugs. Three years before, it had been the town house of Fidubius. Now it was the residence of Dekis, the sometime Bruttian huntsman.
The trial had brought a seismic shift in the colony of Temesa. Lollius, of course, was dead, along with two of his cousins. The verdict on his father and Vibius’ accomplice had been a foregone conclusion. The evidence had been overwhelming. Some had been provided by Solinus, on promise of immunity. More had been wrung out of Croton under torture. The latter subsequently had been crucified outside the main gate. Vibius and Fidubius had fled into exile.
‘Fidubius is still in Massilia?’ The exiles were the only thing that still troubled Paullus.
‘An old man sunk in lethargy and bitterness,’ Orestes said, ‘only rousing himself to drink and gorge on seafood. Haunted by his crimes, he will never leave.’
‘And Vibius?’
‘As far as anyone knows, still in the east. There is no cause to worry. Denied fire and water, if he sets foot in Italy, his life is forfeit.’
Both had been condemned to death in their absence. Their estates had been confiscated. By due process of law, one quarter of the whole had been awarded to Paullus. From the bounty, Paullus had gifted this house and land to Dekis, a more modest property to Onirus, and provided a smallholding on his own enlarged domain to old Kaido.
The lamb came in, tender and succulent, filling the room with its aroma.
‘Do you ever think of Corinth?’ Orestes asked.
‘Sometimes, hardly ever,’ Paullus said. ‘I try not to dwell on what was done.’
‘We did our duty,’ Mummius said. ‘We had our orders. It was a terrible thing, but perhaps for the best. Polybius the Achaean argues that it spared Greece the agony of a long-drawn-out conquest.’
They had not been long at dessert when Ursus, the officiating priest, rose to his feet and announced it was time.
Flute players led them out into the street. Five torchbearers were waiting, even though it was still broad daylight. Bystanders called out blessings on the procession as it wound down to Paullus’ new house overlooking the water. There were ribald jokes and snatches of song. Naevius led the way in this traditional licentiousness. For once, half gone in his cups, the centurion looked not angry, but beatific. As they got near, children threw handfuls of nuts. They rattled on the pavement, supposedly a symbol of fertility and happiness.
Minado had been silent and demure throughout the meal, and separated from Paullus in the procession. She was preceded by a boy carrying a torch of tightly twisted hawthorn twigs. Her hands were held by two other boys. Her bridesmaids followed, carrying her spindle and distaff.
There had been no chance to talk.
Finally, at the door, her entourage stood back.
She lifted her veil, and Paullus kissed her. She smelt of verbena and sweet marjoram. Paullus lifted her into his arms and carried her across the threshold, and they were gone.
Afterword
Calabria
THE ORIGINS OF THIS NOVEL go back to a story I read many years ago in Cicero’s Brutus (85–8). Several persons of note were murdered in the Sila forest. Some slaves of the publicani involved in the production of pitch, as well as some free members of the corporation, were prosecuted for the killings. After a drawn-out trial, featuring some of the best orators of the time, the defendants were acquitted. Cicero does not say if they were innocent.
Calabria was a remote and wild place in antiquity. The Romans knew it as Bruttium. The modern name migrated from the Sallentine Peninsula in south-east Italy sometime after the Lombard invasion in AD 700. To avoid confusion, the modern usage is followed in this novel.
Calabria is a backwater of modern scholarship. The most useful study I have found is the doctoral thesis of I. Matkovic, Roman Settlement of Northern Bruttium: 200 BC–AD 300 (McMaster University, 2001); a PDF is available online (
Google: Matkovic Bruttium).
The Roman colony of Temesa (or Tempsa) was a port somewhere on the lower Sabutus (modern Savuto) river. Its precise location is uncertain (Matkovic, op.cit., p.39, n.1).
Versions of the ghost story of the Hero of Temesa are found in Pausanias (6.6.7–11), Strabo (6.1.5), and Aelian (VH 8.18).
Roman Farming
The texts translated by K.D. White in Country Life in Classical Times (London, 1977) offer an enjoyable way into the subject. Much in this novel has been drawn from Cato, On Agriculture, an invaluable contemporary source. My eyes were opened to rural life and peasant farming in classical antiquity by R. MacMullen, Roman Social Relations 50 BC to AD 284 (New Haven and London, 1974), 1–27, and L. Foxhall, ‘Farming and Fighting in Ancient Greece’ in J. Rich and G. Shipley (eds.), War and Society in the Greek World (London and New York, 1993), 134–45.
The Agrarian Crisis
Modern scholars often argue that in the last two centuries BC the Roman peasants recruited into the legions were in effect fighting to dispossess themselves, as, while they were serving overseas, their farms were ruined and taken over by the rich. The classic statement of the case is K. Hopkins, Conquerors and Slaves (Cambridge,1978), 1–98. Recently the view has been repeatedly challenged. An overview of the arguments, inclining to the traditional view, can be found in H. Sidebottom, Ancient Warfare: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2004), 43–9.
Roman Imperialism
In the nineteenth century Rome was seen as a ‘defensive imperialist’, reluctantly drawn into expansion by the needs of her own safety and those of her allies. Now analysis tends to focus on the ‘expansion-bearing structures’ in her culture and society, above all the senators’ needs for military glory, as well as the profits from successful war-making. Two summaries of the modern historiography are T. Cornell, ‘The End of Roman Imperial Expansion’, in J. Rich and G. Shipley (eds.), War and Society in the Roman World (London and New York, 1993), and H. Sidebottom, ‘Roman Imperialism: The Changed Outward Trajectory of the Roman Empire’, Historia 54.3 (2005), 315–30.
The Campaign Against Corinth
The ancient references for the Achaean War, which culminated in the sack of Corinth, are scattered and poor, and often contradictory: Polybius 38.9–18; Pausanias 7.14.1–16.6; Livy, Per. 51–2; Justin 34.1–2; (Aurelius Victor) Vir. Ill. 60.1–3; Orosius 5.3.1–7; Zonaras 9.31.
Modern scholarship tends to concentrate on either the origins or the effects of the war. Among those who discuss the events, even if only in passing, are A. Fuks, ‘The Bellum Achaicum and its Social Aspect’, JHS 90 (1970), 78–89; W.V. Harris, War and Imperialism in Republican Rome 327–70 BC (Oxford, 1979), 240–4; E.S. Gruen, The Hellenistic World and the Coming of Rome (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London, 1984), 514–23; G. Shipley, The Greek World After Alexander 323–30 BC (2000), 383–6; and P. Erdkamp, ‘The Andriscus Uprising and the Achaean War, 149–146 BC’, in M. Whitby and H. Sidebottom (eds.), The Encyclopedia of Ancient Battles, volume II (Chichester, 2017), 842–4.
The Roman Army
An excellent introduction to the mid-Republican legions is L. Keppie, The Making of the Roman Army from Republic to Empire (London, 1984), 14–56. There is a more comprehensive discussion in M. Dobson, The Army of the Roman Republic: The Second Century BC, Polybius and the Camps at Numantia, Spain (Oxford, 2008), esp. 47–66.
Combat Stress in the Ancient World
There is a keen debate among modern scholars as to whether combat stress existed in the classical world. Broadly, there are two camps. The ‘universalist’ approach argues that as it exists now, so it must have existed then. The ‘specificist’ view points to the lack of unambiguous ancient evidence, and the very different conditions (physical and cultural) prevalent at the time. A sketch of both sides can be found in Ancient Warfare magazine IX.4 (2013), 70–4. A convincing example of culturally specific scholarship is J. Crowley, The Psychology of the Athenian Hoplite (Cambridge, 2012).
Quotes
The song the legionaries sing in Chapter 21 is taken from Plautus, Miles Gloriosus, translated by E.F. Watling (Harmondsworth, 1965), pp.160–1.
The various lines from Homer are from the translations of the Iliad by Richard Lattimore (Chicago, 1951), and the Odyssey by Robert Fagles (London, 1996).
Other Novels
All my novels include a couple of homages to other writers. Here I have reworked images from Christ Stopped at Eboli by Carlo Levi (Eng. tr., Harmondsworth, 1982), and Across the River and Into the Trees by Ernest Hemingway (London, 1950).
Acknowledgements
In every novel the usual suspects are thanked, but sincerity is not undermined by repetition.
First my family: my wife Lisa, my mother Frances, my aunt Terry and my sons Tom and Jack.
Next the professionals: James Gill at United Agents; Kate Parkin, Clare Kelly, Francesca Russell, Stephen Dumughn, and (sad to see him leaving) James Horobin at Bonnier Zaffre; Maria Stamatopoulou and Bert Smith at Lincoln College, Oxford.
Finally other friends: Peter and Rachel Cosgrove, Jeremy Tinton, Peter Hill, Sara Fox, Fiona Dunne, Mary and David Palmer, Sanda Haines and Jack Ringer. This novel is dedicated to the latter.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Harry Sidebottom was brought up in racing stables in Newmarket where his father was a trainer. He took his Doctorate in Ancient History at Oxford University and has taught at various universities including Oxford. His career as a novelist began with his Warrior of Rome series.
Fiction
The Lost Ten
(The Warrior of Rome series)
Fire in the East
King of Kings
Lion of the Sun
The Caspian Gates
The Wolves of the North
The Amber Road
The Last Hour
(The Throne of the Caesars trilogy)
Iron & Rust
Blood & Steel
Fire & Sword
Non-fiction
Ancient Warfare: A Very Short Introduction
The Encyclopedia of Ancient Battles
(With Michael Witby)
Dear Reader,
I hope you have enjoyed reading The Return. The inspiration for this novel was an anecdote in Cicero’s treatise Brutus about the murder of several men in the forest of Sila, and the trial which eventually ended in the acquittal of the defendants. Cicero discusses the tactics of the orators speaking for the defence, but he does not say if the accused were innocent.
Calabria was a wild and dangerous region in antiquity. Roman law frequently did not reach into the depths of the Sila. Calabria was a strange place, where anything could happen. It was also the setting for one of the most chilling ghost stories in classical literature: the Hero of Temesa, told by Pausanias. That was another reason for my choice of this wonderfully atmospheric location.
Readers of my previous novels will know that I like to explore important themes of Roman history in my fiction. These themes were important then, and they remain so today. The Romans are always ‘good to think with’ about both the past and the present. The Return investigates Roman imperialism; its causes and effects, as well as its ancient justifications and critiques. It may be a surprise that at times the Romans could voice severe criticisms of their own rise to empire and deplore the effects on themselves.
The Return marks something of a departure for my novels. Although I have flirted with the genre before (in The Wolves of the North), this is my first murder mystery. I aim to bring the dark, brooding menace of the best Scandi and Italian Noir to the past, while not stinting on the military action of the historical novel. The reader is posed several interlocking questions. Who or what is behind the killings? What terrible event in the war changed Paullus? What happened in ‘the last house in Corinth’?
I have never had more fun researching and writing a novel than with The Return, and I very much hope that you enjoyed the story. Please tell your friends about the novel and discuss it on social media.
Finally, do find me on Facebook or my website www.harrysidebottom.co.uk. I would love to know what you think of The Return.
Best wishes
Harry Sidebottom
First published in Great Britain in 2020 by Zaffre
This ebook edition published in 2020 by
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Copyright © Harry Sidebottom, 2020
Cover design by Nick Stearn
Cover image © Stephen Mulcahey
The moral right of Harry Sidebottom to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978–1–78576–966–5
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