Author Bio:
I will never fully understand the Romans, and that is the challenge.
I have loved the ancient world since I read my first Greek myth, Theseus and the Minotaur. After reading Classics at Oxford, I taught at a boys’ public school for twenty-five years, but then my family moved to Qatar. There isn’t much call for Latin teachers, so I write, and all the questions I have asked myself about the Romans over the years are turning into novels.
I was once accused by a slightly indignant teenager of being in love with Cicero. This is not strictly true…
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Editorial Review:
I am so old I am becoming a legend – well, to half the population.
A well-told story always begins with a great first line, and this one is no exception. In this fast paced and succinct novel, we are taken on a journey with Tertulla, the third daughter of the Junius family whose mother, Servilia, is Julius Caesar's mistress. Through the eyes of an unreliable narrator, Tertulla tells her story like a memoir of her life. And her life is one filled with political intrigue and a family with all the dangerous connections which lead to Rome. After all, all roads lead to Rome and the one from their house on the Palatine Hill leads right to the very heart in every direction possible with Tertulla watching the ins-and-outs under her brother Marcus Brutus's eye. Not to mention that she discovers that her own mother is Caesar's mistress which leads her to wondering about her actual parentage. Could Caesar actually be her father?
When he smiled everything about his face lifted – eyebrows, corner of eyes, even those grooves from nose to mouth. The cheekbones suddenly came into their own and he was utterly entrancing. The secret dream that had lain inside me so deep and dark that I had not even noticed it, flowered into life, and I wanted more than anything to be his daughter.
Tertulla is a young woman filled with questions as her life is interwoven in the conflicts surrounding her, from civil war in Rome to her mother's inner turmoil between her lover and upholding the old nobility, to her brother's hand in the conspiracy to murder Caesar. While Tertulla suffers grief and tragedy, and while Rome emerges as an Empire, her questions about her own connection to Caesar remain and shape the narrative from beginning to end. In her grief, another of my favorite passages relates to a letter she receives from Cicero which touches on a tragedy in Tertulla's life... an unexpected letter which reached deep into Cicero's feelings in quite a revealing way. Here is a tidbit:
...I thought nobody understood and that I would never recover. People told me to be brave and that I must think of the Republic, and I dismissed this advice as useless because they did not understand. Now what am I going to say to you? Why, to be brave and think of the Republic.... We ask a great deal of our womenfolk, and we have always been fortunate in how they meet every challenge. May you meet your sorrow and not be overcome by it.
Very touching and the story line is filled with such occurrences of true feeling and depth. Fiona Forsyth has a gift for weaving historical research into a finely tuned and well-rendered narrative, especially in dialogue and delivering this first-person story in a way that the reader truly connects to Tertulla on a high emotional level, whose own story gives a different point-of-view into the story of Julius Caesar's assassination on the Ides of March and the fall of the Republic and on into the Imperial reign of Tiberius. Can you imagine the life this young woman must have had in real life to witness such history unfold before her very eyes? Well, in this absorbing page-turner, Forsyth creates a remarkable character and story which will stay with the reader for quite some time afterward, and does so in a way that the read is easy and enjoyable... tight and concise, but not reader’srushed as you savor the details of this ancient world. Forsyth immerses you in the rich details which form in your mind as you read and plants you firmly in this time period and expands the reader's knowledge of Roman history... which is what historical fiction ought to do. Tertulla is a fascinating character and woman with whom anyone might like to sit down and hear her stories, which is exactly the structure Forsyth uses to tell this story – at the beginning she is old and starts to recount her life, starting with a brilliant first line, then moving onward from the time she is little and first recognizes something about Caesar at her own father's funeral, through the vast transformations of not only herself, but of Rome itself.
Not only that but Forsyth offers a clever insight into how history repeats itself and gives a glimpse into how our own modern day politics are very similar to the government of Rome. One of my favorite lines:
But you can see how the whole subject – Senatorial elections and who was going to win – was an endless source of conversation and argument among us. You cannot get excited about the senate nowadays. They specialise in keeping their heads down, and high office brings little glory.
*****
"The Third Daughter" by Fiona Forsyth receives five stars from The Historical Fiction Company and the "Highly Recommended" award