Sidelining the Pater Familias

[mtvessel]

Feb/Aug 2019
The Third Nero / Pandora's Boy - Lindsey Davis – Hodder & Stoughton, 2017 / 2018
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I don't know how she does it. Lindsey Davis has written twenty Falco novels and eight Flavia Albia books as well as sundry stand-alones, yet her take on ancient Rome still feels as fresh and vibrant as when she first started. She ought to be running out of ideas by now, but there is no sign of it yet. And while it is true that both these books re-tread somewhat familiar themes, they do so in a way that feels new.

This is in no small part due to their protagonist Flavia Albia, whose female viewpoint necessarily gives a different perspective and focus. It is always difficult when writing about a patriarchal society to stop male characters stealing agency from the female ones, and it is clear that having married her off, Davis is struggling to avoid this fate for her heroine. In The Third Nero she manages it by having Manlius Faustus off sick following the dramatic events at the end of The Graveyard of the Hesperides, which means that Flavia gets to engage in palace politicking without the pater familias putting his foot down. A bureaucrat called Claudius Philippus comes to see her with a delicate problem. A traitor in the palace has smuggled a man claiming to be the risen Nero into the country. Can he be found before the sinister forces supporting him succeed in plunging Rome into civil war?

I always like it when Davis gets political - Falco's work for Trajan's regime was one of the more interesting aspects of his character. In this one we get a full cast of dubious bureaucrats, dodgy diplomats and brutal Praetorians, and a nice tight plot inspired by actual events (warning: spoilers). It's just a shame that the ending is too silly to be plausible.

Pandora's Boy gets rid of Manlius Faustus by having him disappear mysteriously, which provides an added level of threat to a murder mystery set in the Quirinal area of Rome about a girl named Clodia who is found dead in her bedroom, allegedly poisoned by a love potion. There is only one likely culprit - a woman called Pandora who sells beauty products (and other things) to the women of the area. But Pandora has powerful friends that make investigating her business a dangerous occupation for a woman on her own.

The fun in this one lies chiefly in the characters of Clodia's friends and family and in Davis' sly parallels with modern-day gormless teenagers and their status-seeking middle-class parents. I also liked the solution to the mystery and the touching way in which it was presented. The resolution of what happened to Manlius Faustus is less satisfactory, but serves its purpose of ensuring that Albia has the agency to drive the investigation and to get herself into trouble. It will be interesting to see what excuses Davis can come up with to keep him out of the way in future books, particularly if the next obvious step in their relationship happens. I think we can trust that she will find a way.