East, West, and Finding Yourself in Caroline Lawrence's “Roman

chapter 25 East, West, and Finding Yourself in Caroline Lawrence’s “Roman Mysteries” Helen Lovatt Introduction Caroline Lawrence’s “Roman Mysteries” series uses an ancient Roman setting to explore themes of identity for her four young detective characters. While they do not visit Eastern Europe, ideas of East and West, centre and periphery, are important in making sense of their journeys, both literal and emotional. This popular series of detective novels for children aged eight and above was written in the United Kingdom between 2001 and 2009 by an American living in London, and has also become a well-received bbc television series.1 The theme of “finding yourself”—going away in order to grow up and gain self-knowledge—has a particular importance in children’s literature.2 While one can argue that it lies at the heart of much literature, children are seen as not-yet-complete humans, who need to develop more than adults. So E.L. Konigsburg, in From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler (1967) sends Claudia Kincaid to live in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art in order to better understand herself, to find the something different inside her which allows her to continue living her life. So Lucy goes through the wardrobe to Nar- nia, and Bilbo goes on a journey in The Hobbit. Arguably, this theme is already 1 The bbc series consisted of 10 episodes, released in 2007–2008, directed by Paul Marcus (5 episodes, 2007), Jill Robertson (3 episodes, 2008), and Marcus D.F. White (2 episodes, 2008). This article focuses on the books; the televisions adaptations are interesting, but they do not follow the full trajectory of the narrative in the books, and stop after ten episodes rather than seventeen, at The Slave-girl of Jerusalem. This suggests that the decentred final sequence of the series is more challenging than the earlier episodes and harder to sell. 2 On the past and cultural identity, see Robyn McCallum, Ideologies of Identity in Adolescent Fiction: The Dialogic Construction of Subjectivity (New York: Routledge, 1999); Margeret Meek, ed., Children’s Literature and National Identity (Stoke on Trent–Sterling, Va.: Trentham Books, 2001); Jenny Plastow and Margot Hillel, eds., The Sands of Time: Children’s Literature: Culture, Politics and Identity (Hatfield: University of Hertfordshire Press, 2010). Mary Harlow, “Roman Children and Childhood and the Perception of Heritage,” in Kate Darian-Smith and Carla Pascoe, eds., Children, Childhood and Cultural Heritage (Abingdon–New York, n.y.: Rout- ledge, 2013), 144–158, mentions Lawrence briefly. © Helen Lovatt, 2016 | doi 10.1163/9789004335370_027 Helen Lovatt - 9789004335370 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC-NDDownloaded 4.0 license. from Brill.com09/29/2021 07:15:11AM via free access 412 Lovatt present in classical epic: Odysseus’s adventures lead to a deeper understand- ing of what it means to come home, and Aeneas must journey until he can find and define a new home. In modern adult fiction, too, the idea of finding yourself remains a key theme: romantic plot lines focus on finding yourself by finding your true other half; while for children, finding a secure family func- tions in a similar way. In Roman thought, ideas of East and West were a potent part of the rhetoric of belonging. Rome is both the centre of the world and the locus of Western identity.3 Aeneas moves from East to West, from Trojan and Phrygian (and Phoenician) femininity, and oriental mystique, to down-to-earth Italian and Roman masculinity.4 Similarly, but in reverse, Lucan’s Pompey moves from Rome to the East where he is weakened, feminised, and finally destroyed.5 This is, of course, to oversimplify: were the Greeks still counted as East for Rome?6 Probably: Asia Minor certainly was. The Greeks themselves could associate the 3 On orientalism, see Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York, n.y.: Pantheon Books, 1978). On Greece and the East, see Edith Hall, Inventing the Barbarian: Greek Self-definition through Tragedy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991); Margaret Christina Miller, Athens and Persia in the Fifth Century bc: A Study in Cultural Receptivity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Kostas Vlassopoulos, Unthinking the Greek Polis: Ancient Greek History beyond Euro- centrism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). For other models of thinking about identity and Roman Empire, see Greg Woolf, “Becoming Roman, Staying Greek: Culture, Identity and the Civilizing Process in the Roman East,” Proceedings of the Cambridge Philo- logical Society 40 (1994): 116–143; Richard Hingley, Globalizing Roman Culture: Unity, Diversity and Empire (London: Routledge, 2005). On orientalism and reception, see Lorna Hardwick, “Reception as Simile: The Poetics of Reversal in Homer and Derek Walcott,” International Journal of the Classical Tradition 3 (1997): 326–338; various articles in Lorna Hardwick and Christopher Stray, eds., A Companion to Classical Receptions (Oxford: Blackwell, 2008); and Mark Bradley, ed., Classics and Imperialism in the British Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). 4 On Roman literature and orientalism in Virgil, see Yasmin Syed, Vergil’s Aeneid and the Ro- man Self: Subject and Nation in Literary Discourse (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press, 2005); on gender, nationality, and desire in Virgil, see J.D. Reed, Virgil’s Gaze: Nation and Poetry in the Aeneid (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007); on Silius, gender, and the Other, see Antony Augoustakis, Motherhood and the Other: Fashioning Female Power in Flavi- an Epic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); and Alison M. Keith, “Engendering Oriental- ism in Silius’ Punica,” in Antony Augoustakis, ed., Brill’s Companion to Silius Italicus (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 355–373. 5 Andreola Rossi, “The Aeneid Revisited: The Journey of Pompey in Lucan’s Pharsalia,” Ameri- can Journal of Philology 121 (2000): 571–591. 6 On perceptions of Greek ethnicity both among Greeks themselves and outsiders, including Romans, see Irad Malkin, Ancient Perceptions of Greek Ethnicity, “Center for Hellenic Studies Colloquia” 5 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001). Helen Lovatt - 9789004335370 Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 07:15:11AM via free access Caroline Lawrence’S “ROMAN MYSTERIES” 413 East both with Persian urbanity and lack of freedom, and with Colchian barba- rism. How does the North fit into this? What about Africa?7 A surprisingly large part of the Roman world could be defined as “Eastern” when the rhetoric fit the situation. In some ways, ideas of East and West can be mapped onto ideas of periphery and centre, except for the prevalence of the topos of “noble barbarian” applied to Northern/Germanic tribes.8 One of the defining features of the Roman Empire is its incorporation of multiple ethnicities and its cosmopolitanism.9 How do these complex nego- tiations between ideas of East and West play out in receptions of Rome for children? Does the child’s concern with identity allow for deep exploration? Or must the children’s author simplify in order to comfort? How in particular does Caroline Lawrence represent Roman rhetorics of identity in her series for children? The “Roman Mysteries” consist of seventeen volumes, covering the period of Roman history from the accession of Titus and the eruption of Vesuvius to the death of Titus and the accession of Domitian. The overarching story line follows a quest to return free-born children, who have been kidnapped by slavers, to their families, and ranges widely across the Roman Empire, starting in Ostia, moving to Rome itself, and then on to Greece, North Africa, Egypt, and Asia Minor. The four protagonists each have their own quest for identity: Flavia Gemina must come to terms with her role as a woman, as well as reconciling that role with her (obviously anachronistic) desire to be a detective (to have public agency and help people). Although her mother is dead, she does not search for a mother figure; instead she must come to terms with what is ex- pected of women, with the restrictions of marriage and the dangers of death in childbirth. Jonathan, her neighbour, begins by searching for his mother (lost in the sack of Jerusalem) and ends by searching for his nephew (apparently kidnapped), while dealing with the effects of the destruction of the Jewish nation on his family and himself. Nubia, Flavia’s slave girl, searches for her home and remaining family after she was captured by slavers in North Africa, and for a sense of meaning and security in her life. Lupus, a beggar boy whom the three others adopt, searches for his mother and his home, and a place in society for 7 On Greece and Africa, see Daniel Orrells, Gurminder K. Bhambra, and Tessa Roynon, eds., African Athena: New Agendas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); on Roman attitudes, see Paolo Asso, Ideas of Africa in the Roman Literary Imagination (forthcoming). 8 For a recent take on Greeks and barbarians, see Kostas Vlassopoulos, Greeks and Barbarians (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). 9 On Rome as world city, see Catharine Edwards and Greg Woolf, eds., Rome the Cosmopolis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). Helen Lovatt - 9789004335370 Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 07:15:11AM via free access 414 Lovatt someone with a disability, after his tongue is cut out by his vengeful uncle, a slaver and the murderer of his father. The inclusion of four different heroes, boys and girls, members of excluded minorities and the moneyed elite, able- bodied, mentally unstable, and disabled, was a deliberate move by Lawrence to give as many young readers as possible a character with whom to identify. It also allows for a multicultural and postcolonial take on Roman imperialism, even if the violent and disturbing nature of many of the story lines is offset by the comforts of clearly good and bad characters, definite solutions to the mysteries, and an emphasis on the softer side of Roman society.

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