A COIN FOR THE FERRYMAN, interesting exploration of timeless male arrogance

A COIN FOR THE FERRYMAN
MEGAN EDWARDS
Imbrifex Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$17.95 paperback, available now

Rating: 3.9* of five

The Publisher Says: The story can now be told.

In 1999, an elite interdisciplinary team headed by Nobel laureate Andrew Danicek gathered in California to carry out a ground-breaking time-travel experiment. While the rest of the world remained unaware, Julius Caesar was successfully transported from the last day of his life to a specially-constructed covert facility. Four days of conversation with historians and Latin scholars were planned, followed by Caesar’s return to the moment from which he was extracted. But despite the team’s meticulous efforts to maintain secrecy and plan for all possible exigencies, a kidnap attempt plunges Caesar into peril. Fully aware that the future of civilization may hang in the balance, one team member must summon strength she didn’t know she possessed to return Caesar to the Ides of March.

The shocking details of Caesar's visit and its effect on subsequent events have been protected by draconian nondisclosure agreements....until now.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: I'd wondered, as I set out to read this time-travel/alternate history story, if I was instead going to get an academia/tech sector skulduggery thriller-lite. In a way I did; but that's how the author seduced me into investing in the characters. Sneaky sneaky, you storytelling devil you...but also very clever.

I got invested in the people, their desires and foibles, before I was confronted with the disbelief hurdle of physical time travel. (It's not possible until our energy budget expands multiple times current (!) limitations.) I might've never finished this quite enjoyable book had that not been the order of operations. I'm willing to go into fantasyland if I'm following people I've become interested in.The infighting and interpersonal politicking kept me invested and ready for more.

Then Caesar, a man born into pinnacles of privilege the Proud Boys can only dream of, arrives on the scene.

Never mind the technology is unrealistic...this is fiction. I was clangingly dropped to the decking by the man's apparent mental flexibility, of which there was no sign in history. See Commentarii de Bello Gallico if you doubt this. His own words, admittedly written for an audience, condemn him for a chauvinist Roman-centric genocidal maniac...out-Hitlers Hitler all day every day. Trump and his clown-car of cynical sycophants are the rankest...term used advisedly...of amateurs (kidnapping the sitting president of another country?! what could possibly go wrong?) in comparison.

Yet this era-defining man of destiny accepts the technology and the social reality...conversing with a woman he's neither related to, nor married to, nor a common whore without a blink!...of this century with apparent ease.

I don't buy it.

It caused a long hiatus in my reading. I was not best pleased by the very detailed and slightly overdone explanatory elements of the storytelling signally failing to reveal the massive cognitive shock anyone would experience in these circumstances not being addressed at all; I can certainly see not foregrounding it given the story the author wants to tell.

Hubris and overweening self-regard are blatantly on display in every era's politics and technology sectors. No progress ever made has been free of them; no disaster ever inflicted on the world and her people has ever not stemmed from them. They are present in, are central to, this narrative. It's what ultimately drew me back to finish the read in 2025. I can't say I'm over the moon or ecstatic with the read, but I liked a lot about it...Cassandra being a classicist, really, was both sticking point and advantage as the Latin bits being translated went from implausibility trap to logical extension of the character's expertise. But it was a knife's edge. That pretty much sums up my experience of the read: always on a knife's edge between a low three stars and touching the ragged edge of four stars.

You see where I settled. You'll do your own thinking about what it means, decide whether or not to include this tale of hubris and arrogance through time on your own TBR.

FOLLOWING CAESAR: From Rome to Constantinople, the Pathways That Planted the Seeds of Empire, armchair travel with the best kind of guide

FOLLOWING CAESAR: From Rome to Constantinople, the Pathways That Planted the Seeds of Empire
JOHN KEAHEY
St. Martin's Press
$30.00 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A travel narrative following three ancient roads and looking at more than two thousand years of history of Ancient Rome through the modern eye.

In 66 B.C., young, ambitious Julius Caesar, seeking recognition and authority, became the curator of the Via Appia. He borrowed significant sums to restore the ancient highway. It was a way to curry favor from Roman citizens in villages along the route, built from Rome to Brindisi between 312-191 B.C. He succeeded and rapidly grew in popularity. After achieving greatness in Rome and the far reaches of Gaul, he led armies along this road to battle enemies in Roman civil wars. And then, across the Adriatic Sea, he joined Via Appia's sister road, the Via Egnatia that began in today's Albania. Other armies followed these two roads that eventually connected Rome to Byzantium, today's Istanbul. Octavian, who became, in 27 B.C., Rome's first emperor, and his friend and later enemy Mark Antony traveled portions of both roads to defeat Caesar's murderers Brutus and Cassius at Philippi in eastern Macedonia. The great Roman statesman Cicero, the Roman poet Homer, the historian Virgil and many other notables traveled along one or both of these roads. In the first century of the Roman Empire in the earliest years of Christianity, the apostles Peter and Paul traversed portions of them. Pilgrims, seeking salvation in far-away Jerusalem, followed them as well throughout much of the Middle Ages. In the early second century A.D., the emperor Trajan charted a new coastal route between Benevento and Brindisi, later called the Via Traiana.

Today, short stretches of the original three roads can be seen in the ruins of ancient Roman cities, now preserved as archaeological wonders, and through the countryside near, and sometimes under, modern highways. Following those routes is the purpose of treading along the path that Caesar and so many others took over the early centuries. Modern eyes, seeing through the mists of more than two thousand years of history, lead the traveler along these three roads coursing through six countries between Rome and Istanbul. It is a journey full of adventure, discovery, and friendship―one one worth taking.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I enjoy history for itself, and the many present-day echoes of historical events just add texture to my pleasure. This historical-tourism book was as deeply involving to me as a standard historical narrative because the conceit...following the Roman roads...is my idea of a great adventure vacation. The author was my guide on this escape from home. It worked as well as anything could because I knew I was in experienced hands (he has written four other books on touring Italy as a history buff.)

While I was very interested in his veteran-journalist's observations of the world traversed by the Roman roads he then traversed himself, and by his reports of his companions' responses to the modern world as well as the archaeology of the paths they traveled together, I was very disappointed that the book contained NO maps or photos.

Don't let that lapse stop you from enjoying the informed, intelligent voice of this forty-five-year veteran reporter as he shares his observations of the world he's moving through. His lifelong fascination with Italy and Rome (men really *are* obsessed with Rome!) gives him a very full view of the countries and regions he takes us through. This book is one of those rare books that, just as a reading experience, solely for the way the author builds an image and creates a simile, is a pleasure to read.

That his trip in Turkey, Asia Minor that was, coincided with COVID and its joys was very evocative for him. Plenty of plagues to meditate on. His religious ruminations are interesting to my deeply, faithfully atheist self...the road network of ancient Rome, and its internal postal connections enabled thereby, are largely responsible for the spread of the religion all across the empire. (There were christians in Pompeii...they found a ROTAS square there! By 79AD there were christians in Italy!)

I do want to mention that the "Caesar" of the title is not Julius; remember that Caesar was a title during the empire, and Trajan, whose Via Traiana is followed, was also a Caesar.

Self-gifting for a lovely time on #Booksgiving, as you settle down in your favorite reading spot, a beverage and a snack close at hand...Italy is involved, there is going to be food talk...and immerse yourself in a part of the world that could not possibly be richer in cultural highlights.

One star off for the absence of photos and/or illustrations.

MORTAL REPUBLIC: How Rome Fell into Tyranny, using History to explain the present pretty convincingly

MORTAL REPUBLIC: How Rome Fell into Tyranny
EDWARD J. WATTS
Basic Books
$18.99 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Learn why the Roman Republic collapsed—and how it could have continued to thrive—with this insightful history from an award-winning author.

In Mortal Republic, prize-winning historian Edward J. Watts offers a new history of the fall of the Roman Republic that explains why Rome exchanged freedom for autocracy. For centuries, even as Rome grew into the Mediterranean’s premier military and political power, its governing institutions, parliamentary rules, and political customs successfully fostered negotiation and compromise.

By the 130s BC, however, Rome’s leaders increasingly used these same tools to cynically pursue individual gain and obstruct their opponents. As the center decayed and dysfunction grew, arguments between politicians gave way to political violence in the streets. The stage was set for destructive civil wars—and ultimately the imperial reign of Augustus.

The death of Rome’s Republic was not inevitable. In Mortal Republic, Watts shows it died because it was allowed to, from thousands of small wounds inflicted by Romans who assumed that it would last forever.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: The Mary Beard School of Skepticism About Past as Prologue is in session.

The past is no Oracle and historians are not prophets, but this does not mean that it is wrong to look to antiquity for help understanding the present.

This is intensely controversial. I am not at all sure it is true, but after reading this thoroughly researched and well sourced in the facts that we can know book, I'll put a pin in my inclination to doubt. I can enjoy this book on its factual merits quite well enough.

The author focuses his attention on the period between the victory of the Romans over Carthage in the Second Punic War, and Octavian's usurpation of power, effectively beginning the Empire. That time, its unrest and gradual normalization of political gridlock and, ultimately, violence, does bear a resemblance to the current pass in US–and world–politics.

I have no kick with that fact being pointed out. I am pretty confident the author's analysis of what led up to the events, and how what went down made the resolution of the problems seem pretty obvious. The way he has used the chapter order is, pretty clearly, tendentious...a downward slide from functioning, if troubled republic into one-man rule and autocracy just *feels* more and more inevitable as the facts we know are marshaled.

Where I go a little off his carefully laid rails is where he posits his ideas for how the slide was not inevitable, and the autocracy could've been avoided. That is allohistory which, by itself, is fine by me. But this is presented with a very authoritative air, not differentiated from the text based on facts that surrounds it, and that felt a bit like I was being led to agree without any facts or evidence that his conclusions were plausible. There can not be any such evidence or facts because that isn't how things *did* play out. I can't say he's wrong for all the same reasons.

The desire to show us how to fix the ugly, scary passage we're going through by using the past as a model makes a lot of sense. It still shouldn't be presented as being the equal of the fact-based narrative around it.

Your history-loving giftee, your anxious old uncle who just knows The End Is Nigh, will lap up this story. The good thing is that, as the facts pile up, the author hands the reader this double-edged aerçu:

No republic is eternal. It lives only as long as its citizens want it.

That is hopeful, if you believe there is a chance to warn and arm people against what is occurring; and disheartening, because look what happened to Rome.

The author is of the former opinion, and this book is the case he makes for it.

AWAKE, Pliny the Elder's final days writ large

AWAKE
HARALD VOETMANN (tr. Johanne Sorgenfri Ottosen)
New Directions
$14.95 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: In a shuttered bedroom in ancient Italy, the sleepless Pliny the Elder lies in bed obsessively dictating new chapters of his Natural History to his slave Diocles. Fat, wheezing, imperious, and prone to nosebleeds, Pliny does not believe in spending his evenings in repose: No—to be awake is to be alive. There’s no time to waste if he is to classify every element of the natural world in a single work. By day Pliny the Elder carries out his many civic duties and gives the occasional disastrous public reading. But despite his astonishing ambition to catalog everything from precious metals to the moon, as well as a collection of exotic plants sourced from the farthest reaches of the world, Pliny the Elder still takes immense pleasure in the common rose. After he rushes to an erupting Mount Vesuvius and perishes in the ash, his nephew, Pliny the Younger, becomes custodian of his life’s work. But where Pliny the Elder saw starlight, Pliny the Younger only sees fireflies.

In masterfully honed prose, Voetmann brings the formidable Pliny the Elder (and his pompous nephew) to life. Awake is a comic delight about one of history’s great minds and the not-so-great human body it was housed in.

I RECEIVED MY DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: First, read this:

Sex can be either play or labor, depending on the participant's role and reasons for taking part, but as we have eliminated the category of play, there is only one option left. Sexual activity can only be defined as a kind of labor, and all participants would do well to strive for the superior work ethic of the slaves who know they must endure it. You won't hear them cursing and fuming and acting out whole other are trying to nap—trouble springs from the perceived masters of the situation, who trust that their ejaculation, under the right circumstances, is for pleasure, and never realize that their urge is but earthly slavery imposed on them.
–and–
It's different with women. I would not go so far as to suggest that women are more shameless than men as several examples of the female pudicitia exist, but perhaps their shame os more general, shame felt on behalf of an entire species rather than the indivivual alone. Even as they indulge their shame and allow themselves to go mad with desire for bloodspattered gladiators and dusty donkey herders, it can hardly be considered personal.

It flows from there....

Pliny the Elder, a titanic figure in Western culture for his unbelievably vast (and hubristic, if you ask me) effort to contain a description of all of Creation in one encyclopedic work, is here in his subligaculum. It's a wry, ironic character who addresses us. It's not, however, a recital (perish forbid! he did poorly at those) but a polyphony of perspectives on the topic "privilege."

What the novella does at its best is bring the reader that quiet, deeply personal glow of happy recognition, that connection to the character we seek so often fruitlessly in less meditative works. What the novella does not deliver, nor in my opinion does it promist to do so, is Action. Pliny the Elder is, well...elder...when we meet him. He's suffering from what sounds to me like congestive heart failure. He's lost interest, such as he had to begin with, in the pleasures of the flesh and even the world. He's forcing himself to remain connected to the suffering planet because he does not yet KNOW EVERYTHING and that is an intolerable pain.

As someone who believed that finishing a book a day for decades would enable him to read All The Books, this is a delusion the pain of losing which I can relate to in a deeply personal way.

The other voices in the polyphony are his priggish, licentious nephew Pliny the Younger, whose very sneering judgments of his uncle are mercifully kept short...I wouldn't have been able to endure too much more of the rotten-souled grasping whoremonger!...and his slave Diocles, a youngish Greek scribe whose hands are worn out and blistered in copying Master's words as he emits them...all while he dreams of mounting, well, anyone. He can not focus on the raspy reedy wheezing bloviations of fat old Gaius Plinius Caecilius for long, not unserviced as he is! And Master is surely dying, he won't miss that silver ewer but Diocles will miss the services the professionals will give him for it!

I think of Pliny the Elder as the lunatic whose curiosity got him killed in Pompeii's eruption. Author Voetmann is a more subtle man than I can aspire to become:

I certainly do not believe that life is so valuable it must be prolonged at all costs. You who are of the opposite opinion will die nonetheless, even if your life has been prolonged by perverse acts and abominations. Therefore, let each take the following to be the soul's greatest remedy: Among all the gifts which nature has bestowed on man none surpass a timely death, and the best thing is that anyone can procure it for himself.

"Perverse acts and abominations" indeed....

This slim book comes out tomorrow, heralding the translations (at last! this is a 2010 publication!) of the other two parts of "his trilogy about mankind's inhuman drive to conquer nature," as the publisher's promotional material says. It also says this short work is at times wildly unpleasant, well actually Claire Messud said that in Harper's, but it's oddly true. The reason I say oddly is that the book's prose is never aiming for vulgarity or puerile transgressivness. It is aiming, insomuch as that feat is possible, for the world-view of man dead for almost 2,000 years rendered as comprehensible as it's possible to be...there's much of credulousness, pompously pooh-poohed in Pliny the Younger's tiresomely superior interpolations, in Pliny the Elder's worldview. His memories of Novum Comum's lake-side rituals were particularly the topic of scorn...his gardens in Tusculum, the ones Pliny the Younger swears he failed to catalog, are the source of an anecdote that sounds half-remembered and half-repurposed by the angry younger man.

I prefer to remember Pliny the Elder thus:

Greetings, Nature, mother of all things, and deign to give me your favor, I am alone among Romans in praising you in your every expression.

He loved what he possessed, and it pained him not to possess Nature utterly.

Let that sink in.

EROMENOS, the love/hate of Antinous for Hadrian told at last

EROMENOS
MELANIE J. MCDONALD
Seriously Good Books (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$3.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Eros and Thanatos converge in the story of a glorious youth, an untimely death, and an imperial love affair that gives rise to the last pagan god of antiquity. In this coming-of-age novel set in the second century AD, Antinous of Bithynia, a Greek youth from Asia Minor, recounts his seven-year affair with Hadrian, fourteenth emperor of Rome. In a partnership more intimate than Hadrian's sanctioned political marriage to Sabina, Antinous captivates the most powerful ruler on earth both in life and after death. This version of the affair between the emperor and his beloved ephebe vindicates the youth scorned by early Christian church fathers as a "shameless and scandalous boy" and "sordid and loathsome instrument of his master's lust." EROMENOS envisions the personal history of the young man who achieved apotheosis as a pagan god of antiquity, whose cult of worship lasted for hundreds of years far longer than the cult of the emperor Hadrian.

In EROMENOS, the young man Antinous, whose beautiful image still may be found in works of art in museums around the world, finds a voice of his own at last.

I RECEIVED A REVIEW COPY FROM THE AUTHOR. THANK YOU.

My Review: There have been books aplenty about, and even in the voice of, Hadrian the Emperor of Rome, but so far as I know none in the voice of his beloved Antinous of Bithynia. Antinous is portrayed in this book as he reflects on his life at its end. How and why his life is ending, if one isn't familiar with the story, is a question still of some interest to scholars, who don't have a solid consensus about causes and motivations. Hey, it's almost 2,000 years ago! No one knows *any*thing for sure at that distance in time. But Melanie McDonald creates a composed, mature voice for this important and vital character in her novel, titled after the Greek word describing Antinous's relationship to Hadrian. The course of Antinous's life, the exciting events in it, and the reasons for his long tenure as Hadrian's eromenos, are presented in swift, sure prose; the inevitable, it would seem, conclusion is very nicely handled; and the narrative frame, the temple offering of a manuscript in Serapis's sacrificial fire, gives the book a very agreeable frisson of the supernatural.

This is a first novel for both author and publisher. The degree to which this surprises me is a testament to the very high design, production, and editorial standards the publisher adhered to. I think the book is very, very well-conceived, but I know that it owes a great deal to the vision of a small, new publishing venture that it came out at all, and that it looks and feels so good in its present form.

Experiencing the joy, pain, humiliation, love, lust, and hate that Antinous feels for his old-man lover is extraordinary. That the author is a married straight lady (among other things, she was a Hawthornden Fellow in 2008 to work on this very book) makes me think she's channeling a past life! (That was a joke, Ms. McD, should you chance to read this review...I think it is, anyway....)

The book posits a reason for the mysterious death of Antinous, an event that caused Hadrian such acute agony that his final eight years were spent in a kind of mourning haze for his lost love, that had not occurred to me...an explanation that accounts for some of the strangeness of the timing of his death, which has always made me think that the hints and rumors of murder were just off. It's a valid reason, or complex of reasons, and it rings true enough that I wish it were possible to research it. (Absent time travel to the past, an unlikely development, it isn't. Drat you, Albert Einstein! I bitterly resent being poked in the back by Time's Arrow!)

My quibbles are few, the largest being that I find references made by Antinous to Christianity to be extremely unlikely to be accurate; a minor Jewish cult would not have made the radar screens of a person at such a rareified remove from ancient Palestine's nasty, squabbling inhabitants; the Christians hadn't made it big enough yet for someone not Palestinian to know the things Antinous is portrayed as knowing.

It didn't ruin the book for me, though, and I certainly hope you'll all zip right out to Amazon or somewhere and get a copy of this beautiful, well-written, and very engrossing story.