The Annals of Ancient Rome

by Paul Doherty

Genres: Historical Fiction; Historical Mysteries; Traditional Mysteries

Synopsis

Under a full moon, three warriors tell their tale of ghosts, mystery and death... The Annals of Ancient Rome features a new, exclusive short story from the master historian, Paul Doherty. Perfect for fans of Lindsey Davis and Steven Saylor. Includes tasters from Paul Doherty's other Roman titles including Murder Imperial, The Song of the Gladiator, The Queen of the Night and Murder's Immortal Mask. Under the full moon, a fire blazes to ward off the evil dead, and the spirits of four old warriors have come to tell their ghost story. It is a tale of battle, of death, and of Carinus the Thracian gladiator and his enemy, the Emperor Domitian, whose souls wander the streets of Rome... both for good and for evil. What readers are saying about Paul Doherty: ' It's short, it's dark, it's gory ' ' Five stars ' 'Paul Doherty is a synonym for quality and entertainment '

Release date: April 7, 2016

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 130

Sample

The Romans believed firmly in ghosts. They celebrated two great festivals in their honour: the Parentalia, held for ten days in February, and the Lemuria, which took place over three days during May. During the latter, the head of each household would walk barefoot through his dwelling in the dead of night, throwing black beans over his shoulder and saying at least nine times, ‘Ghosts of our ancestors depart’. He was not to look around, as the ghosts would be trailing behind him picking up the beans!

They had every right to be fearful. Ghosts could turn nasty. The Emperor Caligula, mad as a box of frogs, was eventually assassinated, his corpse given a clumsy cremation in the Lamia gardens in Rome. According to the writer Suetonius, this led to a fearful haunting, ‘where no night passed without some terror’. The Emperor Nero, just as bad and just as mad, believed he was constantly haunted by his mother, whom he’d murdered. The Emperor Otho was visited at night by the ghost of his murdered rival Galba, whilst Caracalla, the fratricide, was haunted by the demented spirits of both his father and his brother. Roman ghosts intervened to summon and advise, as Brutus’s own spirit did, warning that fierce republican how they would meet again on the battlefield at Philippi, where Brutus would be defeated and so take his own life.

The Colosseum would be a logical setting for ghosts. Dio Cassius reports how this great amphitheatre was built by the Flavian emperors Vespasian and his two sons Titus and Domitian (AD 69–96). This stupendous killing ground was financed by the plunder from that most sacred of places, the Holy of Holies in the Temple at Jerusalem. Many thought that both the Flavians and their great showpiece were cursed because of this. The bloody spectacles staged at the amphitheatre deepened the darkness of what one writer called ‘that house of blood’. The Emperor Titus opened the Colosseum with games that lasted a hundred days, with five thousand animals being killed in a single day and thousands of gladiators matched against each other. The fall of Rome and the adoption of the Christian faith led to the end of these gruesome spectacles. Nevertheless, the Colosseum conti. . .