Bruce Macbain was born long, long ago in Chicago, Illinois, the only child of a chorus girl and a public relations man—a fact which had surprisingly little effect on his future calling. As a child, he had an overactive imagination, squandering whole days (when other boys were at the playground working on their jump shot) reading science fiction and history. Greek and Roman history held a special fascination for him. He still holds the world's record for number of times seeing Quo Vadis: seven. This led, inevitably it would seem, to acquiring a masters degree in Classical Studies and a doctorate in Ancient History.
As an assistant professor of Classics, he taught courses in Late Antiquity and Roman religion—which is a particular interest of his—and published a few impenetrable scholarly monographs, one of which can still be purchased from Amazon for the incredibly low price of $150.00, used—a real bargain! He eventually left academe and turned to teaching English as a second language, a field he was trained in while serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Borneo in the 60s.
Bruce has come late to fiction writing. Roman Games is his first published novel. Earlier works, which reside in his virtual bottom drawer, are two novels about the Vikings and an unfinished novel about Shanghai in the 20s. He is determined that these will see the light of day someday. But in the meantime he is at work on The Bull Slayer, in which Pliny, now governor of the province of Bithynia-Pontus, faces off against massive corruption and the machinations of another sinister cult.
Bruce also does a bit of book reviewing for the Historical Novels Review and ForeWord magazine. You can read some of his reviews here.
AUTHOR Q & A
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You have an academic background. |
Yes, I used to teach Greek and Roman history at Boston University.
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So you've written both scholarly prose and fiction; which is harder? |
Fiction without a doubt. Academic writing is allowed to be dull. With a historical novel you do all the same research and then have to turn it into an interesting story. Also, your audience is much wider. You need to give them the background information they need to enjoy the story in its historical context.
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When you write fiction is your "inner academic" ever at war with your "inner novelist"? |
Always. It's always a tug of war between adhering strictly to the known facts and shaping a dramatically satisfying plot. I think every historical novelist fights this battle and we all fall somewhere on a spectrum between factual and fanciful. Certainly, in Roman Games I've introduced some story elements which I can't justify from the sources. But I always try to describe events that could have happened and create characters who authentically reflect their time.
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Then what do you think is the historical novelist's responsibility to the reader? |
To confess his sins. I read historical novels both to be entertained and hopefully to learn something about a period or a character that I may know little about. I appreciate it when the author appends a note at the end telling me exactly what is true and what is invention. I don't think that detracts from one's enjoyment of the novel.
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Do you do that in Roman Games? |
Absolutely.
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What about your tastes in reading. Have you always been a mystery lover? |
As a kid, I was much more into science fiction. I cut my teeth on Edgar Rice Burroughs' A Princess of Mars and its many sequels. If nothing else, they enlarged my vocabulary. Greensward, escarpment—wonderful words, although I seldom find an opportunity to use them. As a teenager I began to read historical novels too—Scaramouche, Prince of Foxes, Captain from Castile. I know I'm dating myself here. I only came to mysteries later but these days they are the bulk of what I read. And every time I read one I learn something new about the craft.
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How do you account for the great popularity of the Roman mysteries in recent years? |
Well, I think credit is due to Lindsey Davis, who kicked it off with The Sliver Pigs back in 1989. Then, of course, one has to mention Steven Saylor. And after him about a dozen others who have gotten on the bandwagon. All excellent writers. Perhaps the genre's popularity is due to the fact that we readers think we understand the Romans and see a lot of ourselves in them. It's interesting how few popular novels have been written about the ancient Greeks; the Greeks are much harder to "get."
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Romans have always been popular with moviegoers from Quo Vadis to Ben Hur to Spartacus and right up through Ridley Scott's Gladiator. Does Hollywood get the Romans right? |
No, not really, although I love all those movies. There is something that I call the Hollywood Roman. There's a kind of metaculture of costumes, sets, stock scenes, gestures which has less to do with ancient reality than with newsreels of Nazi and Fascist rallies of the 30s and 40s. The raised arm salute, for instance. Hollywood thought it was Roman because Mussolini and Hitler thought it was Roman. It isn't, as far as we know.
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You have spent many years with the Romans both as scholar and author; do you like them? |
The Romans are not an easy people to like. The Greeks hated them. They found them to be humorless, arrogant, cruel, corrupt, and utterly lacking in artistic taste. It's hard to argue with that verdict. The Romans are more to be admired than loved. That said, there are a few individual Romans—and Pliny is certainly one—who come across as genial, tolerant, and intellectually curious. The kind of person you would actually like to have had dinner with.
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How would you describe Pliny's character? |
We know more about Pliny as a person than we do about most figures from antiquity because he was a great letter writer. Through his letters we see many facets of the man. He was a Roman senator and a lawyer with a successful, if not brilliant, career in the imperial administration. He was a landowner with a beautiful villa on the Italian coast. He was a literary dilettante. He was rather vain, rather fussy. At the same time, conscientious and honest. He was curious about the natural—and supernatural—world. He was a very social animal, he had hundreds of friends. His most endearing qualities are his love for his young wife, Calpurnia; his generosity—he endowed a scholarship fund for the boys and girls of his home town; and his humanity towards his slaves and freedmen in an age when that was not common.
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You mentioned his wife, Calpurnia. She was only fourteen, half his age when they married. |
Yes, that was common practice in the ancient world, as it is in many parts of the underdeveloped world today. But the marriage seems to have been a real love match. His letters to her, when they were apart, are extraordinary, absolutely gushing.
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Coming back to you as an author, have you written fiction set in other historical periods besides Rome? |
Years ago I embarked on a trilogy of novels about the Viking world. The hero, Odd Thorvaldsson, is a young Icelander whose adventures take him ultimately to Constantinople where he serves in the Emperor's bodyguard. Two of the novels are completed and I'm bound and determined to finish the third and see them published some day.
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To wrap up, what's next for Pliny and Martial? |
Sadly, for Martial this is the end of the road. As much as I love him as a character, the fact is he returned to Spain and died not many years after the events described in Roman Games. In my next novel we jump ahead about ten years to when Pliny was governor of the province of Bithynia-Pontus in Asia Minor. His partner in detection this time is Suetonius, the author of The Twelve Caesars. Suetonius did, in fact, serve under Pliny. If you've read or seen the Masterpiece Theater version of I Claudius, then you know that Suetonius, Robert Graves' main source, had a decided bent toward witty and salacious gossip. I think readers will enjoy him. And I might add too that Calpurnia, now a grown woman of twenty-four occupies a major place in the story.
Read about Roman Games
Read Chapter One
Read about Pliny's world: background, sources, map, and pictures
