Aflred Duggan's 1959 novel Founding Fathers begins at the earliest days of the city of Rome, specifically the creation of a town by two brothers, Romulus and Remus and the bloody outcome of that founding (sorry for the 2700+ year spoiler!). The novel includes that fateful event, the capture of the Sabine Women, and the issues of succession after King Romulus.
What really stood out for me in this book however, was its shifting cast of protagonists, including Latins, Sabines, Etruscans, and Greeks, both used as a way to show the early days of the city from different viewpoints, and also to show how the city truly was greater than any of its individual citizens.
By following each of these characters, the strength of the city, its citizens clearly comes to the foreground. The novel moves quickly and does introduce many setting and institutions that will later play a large part in the history of what many call The Eternal City.
I found the book off of a list by David Maclaine at Historical Novels - you can see the list here, and having just spent three years reading his curated list of Ancient Greece, I found this to be a fascinating first read of the Ancient Romans, and although I'll be reading off of this list for the next four years, if Founding Fathers is any indication of the quality of books, I'm going to have a really good time with it.
Last month I read Gillian Bradshaw's The Sun's Bride, a novel of Rhodes in Ancient Greece and the final book in a 36-book list I'd been reading my way through for the last three years.
First of all, a big thanks to David Maclaine, for both putting together a really great list of historical novels set in Ancient Greece which cover both the Hellenic and Hellenistic periods. Secondly, a big thanks to Mr. Maclaine for following up that list with a 50-book list of historical novels covering Ancient Rome - the reading of which is my reward for finishing the first batch.
Although written before The Sand Reconner, Bradshaw's The Sun's Bride was a great way to finish off this series of books - it follows a young man named Isokrates and digs really deep into the subject of pirates in the ancient world and Rhodes business as pirate hunters. The novel has a lot of action and adventure, as well as a really great female lead in Dionysia, a character who starts out as a damsel in distress but then becomes much more interesting as the story progresses.
A really great read and if you are interested in visiting Ancient Greece through historical fiction, I can certainly vouch for the list as well.
...and here we are, another year older, another year done.
2018 was a pretty great one for me, I started work sitting on the Board of Governors for a University, finished a reading list I've been working on for three years, and helped our oldest child move into her first new home.
Although I haven't been as consistent here as I was in previous years, I wanted to take a quick moment to say thanks to everyone who still checks in and Happy New Years!
Image Credit:
https://www.fastweb.com/college-scholarships/articles/college-scholarships-2019-edition
