The Roman Empire

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Book Reviews

Write Your Own Roman Story TOP BOOK CHOICE

Beth Brooke, Dave Martin & Ian Dawson (John Murray, 2001)

Many of the lessons learned during the EACH historical fiction project have been incorporated into this innovative book. It is designed to help students to write their own historical fiction. It does this by giving them explicit guidance on how to write interesting settings, characters and plots. It teaches them how to use the writers’ techniques of simile, alliteration and the careful choice of strong verbs, adverbs and adjectives.

Throughout students are presented with a range of historical sources, both visual and written, from which to draw accurate historical conclusions. Using these students learn about aspects of life in the Roman Empire such as food, buildings, entertainment, work and religion The end results are historical stories that are both interesting to read and historically convincing.

You can also use this book as a template for setting up historical fiction writing tasks set in other historical periods for your students. See for example the work of Gary Hillyard on the Industrial Revolution.


Here Lies Arthur, Philip Reeve (Scholastic, 2007)TOP BOOK CHOICE

Here Lies Arthur is a thought provoking, highly imaginative and very well written treatment of the legend of King Arthur. Set around AD 500 the story is narrated by Gwyrna, servant of Myrddin, and in it Philip Reeve conjures up a compelling view of post Roman Britain. In his author’s note he writes that, “Here Lies Arthur is not a historical novel, …” and points out that, “Very little historical evidence survives from fifth and sixth century Britain.”  However, he has clearly achieved what Jill Paton Walsh would characterise as a ‘good book’.  She wrote of historical fiction, “The writer may invent characters, conversations, circumstances, but if the book is a good one, the invention will all be with the grain of the known historical evidence, and will illuminate.” And that is what this book does superbly. In the extract below Arthur and his warriors arrive for the first time in Aqua Sulis,

The riders cross a place called the forum, which has no weeds at all, just a dried up fountain and a prosperous looking market. Hogs squeal and jostle in a pen of hurdles. Pewter smiths are at work in an open fronted shop. There’s a smell of blood from a pillared building which has been turned into butcher’s shambles; gutted carcases hanging up in the shade under the portico. Behind the stalls and the haze of blue smoke from the food sellers, tall stone walls tower up like sea cliffs. There are fine buildings here, and some are in good repair. One is a big old church, but you don’t have to look too hard at it to see that it was a temple once, dedicated to the Romans’ emperor, who’d been their god too.

The sense of decay here is palpable yet so lightly written (Compare it to the forum description in Write Your Own Roman Story to see the change and continuity). Whether you teach the Roman Empire or not this is a must for your school library, so talk to your librarian. And, if you are considering your students writing their own Roman historical fiction, this book provides a quarry of well drawn characters and settings for modelling. But, more importantly than those, this is a book that students will enjoy and which has something to say to them about the world they live in. It is no accident that it won the prestigious Carnegie Medal in 2008.

 

Victoria: Born to be a warrior TOP BOOK CHOICE

Frances Hendry (Hodder, 2004)

The first in a three part adventure featuring the character Victoria, half Roman, half Iceni. It is set in Roman Britain in 61 AD and through Victoria's eyes we see the Boudiccan revolt and its aftermath. An entirely convincing story that wears its history lightly. Not only is it a good read but also it has the potential for helping teachers to model historical fiction writing for their pupils and would thus be a good resource for those using Write Your Own Roman Story as part of a study of the Roman Empire. The sequel, Victrix, follows Victoria through her training as a gladiator.

  • Victrix, Triumph in the Roman Arena, Frances Hendry (Hodder, 2004).
  • Victrix, The Supreme Warrior, Frances Hendry (Hodder, 2005). The third title in the series charting the adventurous career of Victoria/Victrix, a half Roman, half Iceni young woman. Now she is in Nero's Rome.

 

The Thieves of Ostia TOP BOOK CHOICE

Caroline Lawrence (Orion Books, 2001)

Aimed at readers from 8 -12 and entirely suitable for Year 7 students this detective story is set in Ostia, the port of Rome, in 79AD. The heroine, Flavia, is involved in an adventure that begins with the discovery of a neighbour's decapitated dog. The setting is convincing and the historical detail does not get in the way of the interesting story. This book, and its sequels (see below) are proving very popular in schools. (You might want to direct your students to the author’s web site where they will find an online short story, or visit it yourself or even invite the author into your school.)

  • The Secrets of Vesuvius
  • The Pirates of Pompeii
  • The Assassins of Rome
  • The Dolphins of Laurentum
  • The Twelve Tasks of Flavia Gemina
  • The Enemies of Jupiter
  • The Gladiators from Capua
  • The Colossus of Rhodes
  • The Fugitive from Corinth
  • The Sirens of Surrentum
  • The Charioteer of Delphi
  • The Slave-girl from Jerusalem

    To illustrate the value of these titles as models for your own pupils' writing take a look at this character description from the last book listed.

    • Flavia thought Miriam was the most beautiful girl she had ever seen. With her glossy dark curls, huge violet eyes and creamy skin, Jonathan’s sister could stop a column of legionaries dead in their tracks. Last month she had actually caused a collision between two mule-carts just inside the Roman Gate; even at eight months pregnant, she was so breathtaking that the drivers had not been able to keep their eyes off her.

    Flavia knew that Miriam hated such attention from men. That was why she usually pulled her palla over her head like a modest matron. But here in her father’s house she went unveiled. Wearing a dark-blue stola and sitting on the red and orange striped divan, her beauty was ripe and luminous.

    Flavia sighed. Miriam was not only beautiful, but she was kind and compassionate. She was also a skilled midwife. Even though she herself was heavily pregnant, she still attended the births of poor women and female slaves who could not afford a doctor.

    How much we have learned about Miriam before she has even spoken. And that of course is a further device your students can use. What a character says, and how they say it, tells the reader a lot about them.

Teacher research into student reactions to the novels of Rosemary Sutcliff

Alun Hicks and Dave Martin report on their findings in 1995.

The Each historical fiction project began by looking at historical fiction in the medieval period. After the progress made in this period, the project moved on to look at possibilities in the Roman Empire. Set during the Roman Empire are eight novels by Rosemary Sutcliff. From these, we selected four that we saw as having greatest potential:

Rosemary Sutcliff is a difficult but rewarding writer: "Her major books have combined compelling narrative power with the exploration of important and absorbing themes." John Rowe Townsend's comment exemplifies the sort of admiration that librarians and writers for children commonly declare for Rosemary Sutcliff. Teachers, however, know that individual young readers rarely choose her books. Modern readers are neither compelled by the narrative nor drawn into the themes. Some of the reasons might appear to be obvious: how can Rosemary Sutcliff possibly compete with the current young adolescent's choice, "Point Horror" or "Sweet Valley High", with their 'soap' plots and contemporary concerns?

When we decided to explore the reactions of secondary age school students to Rosemary Sutcliff's stories we had certain expectations. We expected to find some adolescent boredom with 'outdated' times, and perhaps a little irritation with rather wordy prose descriptions. We did not anticipate the very real difficulties that several readers had in getting into the stories in the first place.

We should first declare that this 'research' was low-key. We 'borrowed' sixteen year 7 and year 8 volunteer students (aged from 11-12 years) from two Dorset schools. We met them in two groups of eight and briefly introduced them to some notions of reader response. When readers read they might anticipate, think back, make pictures, be confused, think of other stories, relate to their own lives, empathise, sympathise or make judgements. Equipped with some ideas for thinking about stories plus a tape-recorder and tape each, all students went off with a copy of a Rosemary Sutcliff novel. They left us with a promise to read their chosen story and an intention to return in three weeks with the book read and comments recorded.

From listening to those tapes we learned:

When children did respond positively they almost always talked admiringly of Rosemary Sutcliff's ability to describe a scene so that you could picture what it was like to be there, whether 'there' was the gladiators' arena or the perfume shop. They can feel the sand beneath their feet; smell the perfume in their nostrils. This sense of period and of empathising with historical people is something historical fiction manages to achieve. Nigel, in Mark of the Horse Lord can imagine the "dust and sand floating in the air", can feel that he is a part of the story, "we're all sitting round". Clive talks about the "atmosphere" and "tension", "you're right in there".

Other positive responses tended to occur when readers took from their story something related to their own experience: Chloe enjoyed the chariot race in Eagle of the Ninth because it contained reference to ponies.

However, many readers gave up before the end. Quite simply, the various difficulties presented by the stories prevented all bar one reader from grasping the narrative thread:

* physical location was made doubly difficult by the way the characters moved around Roman Britain and the sheer difficulty of mentally mapping such settlements as Rutupiae or Isca Dumnorium

In short, the difficulties manifested themselves on two levels: unfamiliarity and difficulty with words and names, and unfamiliarity with the Roman society so culturally different from our own.

However, the greatest obstacle was often the sheer volume of information being given to the reader, as the extract below from The Mark of the Horse Lord shows:

Phaedrus was indeed very far away, back beyond the four years that he had been a sword-fighter in the Gladiators' School at Corstopitum, and the two years before that; back in the small pleasant house in Londinium on the night his father died... Ulixes the Arcadian, importer of fine Greek wines. He had never owned Phaedrus for his son, only for a slave, the son of Essylt who kept house for him.

The difficulties are apparent: two unfamiliar places, two new characters; complex relationships (what does "owned" mean here?); two nationalities; a 'flashback' ("far away"), and reverse chronology. For teachers keen on using historical fiction in school two contrasting responses to this research are possible:

Accept it: Rosemary Sutcliff's stories are not for a mass, modern, young audience.

Do something about it: some of the issues arising from this research are issues facing any teacher who chooses to teach a difficult but 'worthwhile' text. Our evidence arises from a 'worst-case scenario' - a child alone, reading an historical novel disconnected from a study of the period. The teacher can use the sharing of a novel allied with sympathetic teaching strategies to 'get across' an outwardly difficult story. The teacher of English working with the teacher of history can do much to bridge those cultural and knowledge gaps that make such stories inaccessible.

Our inclination, unsurprisingly, is to take the second option. Now we know more about the difficulties children face in Rosemary Sutcliff's stories we feel well placed to tackle them.

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