As you can probably tell by the lack of new blog entries over the past couple months, it’s been a pretty insane summer here. Work—my real job, as it were—just took up a lot of my time lately. Go figure! What free time I did manage to scrape together for non-work-related activities, I generally invested in my next novel. That work, I’m happy to say, bore fruit recently with the completion of a first draft. Now, since I owe it to my editor by mid to late October, I’ve got a lot to do in a short time. That said, I should be on track to have the book—a sequel to “Q.Fulvius: Debt of Dishonor”—on bookshelves with the coming of the New Year.
All that work, however, the research, the writing, all of it, has left me perpetually wandering mentally in and out of the modern world we live in. A writer of fiction—especially historical fiction—finds him or herself naturally immersed in the world in which they write. More the pity, of course, for the poor characters we force to endure horrible circumstances, virtually daring them—for the pleasure of our readers, I might add—to find a way out. Yet that immersion into another world, in some cases very different from the one in which we all live, can be fairly jarring.
As an example, my next work, as with its predecessor, takes place during a time of indescribable crisis for the Roman Republic. Not yet an empire, not assured, yet, of wider success in the Mediterranean, the period from 218-201 BC characterized as the 2nd Punic War with Carthage, was a pivotal time for the Italian city state. Invaded by an incredibly gifted commander, none other than darling of military history Hannibal Barca, with the financial backing of the region’s strongest trade economy and greatest mineral wealth, Rome, late in the 3rd Century BC was in a tough place.
Had Hannibal succeeded, crushing the rising power of Rome and ending the Republic’s bid for preeminence if not outright domination, our world today might be very different indeed. On the other hand, because Rome did find a way to outlast, if not out fight, Hannibal, the Roman empire that followed would put its stamp on everything we know from modern languages to conceptions of religion, from engineering to art, from trade to how we conduct diplomacy and wage war. Everything hinged on this singular moment in time, Carthage’s only real shot at putting down what must have seemed a very rabid Roman wolf.
And the Republic did indeed rise to the occasion, again and again pooling more soldiers, more leaders, and more resources to throw against Hannibal’s seemingly invincible army. Yet those efforts were—at least for the first few years—rewarded only with defeat and massacres on a scale never seen before. I believe I mentioned it in a previous posting, but between 218 and 216, Rome lost some 138,000 casualties fighting Hannibal. A truly astounding figure for what amounted to a city state plus a few Italian allies. No matter how you cut it, by the end of August 216, Rome was in serious trouble … and in danger of losing it all. Three hundred years of history, development, consolidation, all for nothing if a solution to the Hannibal problem couldn’t be found.
The city was panicked—to say nothing of the countryside—and otherwise erstwhile Roman allies broke ranks and sought to cut their own deals with the victorious Carthaginian general. Rome, for the first time in its history, threw out the requirements for land ownership and conscripted criminals, slaves, and the very poor into hastily put-together legions. Everyone expected the worst. Everyone—even Hannibal—thought that this just might be it. The end of the line. You just can’t overstate the danger to Rome at this time, nor the lengths to which the Senate might go to keep the boat afloat.
This was the setting into which I dropped my man Fulvius and the current work continues his story. Rome’s plight gets marginally better with the defense of Nola in 216, then so much worse when Philip V of Macedonia throws in with Carthage against Rome. The Republic’s recent encroachment into the Macedonian sphere of influence—particularly along the coast of Illyria in what is modern day Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, and Albania—threatened Philip’s core interests and it seemed that for the moment Hannibal was ensuring that Rome’s legions were busy elsewhere.
The excitement and opportunity Hannibal’s sixteen-year pillage of Southern Italy presented to a Macedonian ruler already struggling to maintain that which Alexander the Great had left him in Europe, must have been intense. In 214 then, Macedonia commenced a naval invasion of Illyria, compounding the already tough place Rome found itself trying to deal with a brilliantly led Carthaginian army continually rampaging around the countryside. The Roman Senate was forced to divert funds and forces much needed to keep Hannibal at bay, to protect Roman gains won during the 219 war against Illyria.
This situation left Hannibal threatening Rome for over a decade while the Roman general Scipio ripped apart the economic foundation of Carthage in far-away Hispania. Philip’s attempt to take advantage of the situation and detach Roman territories in Illyria complicated things for Rome, but also for the Illyrians. The Illyrian tribes were, ostensibly at least, allied to Rome, a status forced upon them following the 2nd Illyrian War in 219. They found themselves in the rather uncomfortable position of being sandwiched between rising, expansionist powers to both their East and West. From the Illyrian perspective, since the war would be fought in and around their homeland, regardless of which side emerged victorious, the winning state would probably end up slicing off yet another piece of Illyrian territory as a war trophy.
This is the world in which Fulvius lives, or at least struggles to live. The near universal sense of unease pervading the period of the 2nd Punic War in Italy and nearby lands colors nearly everything he encounters and creates a wonderfully complex milieu for a writer of historical fiction.
That said, and finally circling back to the concept of mentally jumping into and out of other “worlds”, it can be a bit jarring to go from hours spent in Fulvius’s crazy, blood-soaked world to the modern one with all our conveniences and seeming assurance that, yes, tomorrow will indeed come. While I’ve truly enjoyed the process of writing this story, the differences between the two worlds—at that specific time and place in Rome’s history—couldn’t be greater. I will say that through it all I’ve managed to maintain my sanity—what remains of it, anyway—though my wife may beg to differ.
In the end, however, I think you’ll truly enjoy the result as my favorite Roman miscreant navigates the insanity of life in those perilous times. More-to-follow, certainly, as I get closer to a publication date and, potentially, as with the first book, I’ll post a short teaser here on the website at some point. Till then, enjoy the cooler temperatures and get ready for just a little more Fulvius.
Ready or not … here he comes!
M. G. Haynes