The upcoming sequel to Ridley Scott’s Gladiator looks brutal to man and beast alike. It arrives in cinemas on 15 November, but we think crime fiction lovers interested in Ancient Rome might be drawn to something a little more… subtle. Here to help us is classicist Fiona Forsyth, author of five crime series set in Ancient Rome…

Even Shakespeare couldn’t resist a good, juicy Roman murder – in Julius Caesar, the victim himself unwittingly noticed his would-be murderer. “Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look,” says Caesar. “He thinks too much. Such men are dangerous.”

As this and many other stories attest, murder and Romans are a match made in Elysium. Lots of cold hard iron, lots of gruesomeness and the Empress Livia poisoning her way to the top – all great mystery material.

For me, as a classics teacher, the revelation came when I discovered Lindsey Davis and Steven Saylor. The Silver Pigs by Lindsey Davis came out in 1989, while Saylor’s Gordianus the Finder first appeared in Roman Blood in 1991 – both excellent reads. I began to look for other books that combined crime and the Romans, passing my finds around the group of work colleagues who had formed an ancient crime fiction reading group. We just loved murders – as long as they were Roman. 

So what do Roman mystery authors do that is different? Just like every other crime fiction writer they must devise a plot and present the reader with an interesting investigator. In those days, there were no detectives as the modern world would know them. But a good historical fiction writer also must make the reader feel that they have entered a world that is different yet understandable, realistic and fascinating. They must do their research carefully because historical fiction readers check all the details. There are problems such as no police force and a lack of forensics so dear to modern crime aficionados.

To top it all, the Roman crime writer must do all this in a world where the past is not just a foreign country, it is an alien world which involves some very unpleasant things. Today’s readers are going to find slavery an abhorrent concept, for example. Yet the Roman world of Vespasian or Augustus or Caesar ran on slavery. There is no getting around the fact that the Romans loved gladiatorial combat and the killing of wild animals in the arena for entertainment, and the list could go on, with few sources from the time expressing anything but acceptance of these practices throughout Roman society.

Combining a crime story with this complex and at times unlovely historical background is not easy, but many writers manage it. Here are five of the best classic Roman crime fiction series:

1 – SPQR by John Maddox Roberts

Beginning with The King’s Gambit this lively series focuses on the extremely posh Decius Caecilius Metellus, who belongs to a family at the heart of Roman politics. The events of the last 50 years of the Roman Republic are depicted with pace and humour, and Decius’ brand of empire-weary cynicism fits the era perfectly. So far, Decius has reached the dictatorship of Julius Caesar in the 40s BCE.
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2 – Roma sub rosa by Steven Saylor

Saylor sets his series in the same era as Roberts, but his hero is the middle-class and philosophical Gordianus. We see the young lawyer Cicero climbing his way to the top, as Gordianus first works for him as an investigator then observes him as an increasingly distant acquaintance. Gordianus is employed by some of the highest in Roman society and he isn’t impressed by most of them!
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3 – The Marcus Corvinus mysteries by David Wishart

In his book Ovid, David Wishart created a scion of the noble Corvinus clan, an idle lad-about town, Marcus, who lives at the start of the first century. Marcus has seen the rise of the emperor Tiberius and wants nothing to do with politics, but he can’t seem to avoid being drawn into some very dodgy conspiracies, and a deliciously evil empress Livia features in several of the earlier tales.
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4 – Marcus Didius Falco by Lindsey Davis

Falco is a lower-class Roman from the unfashionable end of the Aventine, with a family of interfering mother and sisters, dodgy father and useless brothers-in-law. Under the Emperor Vespasian in the 70s AD, Falco is an informer, the nearest thing Rome had to a modern private eye. It’s not a popular profession, but Falco himself is a very well-drawn and interesting character.
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5 – The Medicus series by Ruth Downie

Downie’s hero Ruso lives a good 50 years later and works as an army doctor when we first meet him in Medicus. The series is mostly set in Britannia but occasionally moves further afield, as Ruso introduces his slave-girl, and later wife, Tilla to the delights of Gaul and even Rome itself. Ruso and Tilla are superb characters and Ruso’s medical and army background is used to great effect.
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And if you get through all of these, for Roman Britain fans, I recommend Rosemary Rowe, Jane Finnis and Jacquie Rogers, while Caroline Lawrence’s Roman Mysteries are a good introduction for younger readers. And then you can move on to the world of Ancient Greece…

After a career teaching classics, Fiona Forsyth started writing when her family moved to Qatar. Now back in the UK, she has published five novels set in Ancient Rome. Her latest  book, Poetic Justice, starring the Latin love poet Ovid, is published by Sharpe Books.