Something Old

Not everything worth reading is hot off the press. In this section, we recommend "something old" that is still well worth reading. "Something Old" can mean anything from a venerable and antique classic to a good book first published four or more years ago.     

“THE FLOWERS OF ADONIS” by Rosemary Sutcliff (first published 1969)

 

            Some months ago, in a posting called Three Novels Set in Roman Britain, I considered three historical novels by Rosemary Sutcliff (1920-1992), Eagle of the Ninth, The Silver Branch and The Lantern Bearers. I noted that Sutcliff’s prolific output was largely aimed at adolescent readers. But of her forty-odd novels, there were four or five that were intended specifically for adults. One of them I had read with pleasure. It was Sword at Sunset, a very plausible account of a Romanised Briton who fought against invading Saxons and who could have been the germ from which the legends of King Arthur grew. Having not read any of Sutcliff’s other “adult” novels, I decided to read her The Flowers of Adonis, to see if my youthful enjoyment of her work was justified.

 

The Flowers of Adonis concerns Alcibiades - or Alkibiades, as Sutcliff prefers to call him. If you know your Plutarch’s Lives, you’ll know that the Greek-speaking Plutarch organised his brief biographies as a sort of running comparison of Greece and Rome. For example, his biography of a famous Greek orator, like Demosthenes, would be followed by a biography of a famous Roman orator, Cicero. When he got to Greek Alkibiades, he paired him with the Roman Coriolanus. (You can see my account of Shakespeare’s version of Coriolanus elsewhere on this blog). Plutarch linked them because he saw them both as forceful military men who nevertheless were traitors to their country. The comparison is a little brutal. Roman Coriolanus was a haughty man who looked down on his fellow citizens and regarded them as his inferiors. Athenian Alkibiades courted, and often won, popularity. Nevertheless, both did turn against their countries for some time, although under very different circumstances. The era when Alkibiades was most famous (or infamous) was during the last phase of the Pelopponesian wars, a little before 400 BC. It was essentially a long-drawn out struggle for overlordship between the city state of Athens and the city state of Sparta and their respective allies such as Thebes and Corinth.

If you read Plutarch’s life of Alkibiades, you will find the outline of Sutcliff’s novel, although she obviously undertook much more research to get the historical details right. In brief [according to both Plutarch and Sutcliff] Alkibiades was a very handsome and very popular young man in Athens, as well as being very wealthy and a sometime disciples of Socrates. But he was also known for wild carousing and occasional boisterous practical jokes. For all that, he was made an admiral of the Athenian fleet as it set out to conquer Syracuse, in Sicily, in a bid to extend Athens’ maritime empire.

But there was a snag. He had enemies in Athens. A message was sent from Athens when he was in full voyage telling him that he had to stand trial on a charge of blasphemy. According to gossip, he and his partying mates had desecrated the sanctuary of one of the gods, and such blasphemy was a capital offence. Not wishing to be executed, Alkibiades sneaked off to Sparta, betraying Athens as he offered his military advice to the Spartan King Agis. [Sparta still had a king while by this stage Athens had a restricted form of democracy.]

Thanks to Alkibiades’ information, Spartan generals defeated the Athenians and brought Athens near to collapse. Syracuse, Corinth and other little states allied with Sparta to completely destroy the Athenian fleet. But there was another snag for Alkibiades. According to gossip (which Rosemary Sutcliffe takes as fact) the Spartan King Agis was old and feeble and incapable of begetting a child. While king and Spartan armies were away fighting, Alkibiades, a known womaniser, remained in Sparta, seduced the king’s willing wife Timea, and left her pregnant. The baby was born when King Agis returned, but Agis had been away for ten months. To save face, the king accepted the child as his own, but once again Alkibiades had made enemies, and he fled from Sparta. 

 

He now hid in the part of Persia that faced Greece. He won some favour there. He spent some years as a bandit, raiding and subduing small towns near the Hellespont, including the then-minor city Byzantium. He also acquired a very faithful mistress, the former Bythinian slave Timandra, who was to stay loyal to him until his death. Athens was able to rise again to military and naval power, though Sparta still had the upper hand. Alkibiades dreamed of being recalled to Athens, despite his treachery – and amazingly, he really was still popular enough to be recalled. He returned to Athens in triumph and was able to have the blasphemy charges against him dropped. For a short time, again given the role of admiral, he helped Athens win battles against Sparta and its navy. But bit by bit his luck ran out. He was no match for the astute Spartan general Lysander, who piece by piece destroyed the Athenian fleet, sometimes by clever deceptions, and who was finally able to besiege Athens itself and starve its inhabitants into surrender. Classic Athens was destroyed, never to rise again in its former glory, and Sparta had effectively won the Pelopponesian War.

On the run yet again, Alkibiades sought refuge under the protection of a Persian Satrap (governor of a province). Now he tried to persuade his host to incite Persia to ally with Athens and wage war on the Spartans – but the Satrap would not have a bar of it. He saw Alkibiades as a man who had betrayed first Athens, then Sparta, and who was now trying to entangle him in another war. After first advising Lysander of what he was doing, the Satrap had Alkibiades put to death.

This (with some modifications) is the story that Plutarch told and, with some fictional inventions of her own, this is essentially the story that Rosemary Sutcliff tells over 400-odd tight pages. Her novel begins and ends in Athens, on the festival when the goddess Aphrodite is believed to weep over the death of the beautiful Adonis, and when women scatter fragrant flowers through the streets. Hence that odd title The Flowers of Adonis. By making this her frame, Sutcliff is apparently lamenting the loss of Alkibiades’ beauty as a young man, his sexual potency and his charisma – for much charisma he must have had to persuade people to trust him when he so often betrayed them.

The Flowers of Adonis is told in many first-person voices, none of whom is Alkibiades himself. Sutcliff is aiming for a polyphonic effect, giving us many perspectives and hence a panoramic view of Alkibiades and how he was seen by his contemporaries. She gives her many narrators generic names. “The Citizen” is Timotheus, a lame young man who cannot leave Athens and who is therefore able to give us evidence of the way Athenians talked about Alkibiades as his reputation rose and fell and rose again over the years. “The Soldier” is Arkadius who witnesses and understands how charismatic and persuasive Alkibiades is when he rallies and leads the troops. “The Queen”, Spartan Timea, gives a first-person account of how she was infatuated with, and seduced by, Alkibiades. There are many other minor voices who speak. But the most important of all the voices, and narrating more than any other others are “The Seaman” and “The Whore”. “The Seaman” is Antiochus, the pilot who has known Alkibiades  since childhood, becomes a master strategist in Alkibiades’ naval battles, and who can read Alkibiades’ moods better than anyone. As Antiochius dies two-thirds or so through the novel, “The Whore” takes over as principal narrator. She is Alkibiades’ most constant love Timandra.

There are a number of problems with this narrative strategy. One is that (especially with “The Seaman” and “The Whore”), Sutcliff often had to use the device of her narrators just happening to overhear important plot-points being discussed by others. Another is that the various voices do not sound all that different from one another. One attempt to differentiate them doesn’t quite work. Apparently trying to show that “The Seaman” Antiochus is of a lower social class than Alkibiades, Sutcliff has him talking like a commoner – but this amounts to little more than having him say “we gets” or “I sees” instead of  “we get”, “I see” etc etc. Biggest problem, however, is that for all these witnesses, we never get to the heart of the man Alkibiades himself and his mind and motives. Because we are presented with him at two removes, we are never close to him. At times I thought how much better it would have been if told in the first person by the (ostensibly) main character Alkibiades himself, as Marguerite Yourcenar’s Memoirs of Hadrian is told.

As The Flowers of Adonis is a novel for adults, there is a moderate amount of sex. In Chapter 8, the Queen of Sparta tells of the only night when her husband attempted to engage her and was simply unable to perform. She remarks “He pulled down his tunic and came to the bed, and looked down at me; and I saw that he was shaking, through all his strong thick-set body; and I thought ‘Maybe he will kill me with this; with his striving to force his son into me against the will of his flesh’. ” She is clearly implying that the king has never had sexual intercourse with a woman, and prefers the boys he sleeps with in the Spartan barracks.

The queen goes over-the-top in Chapter 9 when  Alkibiades deflowers her: “He hurt me then for I was a virgin, having been bred up to give proof  of that to My Lord the King. And Oh! The pain was sweet! I took it and drew it up into my body, writhing and gasping beneath his thrust, until his man-spear broke through and I gave him the proof that had been meant for Agis the King.” Is this one of those romantic, adulterous affairs like Tristan and Iseult or Lancelot and Guinevere? No. It’s more like Aeneas and Dido, where the Trojan cad cruelly deserts the Queen of Carthage. When Queen Timea asks Alkibiades whether he still loves her, he replies (Chapter 10) “I loved you all last summer, and that is as long as I have ever loved any woman.”

These were reasonably curt accounts of sexual intercourse [and remember, they were written by a virginal author].  But later in the novel there is a purple patch that could almost qualify for one of those “Bad Sex awards” which hip magazines used to feature. When Alkibiades first swyves “The Whore” Timandra, who becomes his most constant love but who had long been a prostitute, she says (Chapter 12): “But when I opened my thighs for Alkibiades, it was as though it was for the first time. And when he came up into me, the great waves of his coming were made of flame, beating, beating through all the dark woman-parts of my body, filling all of me, shimmering through me like the high notes of a flute, until the shrill white sweetness was almost past my bearing; and I clung to him, while all my body seemed to melt and I no longer knew which was his flesh and which was flesh of mine, or where his spirit ended and mine began.” Which sounds almost as bad as D. H. Lawrence usually was when he tried to talk about sex.

As a history lesson with some vivid moments, The Flowers of Adonis reads quite well and entertains. I am almost inclined to call it a chronicle. Certainly Rosemary Sutcliff put much research into it. Among many other things, she is good at showing us how much Athenian “democracy” was more a rule of Oligarchs, and what competing factions there were in the admired city. But there are too many passages where she spells out the minutiae of political and military situations and loses focus on her main character, who is absent for a number of chapters. It’s solid work, but I’d still place Sword at Sunset as a better “adult” novel than this.

 

Random Footnote: This novel was written over fifty years ago. Despite a brief forward in which she says some speculation has come into her account of Alkibiades, nowhere does Rosemary Sutcliff list all the sources, ancient and modern, which she must have consulted. Nowadays, I believe, most serious historical novels will append at least a couple of pages giving every source the author has dipped into.

Something Old

 Not everything worth reading is hot off the press. In this section, we recommend "something old" that is still well worth reading. "Something Old" can mean anything from a venerable and antique classic to a good book first published four or more years ago.   

THREE NOVELS SET IN ROMAN BRITAIN by Rosemary Sutcliff (“The Eagle of the Ninth” first published in 1954, “The Silver Branch” first published in 1957 and “The Lantern Bearers” first published in 1959)

 

            On this blog, back in 2016, I introduced comments on C.S.Lewis’s Narnia Books by listing many of the titles of books for children and adolescents which I had read to my larger-than-average family when they were growing up. Among these books, I mentioned in passing those of Rosemary Sutcliff (1920-1992).

From the 1950s to the 1980s, Sutcliff was regarded in Britain as the best writer of historical fiction for adolescents, much admired and winning a number of literary awards.  She was prolific in her chosen genre, pouring out something more than a novel a year over 40 years. She did write some non-fiction and a few novels for adults, including Sword at Sunset, one of the more plausible reconstructions of the man who might have been the model for the tales that grew into the legends of King Arthur. I recall reading Sword at Sunset for my own pleasure some years back. But her forte was books for adolescents, with historical settings. Although she did write sometimes about other eras, she was most interested in Roman Britain and the early Middle Ages. Rosemary Sutcliff had some literary rivals. Henry Treece was probably her equal in his tales of vikings and saga-heroes. Geoffrey Trease (of a slightly earlier generation) was pretty good, but a little plodding in his narratives and inclined to be preachy. Far below her level was Ronald Welch, whose juvenile historical novels tended to be exercises in English jingoism concerning the patriotic Carey family  (how the Black Prince beat the Froggies at Crecy; how Marlborough beat the Froggies at Blenheim etc. etc.). To my chagrin, one of my sons – when he was a kid, of course – thought Ronald Welch was great, and I wasn’t going to argue with him.

But Rosemary Sutcliff reigned supreme.

In the days when I read to my children, I remember reading such Rosemary Sutcliff books as Warrior Scarlet (set in the Bronze Age) and Knight’s Fee (set in Norman England). But the book that stayed most in my mind was the book that is still her best-known, even if it was produced quite early in her literary career. This was The Eagle of the Ninth, first published in 1954. The Eagle of the Ninth is now known as the first part of what is billed as a “trilogy”, but it is a very loose trilogy and the two novels which followed, The Silver Branch and The Lantern Bearers, are set in different historical times and have different casts of characters. They can each be read as a self-contained narrative. What they have in common is their setting in Roman Britain.

As it happens, I did not read these two “sequels” to my bairns in the days when we squeezed together onto the couch for the evening’s reading. So recently I decided to read all three of them.

The Eagle of the Ninth lived up to my memory of it. It is set in Britain in about 130 AD. Marcus Flavius Aquila is an idealistic young military officer. He is obsessed with the memory of his father, who was an officer in the Ninth Legion, which, thirteen or fourteen years earlier, marched off to fight the barbarous Caledonians and was never seen again. The legion was apparently wiped out and ceased to exist.  The eagle standard borne before the legion was a symbol of the legion’s honour, but it too was lost. After being wounded and lamed in a battle with barbaric Britons, young Marcus is discharged from the army. He hears rumours that somewhere in wild Caledonia, a tribe has taken the lost eagle and worships it as a sort of fetish. Marcus believes that if he can retrieve the eagle, the Ninth Legion might be reconstructed and its lost honour atoned. So he sets out on a mission to recapture the eagle.

The Eagle of the Ninth is, in effect, a simple quest story, all the better for its simplicity. To an adult reader Marcus’s adventures in the wild north, accompanied by his faithful Briton ex-gladiator “body slave” Esca, are a little too easy. Marcus’s “cover” for inquisitive northern barbarians is that he is a healer, bearing salves for the sick. Very conveniently for the plot, he has the skill to act as a sort of doctor. Sutcliff glosses over such matters as how Marcus and his companion provision themselves in their long journey, and the wearisomeness of the whole dangerous trek. There are fortuitous encounters with friendly people who help them on their way, such as the huntsman who was once in the lost legion. How Marcus and Esca repossess the battered eagle (essentially an episode of robbing it from a barbarian sanctuary) is, at best, very implausible. But the dash back to the safety of the recently-constructed Hadrian’s Wall, with angry, robbed barabarians on their tail, makes for some rousing chapters.

I could be a spoilsport about this novel, pointing out its improbabilities and its unhistorical premise. (Few historians now believe the real Ninth Legion was wiped out in a disastrous battle in Caledonia; it was probably just transferred to another part of the Roman Empire, leaving Britons to wonder where it had gone.) But then I recall that The Eagle of the Ninth was, like most of Rosemary Sutcliff’s output, written for teenagers and in that genre it works very well. There are those lush descriptions of the landscape and countryside that were among Sutcliff’s trademarks. There is a romantic story woven into the quest narrative – Marcus’s chaste love for the Briton girl Cottia, from the Iceni people, who is being brought up in the Roman fashion under a different name. This could signal nothing but a happy ending – except that Sutcliff has the skill to bring in a mildly downbeat element. After his heroic quest, the (battered) remnants of the retrieved eagle do not lead to a renewal of the Ninth Legion, and Marcus realises that heroic endeavours do not necessarily lead to wished-for outcomes.

I admire the way Sutcliff expects her adolescent readers to be patient as the novel’s premise is set up slowly in the opening chapters. Indeed I do wonder if today’s adolescent readers would stay the course, in an age when there has to be much action from the very opening to keep them reading – especially in current fantasy novels which do not pretend to have an historical basis. I admire, too, the way Sutcliff brings into the story Marcus’s’ adherence to the military cult of Mithras, popular with Roman soldiers at this time, suggesting that honourable actions can arise from belief systems that are now defunct. The Eagle of the Ninth stands up very well, with Marcus’ journey having the freshness and optimism of David Balfour setting out for the House of Shaws. 

The second novel of this loose “trilogy”, The Silver Branch (first published in 1957) is set in the late third century, approximately the decade between 286 and 296 AD and therefore nearly two hundred years after the events of The Eagle of the Ninth. However the main character is a descendant of Marcus and his kin, signalled by his possession of a signet ring with an emerald inlay, which has been passed down as a family heirloom. There is also, late in The Silver Branch, the brief appearance of the battered eagle of the Ninth Legion, used as a rallying standard for patriotic Romanised Britons.

The events of The Silver Branch take place specifically at the time when there is the brief existence of a separate “empire” which had broken away from Rome, even if its leaders were of Roman culture. The commander of one Roman fleet, Carausius, had set himself up as “emperor” of the breakaway Gaulish Empire, consisting of northern Gaul and Britain. This empire lasted for a short time. The Roman general Constantius (who was junior “Caesar” to the Roman emperor) rapidly took over northern Gaul and restored it to Rome. For some years Carausius held on to Britain alone, of which he styled himself “emperor”. But he was assassinated by one of his chief officials, Allectus, who took over as “emperor” of Britain. And then at last, with some help from local Romanised Britons, Constantius invaded Britain, overthrew Allectus, and the separate “empire” ceased to exist as Roman power was restored.

This is the factual historical context into which Rosemary Sutcliff inserts her story. Reading The Silver Branch after reading The Eagle of the Ninth I felt a little let down, and still regard it as the weakest novel in the “trilogy”. In the first place, there is much more labororious scene-setting and explanation of the historical situation than there is in the earlier novel. And in the second place, there is what seems to be the repetition of a formula. Once again, like Marcus and Esca in The Eagle of the Ninth, there are two sworn companions on a quest. Tiberius Lucianus Justinius, known as Justin, is a medical officer in the army of Carausius. He speaks with a stutter. His cousin Flavius is a centurion. Most improbably, Justin and Flavius overhear dastardly plans being hatched against Carausius, whom they admire. Even more improbably, they become friends with Britain’s “emperor” and pass on their news to him. To protect them from any conspiracy, Carausius sends them both out of the way to work at Hadrian’s Wall. But Carausius is murdered and now Justin and Flavius are wanted men as Allectus takes over.

Throughout this novel, Rosemary Sutcliff’s characterisation presents Carausius as a true British patriot. Indeed, when Carausius speaks of the importance of “sea power” to protect his British “empire” from both Rome and Saxon “Sea Wolf” raiders, we can’t help feeling that Sutcliff is projecting onto these ancient times a patriotic image of a much later British Empire. Allectus, the poisoner, is presented as a totally untrustworthy villain, in league with the barbarous raiding Saxons who plague the Saxon Shore. The raw facts of history do not really let us know what sort of personalities Carausius and Allectus had, so these characterisations are very much Sutcliff’s invention. In the event, Justin and Flavius, after much ducking and hiding from Allectus’s villainous and homicidal partisans, throw in their lot with Constantius as one who can restore order and just governorship to Britain. Justin and Flavius lead a tatterdemalion “legion” of their own, recruited from Romanised Britons, to support Constantius’s professional legions and all ends well.

Surprisingly, however, I found the third novel of the “trilogy”, The Lantern Bearers (first published in 1959) to be a great return to form. Indeed, of the three, it is the one that comes closest to being a novel for adults (even if it did win the Carnegie Medal for best children’s book on a British subject). I am inclined to call it the best novel by Sutcliff that I have read. Part of its strength is the very complexity of its story – which has a large cast of characters – and Sutcliff’s clever dramatisation of the blending of many different peoples and cultures. There is also a slightly more honest presentation of adult relationships than appears in the first two novels.

The time is now the early fifth century, a little after Rome has been sacked (in 410 AD) and the Western Roman Empire is imploding. Rome finally abandons Britain, withdrawing its legions and leaving Roman civilians in Britain and Romanised Britons to fend for themselves. In short The Lantern Bearers, is set in the period that historians now call “Sub-Roman” Britain. Protagonist is the decurion (master of cavalry) Aquila, who has disobeyed orders and remained behind as he watches the last of the legions sail away. Of course he bears the emerald signet ring and is a descendant of the main characters in the earlier novels.

Aquila wants to protect and preserve Roman civilisation in Britain, but the barbarians are knocking at the gate. The (historical) Briton cheftain Vortigern – depicted by Sutcliff as spineless and gullible – has given in to the Saxon invaders led by Hengest and Horsa, and granted them great swathes of land in east and south Britannia (the origins of Norfolk, Suffolk and Wessex). Vortigern has abandoned his Briton wife and married Rowena, the bewitching and deceptive Saxon princess (so characterised by Sutcliff). But of course the Saxons have no intention of remaining confined to the lands Vortigern has granted them. They raid deeper and deeper into British territory. The Picts and Caledonian barbarians are ever threatening the north as what remains of Hadrian’s Wall decays and is unmanned. In the west, Scots raiders (i.e. Irish Celts from Hibernia) threaten the coasts of Cymru (i.e. Wales). How then can civilised Roman society survive in Britain? Please note that Sutcliff does assume that Roman culture is the superior brand, and (as in The Silver Branch), there is an undertone suggesting that she is really thinking in terms of patriotic Britishers of her own age.

In one Saxon raid, our hero Aquila’s sister Flavia is abducted by the Saxons and Aquila himself is enslaved by the Saxons’ allies the Jutes. He is taken to Jutland and labours for some years with a “thrall-ring” (a heavy collar) around his neck, signifying his slave status. After he manages to escape from this, he becomes one of those who bring together Romanised Britons and the Britons of Cymru to push back the Saxons, under the leadership of the civilised warrior Ambrosius. The climax is a great and bloody battle with the Saxons. Hengest’s Saxon warriors are defeated, but, as Aquila himself and others realise, the victory is not decisive. The Saxons will continue to advance. Into this, Rosemary Sutcliff inserts the minor character of a brash and brave young Celtic cavalry leader called Artorius (or Artor), who is obviously the origin and inspiration of Arthurian legend.

It shows great skill on Sutcliff’s part to so clearly delineate the different cultures involved in all this. As to the element which comes closest to an adult perspective we, for the first time in this “trilogy”, are given some consideration of the interaction of the sexes. Aquila meets with his abducted sister Flavia after many years. She is now married to the Saxon warrior who (in effect, although it is not spelled out) raped her and she is raising their child. When Aquila suggests she abandon barbarian husband and child and escape with him, she turns him down. By abduction (and implied rape), peoples and cultures blend. Roman Aquila himself marries Ness, a Briton woman, purely with the political aim of consolidating his diverse forces. Ness despises Aquila and Aquila despises Ness – until they realise that they are bound to stay together. By political manoeuvres, peoples and cultures blend. Incidentally, note that the Celts of Cymru and the Romans and Romanised Britons are, in this novel, beginning to be Christians, represented most by a hermit with whom Aquila at one stage takes refuge – but their Christianity still has a place for many pre-Christian beliefs and customs.

I am in danger of “talking up” The Lantern Bearers too much. It is certainly more sophisticated than the two earlier novels and more “adult”, but is is still essentially written for adolescents. In that genre, however, it is a very fine piece of work.

A Couple of Footnotes:

(A.) As all detailed references to Rosemary Sutcliff make clear, the author was stricken with a debilitating disease when she was a child, and spent most of her life in a wheelchair. She never married, had no children and no “significant other”. It would be debased Freudianism to suggest that she wrote about far off times and peoples as an escape from her constricted life – after all, there have been plenty of other very good writers of historical novels who faced no such physical limitations. Look up, for example, my posting on The Historical Fiction of Alfred Duggan, who was writing [for adults] at the same time as Sutcliff. Nevertheless, I do notice how Sutcliff has the tendency to have heroes who are somehow stricken – the lamed Marcus in The Eagle of the Ninth; the stuttering Justin in The Silver Branch and (stretching a point) the collared and enslaved Aquila in The Lantern Bearers. Maybe, just maybe,  they are conscious echoes of her own physical limitations.

            (B.) The Eagle of the Ninth is undoubtedly Rosemary Sutcliff’s best-known novel. It has twice been dramatised for British television, in both cases following Sutcliff’s plot closely and in the awareness that this was a story written for teenagers, not an adult story. However in 2011, there was a film adaptation given the title The Eagle. While more-or-less following Sutcliff’s plot, it introduced scenes of extreme violence quite out of keeping with Sutcliff’s general tone. On the whole, the critics roasted it – with good reason.