Ancient Rome's legions -- approximately 5,500 men each -- were rightly famed for their fighting skills. Overlooked is that they were more than warriors. Incomparable engineers, they built fortresses that still stand, and constructed roads and aqueducts.
Conquering lands, they guarded against uprisings. Administering them under Roman laws didn't enhance their popularity. Barbarians were forever attacking them across the wild frontiers. Captured legionaries were subjected to horrendous deaths. Nevertheless, it was an honour to be in a legion.
A number of modern-day historians have an obsessive interest in happenings millennia past. A good many documents from those times survived and are being pursued. Those analysing them now don't necessarily agree in their interpretations of events.
One of the most respected historians of ancient history today is Brit Simon Scarrow. His historical novels, well-researched, are like time machines bringing the reader back to the days of yore. His best known literary creations are legionaries Marco, Cato and Figulus.
Figulus is the protagonist of Invader, Marco and Cato omitted. The setting is Roman Britain of 44AD, fewer than 100 years after Julius Caesar crossed the Channel. The tribes are on the warpath and the Second Legion, in which Figulus is a minor officer, has its hands full.
Our hero is a Celt, loyal to Rome, who learned the Druid language and customs while growing up. It so happens that the Druids, among the tribes, are the occupation army's most implacable foes. A decisive battle between them is inevitable -- indeed, imminent.
When it comes, Figulus yet again proves his prowess with a sword. In appreciation, he is promoted to Centurion.
Scarrow makes the point that Rome wisely appointed puppet kings from the tribes to head them, with Rome propping them up. The populace thus became Romanised without revolting. And the Second Legion wouldn't lose lives putting them down. For the most part, the ploy worked.
FYI: Scarrow has also written a series of historical novels on the Napoleonic Wars.
The Girl From Venice by Martin Cruz Smith Simon & Schuster 309 pp Available at Asia Books and leading bookshops 595 baht
Changing sides
The 20th century was the bloodiest in human history, wars hot and cold killing tens of millions of people. World War I, billed as the war to end all wars, didn't. All its participants are gone now. It is little remembered. World War II made no such assertion, and though it finished over seven decades ago, it has yet to be forgotten.
Its elderly survivors still talk about it and films keep it alive. Hitler, not the Kaiser, is the chief villain. Tojo and Mussolini are significantly less so. Germany, Japan and Italy were the enemies; the UK, US and USSR, the Allies. The bad guys vs. the good guys.
It was more complicated than that, of course. For a while, the US and Italy were on the Axis side, then sided with the Allies. Mussolini was overthrown in a military coup, then reinstated by Hitler in a smaller Italy named the Salo Republic. Germany invaded Italy.
In The Girl From Venice, Yank author Martin Cruz Smith leaves the reader in no doubt that the German occupation forces, particularly the SS, harshly mistreated the turncoat Italians. Thousands were sent to Germany as slave labourers, Jews to death camps. Il Duce's Fascists assisted the Nazis in every way. Partisans, mainly local Communists, were the Resistance fighters. They gunned collaborationists, Fascists and Wehrmacht with equanimity, regardless of the reprisals. A good many were trigger-happy.
The protagonist is Cenzo, a fisherman in Venice who is a painter in his spare time. A hero of the Abyssinian War, he tries to live down being one of the pilots who dropped poison gas on the spear-carrying natives. Finding a girl on the run from the SS, he decides to protect her.
Giulia is Jewish and his life is forfeited if she's caught. His acquaintances are in all strata of society, and from their conversations we learn what makes them tick. He finds a plane and it is used to carry Il Duce's gold. However, the craft crashes. Can it be recovered from the sea?
Famed for penning Gorky Park, about Cold War Russia, whether The Girl From Venice, about Hot War Italy, proves as popular remains to be seen. The hero-fisherman-painter isn't altogether believable, but the other characters ring true. Have a look-see.
