Delighted to announce two fun events in May, one in Bristol, one in Ross-on-Wye, where the delightful Liesel Schwarz ‘the high-priestess of steampunk’ and I will be in conversation. We’d love to see you, so book your tickets now!
Alison Morton is the author of Roma Nova thrillers, INCEPTIO, PERFIDITAS and SUCCESSIO. The fourth book, AURELIA, is due out in May 2015.
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 A small child, curls bobbing on a head she’s forgotten to cover with the sunhat her mother insists on, crouches down on a Roman mosaic floor in north-east Spain. Mesmerised by the purity of the black and white pattern, the craftsmanship and the tiny marble squares, she almost doesn’t hear her father calling her to the next one.
Jumping up, she eagerly runs to him, babbling questions like many eleven year olds do: who were the people who lived here, what were they called, what did they do, where have they gone?
The father, a numismatist and senior ‘Roman nut’, starts telling her about the Greek town of Emporion founded 575 BC which became Roman Emporiæ in 218 BC, where traders sailed in and out with their cargoes of olive oil, wine, textiles, glass and metals; where people lived in higgledy-piggeldy houses, traded from little shops; where the Roman army based its operations; where money was minted. And the people came from every corner of the Roman Empire to live and work. Boys went to schools and girls learnt to be good wives and mothers.
The little girl listens carefully to every word, sifting the information. Her hand in his, she turns as they leave, looks back at the mosaics and asks her father a final question.
“What would it be like if Roman women were in charge, instead of the men?”
Maybe it was the fierce sun boiling my brain that day – yes, I was that little girl – maybe I was just a precocious kid asking a smartass question.
But clever man, my father replied, “What do you think it would be like?”
Forty-odd years later, INCEPTIO was published.
Ampurias, now officially Empúries in Catalan, was a town on the north east Mediterranean coast of Catalonia, Spain. It was founded in 575 BC by Greek colonists from Phocaea with the name of Ἐμπόριον (Emporion, meaning “trading place”, cf. emporion). Situated as it was on the coastal commercial route between Massalia (Marseille) and Tartessos in the far south of Hispania, the city developed into a large economic and commercial centre as well as being the largest Greek colony in the Iberian Peninsula.
 During the Punic Wars, Empúries allied itself with Rome (sound choice) and Publius Cornelius Scipio initiated the conquest of Hispania from this city in 218 BC.
After the conquest of Hispania by the Romans, Empúries remained an independent city-state. However, in the civil war between Pompey and Julius Caesar, it opted for Pompey (bad choice), and after his defeat it was stripped of its autonomy. A colonia of Roman veterans, named Emporiae, was established nearby to control the region.
From that time onwards, Empúries began to decline, obscured by the power of Tarraco (Tarragona) and Barcino (Barcelona). At the end of the 3rd century, it became one of the first cities in Spain to admit Christian evangelists. In that century, too, the Greek town was abandoned while the Roman town survived as a mint and the largely ceremonial seat of a coastal county, Castelló d’Empúries. In the Early Middle Ages, its exposed coastal position left it open to marauders, particularly Vikings in the mid 9th century, and the town was eventually abandoned.
More here about today’s Empúries http://www.mac.cat/esl/Sedes/Empuries
Alison Morton is the author of Roma Nova thrillers – INCEPTIO, CARINA (novella), PERFIDITAS, SUCCESSIO, AURELIA, NEXUS (novella), INSURRECTIO and RETALIO, and ROMA NOVA EXTRA, a collection of short stories. Audiobooks are available for four of the series. Double Identity, a contemporary conspiracy, starts a new series of thrillers.
Download ‘Welcome to Alison Morton’s Thriller Worlds’, a FREE eBook, as a thank you gift when you sign up to Alison’s monthly email newsletter. You’ll also be among the first to know about news and book progress before everybody else, and take part in giveaways.
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 The Roma Nova heroines – Carina and Aurelia Mitela – are ‘tough gals’; dedicated, strong-willed, physically and mentally resilient and tied into their sense of history and duty. Underlying all this, their driving force is their self-belief.
Carina, despite her disrupted childhood and separation from Roma Nova until she was twenty-four, has embraced Roma Novan values and system wholeheartedly, although, of course, there are gaps that trip her up. Aurelia is a ‘blood-and-bone’ Roma Novan, so completely immersed in the society from birth, but has her own weaknesses.
Neither of these women denies their femininity or personal and sexual needs; they are as emotionally wired as any other person. They fail, fear, experience inadequacy and guilt (and have tempers), but they don’t let any of this diminish them, their motivation or their innate sense of doing the right thing. Aurelia from the outset, and Carina as she becomes more immersed into Roma Nova, are not judged on their gender, nor do they allow themselves to even think that is a criterion for judgement.
In Roma Nova, a society that has survived by vigilance and robust resistance to those who would destroy or absorb it, no quarter is given or allowance made for gender, only for behaving or performing as the person you are.
As Carina and Aurelia say, you’re only as good as your last job.
So, that brings us on to the Roma Novan men – Conrad, Apollodorus, Lurio, for instance. All different characters but tough and masculine. I’d like to see anybody talk to Lurio and call him a softie. I’ll hold your coat while you try. Conrad would be more polite – he has better manners, but Apollodrus would have you removed and, er, disposed of if you dared to make that suggestion.
 Photo courtesy of Britannia www.durolitum.co.uk However, the crucial note of this alternative society is that there is no right of men’s automatic superiority. As they were steadfast pagans, worshipping the traditional Roman goddesses and gods, there was no incursion of paternalistic monotheistic religions.
In the early history of the Colonia Apuliensis Roma Nova, women had to fight alongside men to protect the infant colonia in the fraught period of the late fourth and early fifth centuries. And of course, founder Apulius had four strong daughters whose mother was a tough, independent Celt from Noricum where women managed property, took decisions in the political process and when necessary hefted a blade.
Back to the men… In Roma Nova, there is little of the gender pressure on male children and youngsters as they grow up such as the ‘big boys don’t cry’ and the ‘man up’ culture.
Naturally enough, there is sibling and peer rivalry; testosterone flows in Roma Nova as anywhere else. However, men are expected to act and live as any other Roma Novan, as selfish or achieving as anybody else. But there is no pressure to behave in line with a constructed gender pattern. This frees up men from the pressure of conditioned norms expected in many societies.
Conrad is tough, clever, resourceful and a bit cocky, to be honest. Serving in the Praetorian Guard Special Forces is ideal for him as it provides structure and a place to demonstrate his decisiveness and moral strength. He expects the soldiers under his command to obey not based on any gender considerations but on his authority in the military context. Ditto Lurio, but in a more relaxed, if brash, way. Apollodorus commands through fear, but has a weakness as far as Carina is concerned, as we find out in PERFIDITAS.
Naturally enough, this ‘egalitarian-plus’ type of society can lead to conflict, especially when Roma Novans come up against outsiders – a gift for any novelist. In AURELIA, set in the late 1960s, the first adventure featuring Aurelia Mitela as a young woman serving in the Praetorian Guard, conflict is rife. Not just in the story.
It’s hard to remember just how casual and taken for granted sexism was at that time as Aurelia discovers when she travels outside Roma Nova on a mission to Berlin. Being Aurelia, she confronts it or ignores it depending on the circumstances, but never allows it to affect her mission or her intrinsic values. But when she meets another equally independently-minded soul, she knows she has found her life’s love. Yet she still steers her own course as we go on to see in INSURRECTIO and RETALIO.
Updated for March 2024: Alison Morton is the author of Roma Nova thrillers – INCEPTIO, CARINA (novella), PERFIDITAS, SUCCESSIO, AURELIA, NEXUS (novella), INSURRECTIO and RETALIO, and ROMA NOVA EXTRA, a collection of short stories. Audiobooks are available for four of the series. Double Identity, a contemporary conspiracy, starts a new series of thrillers. JULIA PRIMA, Roma Nova story set in the late 4th century, starts the Foundation stories. The sequel, EXSILIUM, is now out.
Download ‘Welcome to Alison Morton’s Thriller Worlds’, a FREE eBook, as a thank you gift when you sign up to Alison’s monthly email update. You’ll also be among the first to know about news and book progress before everybody else, and take part in giveaways.
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