| 1 | [[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ode_to_a_banker.jpg]] |
| 2 | |
| 3 | -> ''Some men are born lucky, others are called Didius Falco.'' |
| 4 | |
| 5 | Central character and CharacterNarrator of the HistoricalFiction novels by Lindsey Davis. Falco is an "informer" (the equivalent of a private eye) in AncientRome around A.D. 70. Reviewers describe Marcus Didius Falco as "[[Literature/TheMalteseFalcon Sam Spade in a Toga]]", but existing centuries before FilmNoir was invented makes Falco amusingly GenreBlind, and allows the author to gleefully subvert most HardboiledDetective tropes. The series follows Falco as he takes on a series of cases, often in far-off provinces, and slowly climbs his way up the social ladder- while dealing with anal-retentive bureaucrats, foreign officials, his various siblings, and other hindering bastards. These, in turn, make the books a mix of historical fiction, crime, and comedy that blend in a very satisfying way. |
| 6 | |
| 7 | The series runs as follows: |
| 8 | |
| 9 | # ''The Silver Pigs'' (1989) |
| 10 | # ''Shadows In Bronze'' (1990) |
| 11 | # ''Venus In Copper'' (1991) |
| 12 | # ''The Iron Hand Of Mars'' (1992) |
| 13 | # ''Poseidon's Gold'' (1993) |
| 14 | # ''Last Act In Palmyra'' (1994) |
| 15 | # ''Time To Depart'' (1995) |
| 16 | # ''A Dying Light In Corduba'' (1996) |
| 17 | # ''Three Hands In The Fountain'' (1997) |
| 18 | # ''Two For The Lions'' (1998) |
| 19 | # ''One Virgin Too Many'' (1999) |
| 20 | # ''Ode To A Banker'' (2000) |
| 21 | # ''A Body In The Bath House'' (2001) |
| 22 | # ''The Jupiter Myth'' (2002) |
| 23 | # ''The Accusers'' (2003) |
| 24 | # ''Scandal Takes A Holiday'' (2004) |
| 25 | # ''See Delphi And Die'' (2005) |
| 26 | # ''Saturnalia'' (2007) |
| 27 | # ''Alexandria'' (2009) |
| 28 | # ''Nemesis'' (2010) |
| 29 | |
| 30 | ''The Silver Pigs'' was loosely adapted into a movie '' Age of Treason'' (1993), with Austalian actor Bryan Brown playing Falco. |
| 31 | |
| 32 | It has a pseudo-prequel, ''The Course Of Honour'' (1998), in which a young man called Vespasian climbs to the very top of the ladder and founds the Flavian dynasty of emperors. It also has what could be described as a grim footnote to the series, ''Master and God'' (2012) in which the reign of Emperor Titus ends prematurely and the second Flavian prince, Domitian, takes over as Emperor, goes insane, and the Flavian dynasty ends in his assassination. Then again, Davis wrote Domitian as the flaky, murderous one as far back in the series as ''The Silver Pigs'' (1989), so it's not too surprising... |
| 33 | |
| 34 | ''The Ides of April'' picks up in 89AD, with Falco's [[SpinOffspring adopted daughter]], Flavia Albia, now an established informer in her own right, and continues with ''Enemies At Home'' and ''Deadly Election''. Here the investigative mantle passes to Albia, and we learn her parents are semi-retired and living as inobtrusively as they can, their patron Emperor Vespasian being dead and their friend, his son Emperor Titus, also having passed. The imperial purple is now on the toga of Emperor Domitian, the unstable Caligula-like member of the Flavian dynasty and a man with no reason to love the Falcos. Rome is now even more unstable and dangerous to live in. The main Falco family is seen in glimpses and cameos, but the focus moves to the life of Albia. |
| 35 | |
| 36 | The Flavia Albia novels, in order, are; |
| 37 | |
| 38 | # ''The Ides of April'' (2013) |
| 39 | # ''Enemies At Home'' (2014) |
| 40 | # ''Deadly Election'' (2015) |
| 41 | # ''The Graveyard of the Hesperides'' (2016) |
| 42 | # ''The Third Nero'' (2017) |
| 43 | # ''Pandora's Boy'' (2018) |
| 44 | # ''A Capitol Death'' (2019) |
| 45 | # ''The Grove of the Caesars'' (2020) |
| 46 | # ''A Comedy of Terrors'' (2021) |
| 47 | # ''Desperate Undertakings'' (2022) |
| 48 | # ''Fatal Legacy'' (2023) |
| 49 | # ''Death On The Tiber'' (2024) |
| 50 | |
| 51 | ''Voices of Rome'' (2024) takes a new direction. Rather than focus on the cast principals, this is a collection of four novelettes each written from the point of view of supporting members of the cast from the main series, such as Falco's adopted son and Albia's brother Postumus, his nephew Larius, or Helena Justina's two brothers. |
| 52 | |
| 53 | |
| 54 | ---- |
| 55 | |
| 56 | !!Tropes present in this series include: |
| 57 | |
| 58 | * AbsurdlySpaciousSewer: Rome's ''Cloaca Maxima'', which is just about as {{Squick}} as it sounds. |
| 59 | * AbusiveParents: Falco's father went out to a game of draughts when he was seven and never came back. He sent Junilla Tacita money (nothing like a fair share of what he made, though Falco concedes that Geminus had a point when he said that giving money to Falco's sisters would have been a bad idea) and later reappeared. Falco never forgives him, and Geminus refuses to believe that he could have possibly done the wrong thing by abandoning his wife and seven children. |
| 60 | * ActuallyIAmHim: In ''The Ides Of April'', the plebeian aedile Manlius Faustus disguises himself as [[spoiler:'Tiberius', the aedile's runner.]] |
| 61 | * AnimalMotifs: ''Master and God'' has flies. They turn up occasionally to represent certain things: for example, when Rutilius Gallicus is found to be so depressed that he cannot function, the narrator calls attention to a fly that keeps trying to headbutt its way through a shutter to freedom, even though all it would need to do is walk three steps. |
| 62 | ** In ''The Ides Of April'', foxes are a big part of the narrative, and Albia compares herself to the foxes often. |
| 63 | * AssholeVictim: Happens from time to time, but particularly obvious in ''Ode to a Banker'' with Chrysippus. [[spoiler: Also, after his head injury makes him ever more unstable, Anacrites is this until Falco and Petro are forced to kill him.]] |
| 64 | * AssShove: How mine slaves picking refined silver from the cooled furnace steal from the till in ''The Silver Pigs'', in order to avoid discovery during daily body searches (which obviously aren't thorough enough). Falco manages to amass and sneak off a nugget this way while undercover as a slave, [[spoiler:which eventually becomes a ring he gifts to Helena]]. |
| 65 | * AudioAdaptation: Several of the Falco novels have been adapted as radio serial dramas by the Creator/{{BBC}}. |
| 66 | * BackForTheDead: [[spoiler: After being the main character of ''The Course of Honour'', Caenis appears in exactly one book in the main series. It's also the book she dies in.]] |
| 67 | ** ''Desperate Undertakings'' has the return of the actors from ''Last Act In Palmyra''. [[spoiler:Chremes, Phrygia and Philocrates are killed by Tranio.]] |
| 68 | * BatmanGambit: After twenty books, Falco knows exactly how to make Anacrites dance to his tune. [[spoiler: And Anacrites knows how to make Falco and Petro dance too…]] |
| 69 | * TheBeard: In ''Shadows in Bronze'', [[spoiler:this is the role Helena Justina plays for Aemilius Rufus, a magistrate she's friends with]]. |
| 70 | * BettyAndVeronica: ''Venus In Copper'' looks like it's setting one up between Helena Justina (Betty) and Severina Zotica (Veronica), but [[spoiler: it's essentially a bluff: Falco and Helena are made for each other, Severina's a murderess, and when she tries to kill Helena, the triangle quietly vanishes.]] |
| 71 | * BewareTheNiceOnes: ''Death On The Tiber'' ends with the revelation that [[spoiler: Maia and Marcia murdered Bambina Milvia in cold blood.]] |
| 72 | * BigBad: [[spoiler: Florius.]] Also (probably) Anacrites. |
| 73 | * BigScrewedUpFamily: Falco's relatives. See TheClan. |
| 74 | ** Not nearly as screwed up as the vile family of Claudii from ''Nemesis,'' even before it turns out [[spoiler:Anacrites is their long-lost sibling]]. |
| 75 | * BittersweetEnding: ''Nemesis'', to the whole series: [[spoiler: Petro and Maia are finally together, Anacrites and his brothers are dead, and it looks like it's smooth sailing from then on... but Helena and Falco's son died, as did Geminus; and Vespasian's about to die, meaning that while they'll get the friendly Titus as Emperor for two years, they'll then get the very ''unfriendly'' Domitian as Emperor.]] |
| 76 | ** ''The Jupiter Myth'': The Jupiter Gang have been broken and Londinium is safe from them, with one of their leaders dead and the other fleeing Britain. Petro and Maia have finally become a couple, and Maia is unharmed. [[spoiler:However, Chloris is dead, Florius is at large and even more determined to kill Petro, and Albia will always suffer from her torment at his hands. In addition, Florius is absolved of the murder of Verovolcus, which destroys Petro's case against him, and while London is safe from the Jupiter Gang, there will always be more organised crime.]] |
| 77 | * {{Blackmail}}: Falco occasionally blackmails [[spoiler: Anacrites, usually to get him to back off, with his knowledge that Anacrites once fought as a gladiator in an arena, which would make him a social outcast.]] |
| 78 | ** He never actually tries it, but [[spoiler: Falco keeps the evidence that Domitian murdered Sosia Camillina, and makes sure that the Caesars know that he has said evidence.]] |
| 79 | * BlackWidow: Professional widow Severina Zotica in ''Venus in Copper''. |
| 80 | * BookEnds: ''Master And God'' begins and ends with the same sentence: "It was a quiet afternoon on the Via Flaminia". |
| 81 | * BreadEggsBreadedEggs: "You look like a spy." "I thought I looked like a priest." "Falco, you look like a spy who's disguised as a priest!" |
| 82 | ** 'The night-life was plentiful: drunks, fornicators, more drunks, cats who had learned from the fornicators, [[RuleOfThree even drunker drunks]]. Drunken cats, probably.' |
| 83 | * BrickJoke: In ''Venus In Copper'', Falco ends up acquiring a talking parrot who belonged to a suspect. He asks Helena to write down anything the parrot (called Chloe) says, in case she says something relevant to his case. Helena annotates the list of things Chloe said and asks if 'manicure set' is a euphemism, since Chloe also said another euphemism and several obscenities. Falco tells her that if 'manicure set' is a euphemism, he doesn't know it. Late in the novel, he ends up talking to Thalia the animal handler, who before talking to him is telling a bawdy story in which she describes one man's privates as resembling a 'three-piece manicure set'... |
| 84 | * BrokenAce: [[spoiler: Aemilius Rufus]] in ''Shadows in Bronze''. He initially appears to be a competent, attractive, skilled, wealthy aristocrat, but he's quickly revealed to be a complete moron who has no idea what he's doing. |
| 85 | * BrokenLeverOfDoom: one of these happens in ''Desperate Undertakings'', when a serial killer with theatrical ambitions is trapped in a mechanism he devised so as to play Icarus, and fly over the stage. A member of the Vigiles misinterprets the instructions and pushes the lever the wrong way, bringing Icarus crashing down to earth. |
| 86 | * BusCrash: Albia's narration reveals that Marcus's two favorite nephews, Larius and Gaius, were both killed off during the interim between the two series: Larius during the eruption of Vesuvius (where he was employed as a mural painter), Gaius during the fire in AD 80 (that affected the Saepta Julia where the family's auction house was located). The fact that both died Semi-HeroicDeath{{s}} does not lessen Falco's grief. |
| 87 | * ButForMeItWasTuesday: In ''Death On The Tiber'', [[spoiler: Albia confronts Florius about him sexually assaulting her in ''The Jupiter Myth''. His response makes her realise that he doesn't recall it, doesn't care and doesn't think he did anything wrong.]] |
| 88 | * TheCaligula: Averted with [[HistoricalDomainCharacter Emperor Vespasian]], who is very competent and completely lacking in pretension. |
| 89 | * CallBack: Falco disposes of [[spoiler: Helena's treasonous uncle's corpse]] by throwing it into a sewer. He and Petro later do the same for [[spoiler: Anacrites' corpse]]. |
| 90 | ** In ''Master and God'', right after he's made Emperor, Domitian ends up sitting alone in a room, being depressed and killing flies by stabbing them with his pen. [[spoiler: And in ''The Silver Pigs'', he killed Sosia by stabbing her with his pen.]] |
| 91 | ** ''Death On The Tiber'' ends with the revelation that [[spoiler:Maia and Marcia killed Bambina Milvia by tying her up, knocking her out and throwing her into the Tiber because she threatened Petro and his family, which is very similar to how Falco and Petro killed Anacrites and threw his body into a sewer for threatening the Didius family.]] |
| 92 | * TheCasanova: Petro. |
| 93 | ** LadykillerInLove: He really does love his wife. [[spoiler: It doesn't end well.]] |
| 94 | ** Vinius in ''Master and God'', who goes through six wives. To be fair, it wouldn't have been so many if his brothers hadn't kept marrying him off every time he got divorced. |
| 95 | ** By ''Enemies At Home'', Aelianus is on his third wife. To be fair, he wasn't the one who initiated the first divorce. |
| 96 | * CharacterDeath: [[spoiler: Anacrites and Geminus in ''Nemesis'', and Famia in ''Two For The Lions''.]] In the Albia series, it's revealed that [[spoiler:Lentullus, Larius and Gaius died during the TimeSkip.]] |
| 97 | * TheCharmer: Quinctius Quadratus in ''A Dying Light In Corduba''. He's popular, good-looking, and very charming — basically, as Falco notes, everything that should make him successful, but he is actually incapable of knowing when he has done something wrong, so he never quite figures out why so many people who should like him think he's a bastard. (To be fair to them, he is.) |
| 98 | * TheCityNarrows: |
| 99 | ** Falco's neighborhood in the Aventine, full of grimy characters of all types (Falco himself included). The Transtiberina district is also this way, the difference being that the Aventine is full of lower-class Romans born and raised in the city while the Transtiberina is an immigrant ghetto. Falco prefers the Aventine because he grew up there and knows the streets like the back of his hand. |
| 100 | ** The Subura was worse, according to Falco's narration in ''Venus In Copper''. It's got better since then, but it's still a very dangerous place. |
| 101 | * TheClan: Falco's family. They may all be crazy, but you do not mess with them. Set up as a deliberate counterpoint to [[spoiler:Anacrites' family]] in ''Nemesis.'' |
| 102 | * ClearMyName: Falco becomes the prime suspect in a murder in ''Poseidon's Gold'' and has to solve the case to clear himself. [[spoiler:And the good name of the family as well, since Festus seems to have become involved in a scheme (before he died) where his financiers, fellow soldiers in the Legio XV Apollinaris, stole from the legion coffers to finance his venture.]] |
| 103 | * ClusterFBomb: There's plenty of instances of 'shit' and the like in the main series, but only one instance of 'fuck' (see PrecisionFStrike, below). ''Master and God'', in contrast, uses 'fuck' liberally, mainly because one of the protagonists is a serving Praetorian Guard. |
| 104 | * CourtroomEpisode: ''The Accusers.'' |
| 105 | * CruelAndUnusualDeath: There's a few. |
| 106 | ** [[spoiler: Florius Gracilis]] in ''The Iron Hand Of Mars'', who is trampled and gored to death by a wild aurochs. |
| 107 | ** [[spoiler: Aufidius Crispus]] in ''Shadows In Bronze'', who dives into the water just as a trireme sails over it, and is drowned after being bashed about by the oars. |
| 108 | ** [[spoiler: Pomponius]] in ''A Body In The Bath House'': Strangled, stabbed and one eye pulled out. |
| 109 | ** [[spoiler: Chrysippus]] in ''Ode To A Banker'': His attacker shoves a scroll-rod up his nose before beating him to death. |
| 110 | ** [[spoiler: Rufius Constans]] in ''A Dying Light In Corduba'', who tries to fit a new millstone into his grandparents' mill, but it doesn't work -- and the millstone ends up caving in his chest. |
| 111 | ** [[spoiler: Famia]] in ''Two For The Lions'', who is sentenced to death by being torn apart by a lion. |
| 112 | ** [[spoiler: Phrygia]] in ''Desperate Undertaking'' truly takes the cake in terms of horror: [[spoiler:she's imprisoned inside a wooden bull, tied hand and foot, to be ''[[BestialityIsDepraved raped to death by a wild bull]]'' (in a recreation of the Greek myth of Pasiphae and the Minotaur). When Albia and the others find her, she's barely breathing, having been gored and trampled and flung about the yard in the wooden frame. Albia theorizes that the wooden bull must have collapsed from the weight of the real bull, and grimly hopes that the mating didn't succeed.]] |
| 113 | * {{Cult}}: Christians, who seduce young middle-class idiots into worshipping only one God (how boring) and solicit donations from travellers who have to beat them up to convince them to mind their own business. Plus they don't respect the Emperor (neither does Falco of course, but he doesn't piss him off by saying so in public). |
| 114 | * DamnedByFaintPraise: ''Saturnalia'' begins with Falco telling us that one good thing he ''can'' say about his father is that he never hit his wife. |
| 115 | * DatedHistory: While Davis's unsavory depiction of Domitian is internally consistent, its historical foundations have been superseded by more recent research. The main problem is that basically all the sources about Domitian's reign were written after the fact by people who had bones to pick with him--aristocrats of the senatorial class like Suetonius or Pliny the Elder, with whom Domitian had notoriously poor relations--while the positive contemporaneous accounts by poets like Statius and Martial were considered no more than acts of brown-nosing (which, to be fair, they were). The negative accounts were essentially believed without question for centuries. More recent archaeological and historical studies indicate that Domitian's reign marked a period of financial stability thanks to the man's tight grip on economic policy (it is noted that coinage of the era are of particularly good quality in comparison to what came before and after), which laid the groundwork for the later prosperity of the Nerva-Antonine dynasty, and that Domitian was pragmatic enough to not pursue aggressive war policies which might have unnecessarily burdened the state (though this made him rather unpopular with the traditionalists of the upper classes). The common people and the troops generally seemed to have liked him, thanks to his reintroduction/promotion of various public festivities, his visits to the front, and his gifts/donatives to the public and the military--in fact, a group of officers of the Praetorian Guard eventually forced Nerva to put his killers to death. The modern, revisionist view paints Domitian as an autocratic but benevolent despot, whose flaws included ControlFreak tendencies, paranoia, an inability to appease the senatorial classes, and an unfortunate penchance to celebrate military victories too early. |
| 116 | * ADayInTheLimelight: ''The Course Of Honour'' stars Vespasian and his mistress, Antonia's freedwoman Caenis, who later turns up in ''Two For The Lions''. |
| 117 | * DeadGuyJunior: [[spoiler: Sosia]] Favonia, Falco's second daughter, who is usually just referred to as Favonia to make things easier for everyone. |
| 118 | * DeadpanSnarker: Falco, Petro, and quite often Helena. |
| 119 | * DeathOfAChild: Two of [[spoiler: Petro's]] children die from chicken pox. In ''One Virgin Too Many'', [[spoiler: Gaia Laelia]] falls down a well (and is fine... for a given value of fine), but spent about two days down there. Helena ends up having [[spoiler: four children, but only two make it: the first miscarries after a fall down some stairs and the fourth is dead shortly after birth.]] ''The Ides Of April'' starts with Albia relating the death of a three year old boy whose parents left their door open and he ran into the road and got hit by a cart. |
| 120 | * DecoyProtagonist: The beginning of ''The Silver Pigs'' makes it look like Sosia will be another protagonist with Falco. [[spoiler: She gets killed off rather quickly. The other protagonist is her cousin, Helena Justina.]] |
| 121 | * DefrostingIceQueen: Helena Justina, the [[PluckyGirl patrician daughter]] of a senator, and therefore two ranks above Falco (a plebeian). The two fall in love in "The Silver Pigs", and a constant theme of later novels is Falco trying to advance his social status so he can legitimise their relationship. |
| 122 | * DeliberateValuesDissonance: Two thousand years separate us from the people in the book, and to modern eyes some of their behaviour can seem inhumane and just plain strange. To her credit, the author doesn't play it for shock value, but rather as a natural part of life in Rome. |
| 123 | ** One example: In ''Venus In Copper'', [[spoiler:Viridovix, a slave of the Hortensius family]], is accidentally murdered after he drinks some poisoned wine (the poison in question was intended for someone else). Falco wants to avenge his death, but once he discovers who had actually brought the poison, he notes that yes, he has enough evidence and witnesses for a solid case in court... but the victim was a slave and his owners barely cared about him, so there likely wouldn't be a murder trial, just a civil suit over the loss of the slave, which would result in a low payout. |
| 124 | * DerivativeWorks: "Age of Treason", a loose film adaptation of ''The Silver Pigs'' starring Bryan Brown as Falco. Lindsey Davis disowned the film for deviating too much from the source material. |
| 125 | * DidTheyOrDidntThey: Justinus and Veleda. They had several hours together in her tower, but on the other hand, for all we know Veleda just wanted some intelligent conversation from a sophisticated man. Justinus never confirms that he slept with her; Falco and the soldiers all instantly decide that he did. Either way, [[DownerEnding it's not like it worked out.]] |
| 126 | ** Aemilius Rufus and Helena Justina in ''Shadows in Bronze''. Rufus's sister Aemilia Fausta hints that Helena is Rufus' mistress, and that they engaged in intimate activities at Aufidius Crispus' party (which Aemilia Fausta gatecrashed with Falco). Falco is not inclined to believe it given the somewhat distant interactions between Rufus and Helena, though he's still torn up about it. After a spat with Helena, he trusts her when she says she never slept with Rufus. [[spoiler:Lingering doubts in the readers' minds may be dispelled when Aemilius Rufus makes a pass at Falco in private, which combined with his continued bachelor status indicates that he is strictly homosexual.]] |
| 127 | * DisappearedDad: Falco has a grudge against his father (and redheads) because his dad ran off with another woman when Falco was a child. He later comes back into Falco's life under the guise of [[LoveableRogue shady auctioneer]] Geminus. Falco never forgives him. |
| 128 | * DisposingOfABody: |
| 129 | ** In ''Three Hands In The Fountain'', the SerialKiller's ''metier'' is to dismember his victims and drop the pieces into various sewer outlets; Falco is sickened when his brother-in-law, a river boatman, gleefully tells him that these parts show up so regularly that he and fellow boatman have taken to calling them ''"festival fancies"'' (since they appear during public holidays; |
| 130 | *** The fact that at least one victim's hand floats up in a public fountain allows Falco and his partners to trace the killer's whereabouts to one of the upriver aqueducts; |
| 131 | ** In ''See Delphi and Die'', the killer's disposes of his victims by [[spoiler:dismembering the bodies and cooking them into the stew served to groups of tourists]]. |
| 132 | * DownerEnding: These often happen- life doesn't fix itself just because the crimes get solved. |
| 133 | * DramatisPersonae: The author says she does it because Roman names follow such similar patterns that she gets confused herself. Done tongue-in-cheek in ''Last Act in Palmyra'', in which Falco and Helena join a travelling theatre troupe. |
| 134 | * DueToTheDead: When Falco disposes of [[spoiler:Helena's uncle's corpse]], he has enough courtesy to toss a fistful of dirt and a coin down the sewer hatch after the body, and say the customary prayer for the dead. |
| 135 | ** In ''The Iron Hand of Mars'', Falco, Justinus, and a detachment of recruits (led by their centurion) visit a fort whose garrison was starved into submission, then massacred after they had surrendered. The group erect a small altar and offer prayers for the dead-- and pray for their own safety in their subsequent journey into non-Roman territory. Later, [[spoiler:when the group encounters the ruined remains of the field camp of the legions who were massacred at [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Teutoburg_Forest Teutoburg Forest]]]], they are so stunned that they cannot offer anything but a heavy moment of silence. |
| 136 | * EnfantTerrible: Postumus turns out to be one- his novella has him deciding that he has to kill Thalia, his mother, because she owns the snake who he thinks killed his pet ferret and since he can't punish the snake, the snake's owner will have to do. |
| 137 | * EstablishingCharacterMoment: Falco's first moments in the series has him calmly discussing why the girl running toward him is wearing too many clothes. He screws with her head a little, but when she pleads him for help he rapidly dispatches everyone chasing her, causes a distraction and has them both running for a safe place in minutes: a fast-thinker, a good fighter but one with a decent sense of humour. Helena, in contrast, is spiteful and angry, but is shown to be good with children and dearly loved her cousin. |
| 138 | ** Domitian's first appearance has him walking in on his brother and Falco whistling a very disrespectful song that only another Caesar would dare to sing, whistle or hum around Titus, which is a good confirmation that he [[spoiler: cares so little for the consequences that he'd get involved in a treasonous plot.]] |
| 139 | * EverybodyDidIt: A variant in ''Venus in Copper'', when the landlord Hortensius Novus is murdered with poison. It turns out that [[spoiler:all the suspects independently ''tried'' to murder him -- his own family with a poisoned cake, his business rival with poisoned spices to be added to the wine -- but the actual murderer was his fiance, who poisoned the plate the cakes were served on, knowing that gluttonous Novus would lick the plate clean once the meal was done. As a bonus, she sabotaged the efforts of the other would-be assassins by removing the poisoned cake from the platter beforehand, because she hated Novus so much she couldn't stand to have anyone other than her kill him.]] |
| 140 | * EveryoneHasStandards: Veleda stirred up rebellions against Rome and conducted numerous human sacrifices, and yet Falco still helps her escape her fate (paraded as a prisoner in Rutilius Gallicus' Ovation before being raped and executed as the highlight), mainly because he thinks it's a horrible death that nobody deserves. He'd prefer her to be killed quickly and cleanly. |
| 141 | * EvilCounterpart: Anacrites to Falco. |
| 142 | * EyeScream: The death of [[spoiler: Pomponius. Not content with strangling him, his killers took his eye out too.]] |
| 143 | * FakeKing: The return of the long-dead emperor Nero is a plot-line in ''The Third Nero''. Flavia Albia has to look behind the distraction to find out who's really behind it and what their real motives are. |
| 144 | * FatalFlaw: A very literal version for [[spoiler: Aufidius Crispus in ''Shadows in Bronze'': he makes decisions on a whim, and often refuses to take advice concerning said decisions into account, even if the advice-giver really knows what they're talking about. Even when his decisions end badly, he refuses to learn from his mistakes. This flaw actually gets him killed, because he decides to dive into the sea to escape the imminent ship crash he's about to be in the middle of- and ends up going under a trireme.]] |
| 145 | * FirstPersonSmartass: Falco spends a lot of time rotting in wineshops and giving lengthy, unflattering descriptions of everyone he meets. However never having read Creator/RaymondChandler, he doesn't know that private eyes are supposed to be loners. "Honest, legate!" |
| 146 | * {{Foil}}: Anacrites to Falco. They both come from unstable families ([[spoiler: Anacrites' family were horrible freed slaves and he was taken from them at age three, while Falco's parents separated early and his entire family are insane]]), both work in similar jobs (Anacrites is a spy and Falco is an informer), and they both end up getting out of some very tricky situations. Falco, however, has what Anacrites wants but never got- loving family members and people who support him. Anacrites later tries to get what Falco has by dating his sister, but it doesn't end well for anyone. |
| 147 | * {{Foreshadowing}}: In ''Master and God'': "Those who love [Domitian] will feel rejected..." "Those who love him may ''be'' rejected." "Exactly." Later in the book, Domitian's obsessive paranoia becomes so extreme that [[spoiler: Vinius, a previously loyal Praetorian, ends up joining the rebellion, and is later forced to finally kill Domitian himself, since their appointed assassin screwed it up.]] |
| 148 | ** There's quite a few hints in ''The Accusers'' to the nature of the Metellus family's big secret: [[spoiler:Falco notes that Metellus Negrinus doesn't resemble any of his family members; the family seems oddly paranoid about babies and the possibility of a substituted child; Negrinus is disinherited despite having been close to his father and nobody gives a reason; and midway through the book a will expert infers from the will that his mother, Calpurnia Cara, had drastically upset her husband somehow.]] |
| 149 | * FourTemperamentEnsemble: Used by Aedemon, a physician, who describes several people in ''Alexandria'' by these terms. |
| 150 | * FreudianExcuse: [[spoiler: Anacrites]] was forcibly removed from his family as a young boy and made to grow up among slaves. He eventually comes to really envy Falco for his tight-knit family, as screwed up as they are. |
| 151 | * FriendOnTheForce: Falco's best friend, Petronius, is a member of the Vigiles (primarily these were firemen; policing was a secondary role, and yes the Author knows this). |
| 152 | * FromNobodyToNightmare: [[spoiler: Florius]] starts off as a harmless equestrian, the son of a ruthless gangster- and once the gangster is dead, he takes his place and rises in the Underworld, becoming a feared figure in no time who nearly kills [[spoiler: Petro]]. |
| 153 | * TheFunInFuneral: The funeral of [[spoiler:the pirate Theopompus]] in ''Scandal Takes a Holiday'' is an undignified affair from the beginning, but after [[spoiler:his murderers are identified at the funeral]] it lapses into farce when [[spoiler:two entire gangs of pirates begin to beat seven kinds of shit out of each other, while the vigiles lounge around eating the finger food, waiting for them to finish so the survivors can be arrested.]] |
| 154 | * GenerationXerox: Vinius, one of the protagonists of ''Master and God'', is the son of Marcus Rubella. He spends a lot of time trying not to be his father, while everyone else thinks he should be his father- i.e. pushing him into the army, promoting him, encouraging him to take new positions and so on. He ends up acting like his father to try not getting caught in a web of conspiracies. |
| 155 | * GladiatorGames[=/=]BreadAndCircuses: ''Two for the Lions'' revolves around them. |
| 156 | * GoingCommando: Falco doesn't wear anything under his tunic. Played for laughs in ''One Virgin Too Many'' when he has to be lowered head-first down a well. |
| 157 | * GoodCopBadCop: |
| 158 | ** When Falco and Flavius Hilaris interrogate Claudius Triferus, the contracted manager of the Vebiodunum silver mines in ''The Silver Pigs'', Falco takes the role of the bad cop while Hilaris becomes the good cop. |
| 159 | ** Later, in ''The Iron Hand of Mars'', Falco is attempting to extract information from a barmaid. He manages to upset her through mentioning her apparent lover. Justinus, accompanying Falco, goes into the tavern to comfort her and manages to get the needed information. Afterwards, Falco explicitly mentions this trope to Justinus. |
| 160 | * HappilyAdopted; Flavia Albia first appears as a street urchin in Londinium. Falco and Helena speculate about her origins, and tentatively conclude her parents were most likely Roman settlers who were slaughtered during the UsefulNotes/{{Boudica}} uprising.[[note]]This is never established: she might have been British by parents as well as birth[[/note]] They decide they can't just leave her there, and she returns to Rome with them as a ward and later as an adoptive daughter. |
| 161 | * HardboiledDetective: in the early novels more than in the later ones, wherein he’s settled down. |
| 162 | * HeadbuttingHeroes: Falco and Helena in the first book. |
| 163 | * HeroicBSOD: Falco had one after seeing the aftermath of the [[UsefulNotes/{{Boudica}} Boudiccan Revolt]] as a young man, as a result, he and Petro faked medical problems to get out of the army. |
| 164 | * HeterosexualLifePartners: Falco and Petro, his best friend, who was in the army with him. |
| 165 | * HonorBeforeReason: |
| 166 | ** Falco rejects a social promotion at the end of ''The Silver Pigs'', as it's an obvious bribe for keeping quiet about a political scandal. Falco then realises he's thrown away the chance to marry Helena legally and changes his mind, but by then Vespasian has withdrawn his offer. |
| 167 | ** In ''The Jupiter Myth'', Falco reflects bitterly that Rome should have abandoned Britannia as soon as it became clear that its fabled mineral wealth didn't exist, but UsefulNotes/{{Boudica}}'s revolt and its aftermath made staying there a matter of national pride, which is why the Empire has continued to occupy a worthless province that holds nothing of value and only bad memories for himself and Petro. |
| 168 | * IHaveThisFriend: In ''Master and God'', Gracilis and Vinius consult a doctor about their friend, Domitian. At first the doctor assumes that they're asking about themselves, but when he finds out who they mean, he has a mental breakdown because of the possible implications that could ensue, since he just diagnosed the Emperor with paranoia. |
| 169 | * IHaveYourWife: A non-villainous version in ''Poseidon's Gold''. Falco has become a prime suspect in a grisly murder of a legionnaire. Falco and Petro are thick as thieves, but they both know Petro is too conscientious a public officer (and has a family to consider) to cover for Falco indefinitely; on top of that, the magistrate Marponius has latched onto the case personally and is breathing down Petro's neck for results. Petro also knows that, even if Falco has been banned from leaving city limits, he could easily keep himself hidden inside Rome if he wanted to, so he ends up taking Helena into custody so that Falco would present himself (and whatever he has discovered) to the magistrate. To be fair to Petro, he did warn Falco ahead of time that he only had about a day's left of slack before Petro would be forced to pick up the pace. Subverted when it turns out Helena went to the murder scene of her own accord to help the waiter clean it up after the body was removed and thus cast herself under suspicion of concealing evidence. |
| 170 | * ImAHumanitarian: The villain of ''See Delphi And Die'' [[spoiler: disguises the bodies of people he kills as meat that he sells.]] |
| 171 | * ImpaledPalm: In ''The Ides Of April'', Albia stabs Tiberius in the palm with a skewer. |
| 172 | * InterruptedDeclarationOfLove: Falco quickly realises Sosia is about to make one, and cuts her off. |
| 173 | * InterserviceRivalry: Inter-legion rivalry: |
| 174 | ** Falco states that the members of Legio XIV Gemina, who gained fame fighting in the [[UsefulNotes/{{Boudica}} Boudiccan Revolt]], are not fond of Legio II Augusta -- which Falco served in — due to the latter's refusal to fight during a battle in the revolt. It is Falco's own bad luck that he has to deliver the titular iron hand to them in ''The Iron Hand of Mars'' at the behest of the Emperor. |
| 175 | ** The Fourteenth Gemina is also not fond of the legion they share a fort with, the Legio I Adiutrix; Justinus, at the moment serving as an officer in the First, helpfully explains that the First Adiutrix was raised from marines in the Misenum fleet during Nero's time, making this a more traditional form of interservice rivalry. |
| 176 | * IntrafamilialClassConflict: ''Fatal Legacy'' (2023) has the Roman public informer Flavia Albia taking on what she ''thinks'' is a straightforward case where she has to locate the documented proof a former slave was granted his freedom. As the slave went on to inherit property and found a lucrative business, with his grand-daughter about to enter a good marriage, a lot depends on this. Albia discovers exactly how much money and property is in doubt and who would stand to benefit if its current owner never stopped being a slave and has no title to any of it. And the case, suddenly, becomes a lot less straightforward. |
| 177 | * InTheBlood: Everyone fears this of Aelianus- he admits to admiring and liking his uncle, who disappeared. In addition, Aelianus is bored, constantly shafted by everyone else, and in a very volatile position. [[spoiler: His uncle, a hedonistic layabout, committed treason and was killed for it. More than a few people fear that if given the opportunity, Aelianus might do the same. Fortunately he doesn't, or at least hasn't yet as of the most recent installment.]] |
| 178 | * {{Irony}}: |
| 179 | ** Rubella wanted to get into the Praetorian Guard more than anything. [[spoiler: ''Master and God'' tells us that he did indeed get into the Guard -- and died six weeks later, because he celebrated so much that the wine basically killed his brain.]] |
| 180 | ** As pointed out in the same book, Domitian claimed to stand for morality and punished criminals severely... but because he was so emotionally volatile and hard to predict, everyone ended up behaving like a pack of douchebags just to survive, whether it was spying, bribing people, or just making things up. In other words, his laws didn't make Rome a more moral place, they pretty much destroyed what morality was left. |
| 181 | * ItsAllAboutMe: [[spoiler:Andronicus]] in ''The Ides Of April'' is a classic example. He believes he is inherently better than everyone else, and crucially, he believes that nothing he does can ever be considered wrong because he is the one who did it. Whatever he did, it's always someone else's fault, or it was necessary. He kills five people for wronging him, and several of them didn't do more than insult him or yell at him. When Albia confronts him and tells him that their burgeoning friendship/relationship was over long before that talk, he immediately concludes that she must be seeing someone else, not that she doesn't want anything more to do with a serial killer. |
| 182 | ** [[spoiler:Tranio/Gnaeus]] in ''Desperate Undertakings'' is another example- he feels that he is perfectly justified in having killed nearly ten people because they all wronged him in some minor way, and even tells Albia to her face that he hasn't done anything wrong by doing so. |
| 183 | * IWantMyBelovedToBeHappy: In ''The Iron Hand of Mars'' Falco discovers that Helena is being courted by the Emperor's son Titus. Falco knows she doesn't love Titus, but out of a belated sense of patriotism -- and feeling that he can't stand in the way of her getting such a tremendous social advancement -- he urges Helena to marry him. Helena calmly responds that she's already turned Titus down. |
| 184 | * IdiosyncraticEpisodeNaming: ''The Silver Pigs'' being followed by ''Shadows in Bronze'', ''Venus in Copper'', ''The Iron Hand of Mars'' and ''Poseidon's Gold'', at which point Lindsey Davis ran out of metals that were known to the Romans and sounded promising in a title. Titles after that follow no particular pattern, though several riff on a well-known phrase (e.g ''Three Hands in the Fountain''). ''Three Hands'' is also the first in a trio of books with numerically-themed titles: ''Three Hands in the Fountain'', ''Two for the Lions'' and ''One Virgin Too Many''. |
| 185 | * ItWillNeverCatchOn: Davis is very fond of this trope. |
| 186 | ** Beginning with ''The Silver Pigs'' and continuing throughout the series, Falco reiterates how much he despises Britannia, the most far-flung and least hospitable of all the Empire's provinces, where there's nothing of value and the natives will never amount to much of anything. |
| 187 | ** In ''Shadows in Bronze'' Falco observes while cutting through Nero's old Golden House that Vespasian is planning to return it to the people and that the amphitheater that his architects will put up will be "yet another forgettable Imperial monument." In fact, it will be the Flavian Amphitheater, better known as the Colosseum, which almost two thousand years later and in ruins is still arguably Rome's greatest landmark. |
| 188 | ** In ''Venus in Copper'' Falco encounters a Gaulish[[note]]that's French for those of you who don't know your classical history/geography[[/note]] cook which he finds ridiculous, as that country will never be famous for good food, although the cook in question ''is'' very good. |
| 189 | ** In ''Last Act in Palmyra'', Falco writes a play, "The Spook Who Spoke", with a plot remarkably similar to ''[[Creator/WilliamShakespeare Hamlet]]''. The actor he describes it to instantly rejects the idea, as ghosts don't speak in plays. In the same book the theatre group is waylayed by a bizarre cult, called Christians. "Only one god? How boring." |
| 190 | ** In ''Three Hands in the Fountain'', Helena suggests that Marcus start a "portfolio" of Italian landholdings by buying the farm near Tibur (modern day Tivoli) where he and Petro are staying while they investigate the surrounding countryside. Falco scoffs that ''"no one of any taste or sense"'' would want to own land in that area. Approximately 50 years later, the Emperor UsefulNotes/{{Hadrian}} will build his famous villa within a stone's throw of the same farm. |
| 191 | ** In ''Alexandria'' the inventor Heron mentions his ''aeolipile'' (wind ball, a steam engine -- and yes, it was a real invention) which Helena Justina suggests could be used as a form of propulsion to move vehicles. Heron laughs at this and says his invention is merely a toy -- after all, who would need it? (Although he also points out the difficulty making a strong enough boiler for a larger version.) |
| 192 | * JerkassHasAPoint: As mentioned above, Geminus was right when he said giving money to any of Falco's sisters (possibly excepting Maia) would have been a bad idea. They're all bloody scary. |
| 193 | * KarmaHoudini: Anacrites got out of how many situations in the end? [[spoiler:[[SubvertedTrope Ultimately, not enough.]]]] |
| 194 | * KarmicDeath: [[spoiler: Domitian killed Sosia Camillina, a noble woman who was meant to trust him and be trusted. Falco has evidence about her death, but as he is a commoner with no status, he knows he can't fire the gun. In ''Master and God'', Domitian is finally killed by Vinius, who started off as a commoner with no status before being bumped up to the Praetorian Guard, an elite body meant to trust Domitian and be trusted.]] |
| 195 | ** After creating a major clusterfuck in the gladiator world, the final fight in ''Two For The Lions'' ends with [[spoiler: Fidelis, Saturnius, Myrrha, Calliopus and Scilla]] all dead, and [[spoiler: Anacrites]] nearly dead, thus neatly killing off nearly everyone responsible. |
| 196 | ** In ''A Comedy of Terrors'', Greius, a thug whose method of dealing with a troublesome person was to set a fire that burnt his whole family to death, runs from arrest into the path of an experimental machine being used to thrill crowds in the Arena. It is a flamethrower. It is possible the vigiles testing the machine know ''exactly'' what crime he committed. They test it to their satisfaction. |
| 197 | ** [[spoiler:Saffia Donata]] in ''The Accusers'' spent a long time blackmailing a family she married into, and got pregnant twice by her husband to ensure that she was permanently tied to them. She winds up dying in childbirth, while the child lives. |
| 198 | ** [[spoiler:Tranio/Gnaeus]] in ''Desperate Undertakings'' murdered his ex-wife and children and set it up to look like his ex-wife had murdered the children and killed herself in the manner of Medea. He later dies in the same way as Jason, who betrayed Medea: crushed by a collapsing replica of the ship ''Argo''. |
| 199 | * KickedUpstairs: 'Hunting leave' and 'being sent up-country' are codes for when someone is unofficially relieved from office or duty, and can amuse themselves however they want as long as they stay out of the way. Both terms carry a very negative connotation, because to be sent on hunting leave implies that somebody did something ''very'' wrong. It actually has even worse connotations for Quinctius Quadratus, because he got given some hunting leave before he'd even started his job, which is a giant red flag to everyone. |
| 200 | * LaserGuidedKarma: Caprenius Marcellus, Helena's former father-in-law, is extremely fond of her and [[spoiler: Atius Pertinax and wants them to get remarried.]] Later, he comes up with an idea: [[spoiler: Pertinax has assumed a new identity, since he's officially dead,]] so Marcellus wants to write Helena into his will and make her his main beneficiary, with the intention that she'll [[spoiler: remarry Pertinax.]] Falco, who knows damn well that Helena divorced Pertinax for being a neglectful husband, is furious at anybody trying to use her for something like that. [[spoiler: Later, Marcellus has a stroke, and is rendered almost totally incapable of speech. Falco takes the opportunity to marry him to Aemilia Fausta, ignoring the fact that Marcellus probably had no idea of who she was, and Aemilia gets his lands, which later go to her son- who is most likely Petro's.]] Crosses over into DisproportionateRetribution. |
| 201 | * LeaningOnTheFourthWall: In one instance in ''Shadows In Bronze'', Falco states that "if this was an adventure tale by some scurrilous court poet", his current conversation partner (sea captain Laesus, who incidentally noted that Falco did not appear like a priest but more like a spy trying to look like one) would then tell him [[DeusExMachina he knew exactly the person Falco was looking for, Curtius Gordianus, and that said person would be in public tonight]]. Laesus milks the tension for all it's worth, before stating he's never heard of the man. |
| 202 | * LooseFloorboardhidingSpot: Falco is tasked with investigating the death of another informer who probed a case too deeply and too unwisely. Falco knows all the tricks for concealment and keeping things safe - he uses them himself. He soon deduces that a knothole in a floorboard that looks like any other floorboard in the room is ''just'' big enough to insert a finger into. This allows him to lift the board up and discover this is the safe hold for the dead man's note tablets and other evidence relating to cases he has been working on. |
| 203 | * MamasBabyPapasMaybe: Falco's brother Festus had a girlfriend called Marina, who gave birth to a daughter, Marcia, after Festus went back on duty. Having slept with both Falco and Festus, Marcia could be either man's child, but everyone prefers to think that she's Festus' daughter, and there's no way of telling. |
| 204 | * MeaningfulName: Musca, the fly in ''Master and God''. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musca Musca]] is [[ADogNamedDog the Latin word for fly]], and also the name of the constellation otherwise known as the Fly.[[note]]In modern French, the Latin word "musca" has become "mouche" - also a fly, but with the colloquial meaning of "spy", "squealer", "police informer".[[/note]] |
| 205 | ** Porcius, the new recruit in ''Time To Depart''- he's the son of a man who sells cold meats, and 'Porcius' is close to 'porcine'. [[spoiler: In a way, it can also be seen as a clue to the fact that he's a traitor: Porcius -> porcine -> pig -> squealer.]] |
| 206 | * MetaphoricallyTrue: In ''Venus In Copper'', Falco manages to bluff Priscillus beautifully by claiming that he saw the [[spoiler: poisoned spices]] that Priscillus had brought mixed into wine and drunk, and then that he saw [[spoiler: Novus]] lying dead from poison. [[spoiler: He's not lying, as such: he did see the spices mixed into wine and drunk, and he did see Novus' body, but the wine was drunk by Novus' cook, who died, and Novus was murdered by Severina.]] He also bluffs Sabina Pollia and Hortensia Attila by telling them that [[spoiler:the poisoned cake they'd prepared for Novus had been removed by Severina Zotica as a treat for Novus to eat alone. In reality, Severina had removed it, but she knew it was poisoned and had thrown it into the trash so nobody else would be responsible for Novus' death.]] |
| 207 | * MinorFlawMajorBreakup: ''Master and God'' has Lucilla's husband Nemurus, who wears socks. In Rome, socks generally aren't a thing unless they're to keep one's feet warm, hide a deformity or make wearing shoes more comfortable; however, Nemurus wears socks because he's a [[{{Hipster}} hipster]], and a particularly cruel one -- his socks symbolise not only the fact that he's intentionally set out to make himself different, but also that he makes himself different because he feels that everyone else is below him. It's one of the big things that makes Lucilla realise that their marriage cannot continue. |
| 208 | * MissingWhiteWomanSyndrome: In ''Three Hands In The Fountain'', a serial killer has been killing women, dismembering their bodies and dumping them in Rome's sewers and aqueducts for decades. Various severed limbs have occasionally been found, usually by people working in the aqueducts or on the rivers, but the people who find them don't care- they assume the victims are women or slaves and treat the body parts with about as much respect as they would a dead rat. |
| 209 | * MosquitoMiscreants: In ''Ode to a Banker'', Marcus and Helena are awakened in the middle of a summer night by the buzzing of a single mosquito. Since their infant daughter is sleeping in the next room, this is their worst nightmare, and they [[DisproportionateRetribution spend an hour flailing around in the dark, until they are absolutely sure they have killed it]]. |
| 210 | * MurderByMistake: In ''Venus In Copper'', [[spoiler:Appius Priscillus brought poisoned spices (to be mixed with wine, not the kind used with food) to a dinner with the intention of killing his rivals and their wives; however, he left the wine and the spices as gifts before he left, so he could not personally serve them the wine. Falco and a witness accidentally stumble upon the wine and spices and decide to drink some; the witness asks for and gets all the spices, thus later killing him.]] |
| 211 | * MyGodWhatHaveIDone: Falco gets hit hard with this trope in ''The Accusers'', after [[spoiler:discovering that it was Saffia Donata, not Calpurnia Cara, who murdered Rubirius Metellus. Not only has he put an innocent party through a gruelling murder trial and blackened her name, he now has to admit he was wrong, and will get hit with a massive compensation claim that he knows he won't be able to pay, thus ruining him, his entire family and everyone who worked with him. Since Saffia died in childbirth, she can't be prosecuted, and to make matters worse, Calpurnia Cara killed herself after the trial looked likely to succeed, before Falco discovered that she was innocent.]] |
| 212 | * NeverFoundTheBody: In ''Enemies At Home'', Albia's narration tells us that this was the case with [[spoiler: Gaius and Larius, Falco's nephews. Having completed his work on the Great King's House in Britain, Larius went back to his home... which was in Pompeii. Albia especially notes that Larius was such a good painter that he was the type to stay and focus on his work rather than run from a volcanic eruption. As for Gaius, he pulled a HeroicSacrifice during the second Great Fire of Rome, refusing to leave his house so he could help others get out.]] |
| 213 | * NeverSayDie: A powerful example from ''Master and God'': the narrator follows a fly as it attempts to annoy the new Emperor, swings past him and -- |
| 214 | -->'''Narrator''': Musca will not be appearing in this story again. |
| 215 | * NeverSuicide: Averted with [[spoiler: Theon]] in ''Alexandria''- Falco finally concludes that the most likely explanation is that he killed himself and the locked doors were an accident. |
| 216 | * NewOldFlame: The oft-mentioned "Tripolitanian rope-dancer", that Falco was carrying on with before the events of the first novel, finally makes an appearance in ''The Jupiter Myth''. |
| 217 | * NobodyPoops: Averted several times. The most significant one is at the end of ''Enemies At Home'', when [[spoiler: Albia contracts dysentery.]] |
| 218 | * NoDeadBodyPoops: Also averted several times, much to Falco's disgust. |
| 219 | * NonIndicativeName: The Society of Olive Oil Producers of Baetica: Most of them aren't from Spain, very few of them own olives and even fewer produce olive oil. |
| 220 | * NoodleIncident: The ''Primus Pilus'' of the Legio XIV Gemina "innocently" asks Falco exactly how Poenius Postumus, TheNeidermeyer who idiotically refused to march Legio II Augusta to the XIV's aid during the [[UsefulNotes/{{Boudica}} Boudiccan Revolt]], died. Falco smiles and says Postumus [[DrivenToSuicide fell on his sword]], while reflecting that he and every other legionary of the II swore an oath to never reveal the truth to outsiders (including the reader). However, it is heavily implied that Postumus was [[UnfriendlyFire fragged]] by his own men for his cowardice and stupidity. |
| 221 | * ObstructiveBureaucrat: SmugSnake Anacrites, the Chief Spy and Falco's rival, along with Laeta, the Correspondence Chief who is constantly warring with Anacrites. |
| 222 | * OfferingsToTheGods: Sacrifices to the gods are common and routine, Falco's not particularly devout but many of his acquaintances make regular sacrifices. |
| 223 | * AnOfferYouCantRefuse: At the beginning of ''Shadows in Bronze'', Falco and Anacrites are making a report to Vespasian. Vespasian shifts the topic to one of the conspirators from ''The Silver Pigs'', saying that he will be "obliged to grant him a favor he won't forget", likely invoking this trope. Falco doesn't understand the statement, thinking it is some sort of code-speak (though he gets it later). |
| 224 | * OfficerAndAGentleman: Justinus as an officer of the Legio I Adiutrix, as seen in ''The Iron Hand of Mars''. He keeps himself connected to the troops as well as he can from his detached station, even picking up how to bugle the reveille. [[spoiler:He's even picked up the local Germanic dialect, which allows him to communicate with Veleda in her native tongue and shatters her image of the "arrogant Roman" who sees everyone not part of the Empire as worthless barbarians who must learn and assimilate themselves into Roman culture, without learning anything about the native culture.]] Finally, when Falco and most of their guard detachment (Helvetius, a centurion, and his recruits) get captured by the locals, Justinus is the one who arrives to their rescue with a clever ploy (instead of running back to friendly lines, which Falco says would have been the sensible, expected thing to do), entering AFatherToHisMen territory in the meantime. |
| 225 | * OhMyGods: A given in Rome's polytheist society (though they usually just say "Gods"). Variations include using specific gods, usually relevant to the situation (i.e. "Juno Moneta!" if you were financially screwed). More earthy characters use "Balls" or (Marcus' favourite) [[UnusualEuphemism "Cobnuts"]]. |
| 226 | * OldShame: In-Universe: |
| 227 | ** Falco and Petro were both in the army at the same time, and they served in Legio II Augusta, the infamous legion whose leader refused to fight against UsefulNotes/{{Boudica}}. As a result, Falco has to be very careful about saying what legion he was in to certain people who he knows will take it the wrong way (usually soldiers, ex-soldiers and ex-army officers). |
| 228 | ** Also, early on in the series Falco disposes of the corpse of [[spoiler: Justinus, Aelianus and Helena's uncle at the behest of the Emperor. True, their father actually dealt the death-blow,]] but the manner in which he had to dispose of the rotting body is something he has never discussed openly, and he was worried that he would find the body itself in the sewer in ''Three Hands.'' |
| 229 | * OneSteveLimit: Exceeded by a long way in ''Deadly Election''. Private investigator Flavia Albia is hampered in her murder inquiry by a family ''all'' of whose female members are named Julia. In the Roman style they are distinguished from each other by second names - Julia Optata, Julia Versecunda, et c. But this still slows up the investigation. Davis even includes a family tree on page 345 headed "A Family With Too Many Julias". But she still has to investigate ''eight'' related women. All called Julia something. |
| 230 | * OnlySaneMan: Petro amongst the vigiles (firemen/policemen - see FriendOnTheForce above). |
| 231 | * PleaseShootTheMessenger: Falco suspects his mission to Germania in ''The Iron Hand of Mars'' is a UriahGambit by Titus (who is courting Helena Justina); Falco is not carrying any specific message for the Legio XIV Gemina stationed at Moguntiacum[[note]]Mainz[[/note]], but his mere status as a former legionary of the Legio II Augusta (who left the XIV twisting in the wind during UsefulNotes/{{Boudica}}'s revolt) is as good as a massive target painted on his back. |
| 232 | * PoorCommunicationKills: |
| 233 | ** ''Shadows In Bronze'' could be called ''Poor Communication Kills: The Book''. |
| 234 | ** ''The Silver Pigs'' has a bad case: Helena instantly takes against Falco, and they spend much of the book arguing. It turns out that [[spoiler: Sosia and Helena were regularly exchanging letters before Sosia died, and Helena inferred from Sosia's letters that she'd fallen in love with Falco and had slept with him -- and Sosia was only sixteen and had no previous sexual or romantic experience. As it turns out, Falco turned her down and refused to risk it, but it takes a while to get the misunderstanding sorted out. It really doesn't help that Sosia gave Falco a bracelet that Helena had given her, and Falco had brought it with him.]] |
| 235 | *** It's not just that; Sosia told Helena she'd given Falco the names of the conspirators, so Helena assumes Falco's investigation is just a cover-up. [[spoiler:Turns out she'd written out a denunciation and left it with the original silver pig.]] |
| 236 | *** A good deal more of the conspiracy could have been revealed earlier if Falco had just asked what Helena's ex-husband's name was. |
| 237 | * PrecisionFStrike: About the only one in the main series: Claudius [[spoiler: Pius]] calling Falco and Petro 'donkey-fuckers' in ''Nemesis''. |
| 238 | * {{Pride}}: Domitian's biggest fault. He wants to be loved like his father and brother, but he never gets the love he wants because unlike them, he's a cold, calculating bastard. He does his best to make himself loved, and tries to pump up his self-esteem through more and more accolades to himself (such as renaming two months of the year, giving himself Triumphs when the wars fought weren't that substantial, and openly allowing people to call him 'Master and God', which is abominable to most Romans (calling someone a god while still alive was considered terrible, and the worst kind of hubris)). It doesn't work. ''Master and God'' notes that the public find him cold and distant, regularly buying them off; the Senate have been made obsolete, and just about anyone of note is terrified at how capricious he is. |
| 239 | * ProdigalFamily: Marcus' entire family tree, highlighted by the annotations on the family tree. We meet several of them in ''Poseidon's Gold'', including his disreputable auctioneer father, who left his mother years ago; in ''Scandal Takes a Holiday'', we meet the uncle "nobody ever talks about", his mother's eldest brother. |
| 240 | * PyrrhicVictory: By the end of ''Venus In Copper'', [[spoiler: Severina]] has amassed a huge dowry and got revenge on the man who inadvertently murdered her lover… but he's still dead, and she ends up in a probably unhappy marriage to a man who knows the details of her crimes and has evidence hidden away, so she can't kill him too. |
| 241 | * RedHerring: In ''One Virgin Too Many'', a young girl tells everyone she can that a member of her family has threatened to kill her. Later in the book, she completely vanishes without a trace, [[spoiler:and it is revealed that the dead man Aelianus found earlier in the book was actually her great-uncle, which makes Falco suspect that his wife, who had been named as the killer, also murdered Gaia. However, while it is revealed that the true murderer was also the person who had threatened Gaia, she had not actually harmed Gaia- Gaia had simply accidentally fallen down a well, and nobody else was involved.]] |
| 242 | * RedShirt: [[spoiler: Linus, one of Petronius' crew we're introduced to in ''Time to Depart''. He exists to get killed by Balbinus.]] |
| 243 | * RefugeInAudacity: Falco ends up with two [[spoiler: living]] children: Julia Junilla Laeitana and [[spoiler: Sosia]] Favonia. 'Laeitana' is the name of the province where Julia was born, but it's also the name of a wine, a fact which Falco was very aware of when he named her. [[spoiler: Sosia]] is the name of Helena's dead cousin, who was murdered by [[spoiler: Domitian]]. Even though she's normally just called Favonia, naming her [[spoiler: Sosia]] was basically Falco's way of flipping off Vespasian and his entire family- [[spoiler: especially since Falco always kept the evidence that Domitian killed Sosia, and could have used it at any time.]] |
| 244 | * TheReveal: In ''The Accusers'', the secret of the Metellus family turns out to be that [[spoiler: Calpurnia Cara bore three children, two girls and a boy, and when the boy died, rather than admit the truth, she simply asked the babysitter to substitute one of the kids she was caring for. Even when the truth gets out, Negrinus' siblings accept him, but that's not the problem: the problem is that the adoption was never actually legal. Had Negrinus simply been adopted, everything would be fine, but his true parents are unknown, so he becomes an unperson: his marriage becomes illegal; he loses his rank, as do his children; he has no right to any of his property and he can't even use his name, as he has no legal right to it. Falco never finds out what happens to him, but he probably left Rome and tried to start over.]] |
| 245 | * RichInDollarsPoorInSense: Falco's opinion of nouveau-riche freedmen, who are mostly ill-educated; many of them who appear in the series do not disappoint, for example the Hortensii from ''Venus in Copper''. |
| 246 | * SaunaOfDeath: The plot point of ''A Body In The Bath House''. |
| 247 | * ScarsAreForever: Vinius in ''Master and God'' took a spear to the face, leaving him with a ruined right eye and a lot of facial scars. He does see a doctor about them and gets an ointment to soften the skin, but essentially there's nothing more that can be done. |
| 248 | * SelfFulfillingProphecy: Themison of Miletus, a doctor, describes Domitian's paranoia as this -- patients with paranoia tend to suspect everyone around them, despite their innocence, and will continue to do so even if evidence proving their innocence is shown. Many will end up turning against their paranoid loved ones because they just can't take it any more. [[spoiler: Vinius does so, in the end.]] |
| 249 | * SerialKiller: ''Three Hands in the Fountain'' involves the search for a killer of women who strikes during festivals, dumping their dismembered bodies in Rome's [[AbsurdlySpaciousSewer formidable aqueduct system]]. |
| 250 | * ShadyRealEstateAgent: Marcus Didius is looking to move out of the shabby apartment in downmarket Fountain Court to try and raise his social status now that he's dating Helena, ideally in a slightly better area of Rome. A plausible and helpful apartment broker called Cossus gets him the seemingly ideal place in a spanking new build among other aspiring young professionals. The only problem is, all the little creaks and shifts which the helpful estate agent assures them are down to a new build ''settling.'' The building eventually settles so far it collapses. After fearing Helena is dead, Falco looks the other way while enraged survivors lynch the estate agent. |
| 251 | * ShoutOut: |
| 252 | ** In one novel, Falco strikes up a conversation with a group of Judean refugees who offer him a commission to retrieve one of their holy relics. At first, Falco is afraid that they want him to "raid" the treasures brought back after the Roman conquest. However, they then tell Falco that they want him to look for a "Lost Ark." Falco demurs, and tells that [[Franchise/IndianaJones someone more of a daredevil then he]] would have to perform that particular quest... |
| 253 | ** Davis has admitted to quite a lot of what she calls "tribute plagiarism" of authors she respects, most notably Sir Terry Pratchett. Examples of Discworld homage in the books are too numerous to inventory, the character of Zoilus, who flaps around the cemetery in a sheet pretending to be dead (Felmet in ''Wyrd Sisters''), the policeman who turns up at the Saturnalia party dressed as a six-foot carrot; the three witches, one of whom is indisposed because of having to babysit the grandchildren; Alexandria University, where [[spoiler: academics try to gain promotion by killing off the men senior to them, sometimes with the assistance of sacred crocodiles]] (''Literature/{{Pyramids}}''); a troupe of strolling players in a backwater kingdom who put on a suspiciously Shakespeare-like play (''Literature/WyrdSisters'') and do feel free to add more examples. There are [[https://wiki.lspace.org/Reverse_Annotations#%22Falco%22_series]]. |
| 254 | ** A blatant one to Julius Caesar's Literature/CommentariesOnTheGallicWar in ''Shadows In Bronze''; Falco is closely scrutinizing a scroll of it, both to brush up on it again, and to avoid the attention of two local roughs (given Falco's luck, this obviously fails). Falco opines that Julius Caesar is a good writer, but too self-absorbed and therefore not trustworthy. |
| 255 | ** Then there’s the successful British playwright whose description sounds [[Creator/WilliamShakespeare uncannily familiar]]... |
| 256 | * ShownTheirWork: Davis explores Roman life in detail, including some areas that are little known, such as the olive oil industry (''A Dying Light in Corduba''), art dealing (''Poseidon's Gold''), real estate and the nouveau-riche (''Venus in Copper''), finance and vanity publishing (''Ode to a Banker''), Vestal Virgins and other cults (''One Virgin Too Many''), the legal profession (''The Accusers''), and the building industry (''A Body In The Bath House''). |
| 257 | * ShutUpKiss: In ''The Silver Pigs''; at Massilia, while escorting Helena Justina back to Rome, Falco attempts to resolve the romantic tensions that have built up between the two of them this way. His kiss is forced and feels flat, putting a damper on both their emotions. The second time he attempts to kiss her much later on is much more passionate. |
| 258 | * SinsOfOurFathers: Aelianus is shafted from a religious order he wants to join because of [[spoiler: his uncle's involvement in treason.]] He had no part of it and didn't even know it happened, but that's irrelevant. |
| 259 | * SlapSlapKiss: Falco's relationship with Helena Justina starts off rather antagonistically, but it gets better. |
| 260 | * SpinOffspring: At the end of ''Nemesis'', Falco's adopted daughter Albia sets up as an informer in his old office. ''The Ides of April'' picks up her story 11 years later. |
| 261 | * SpiritualSuccessor: ''Master and God'' is basically the sequel to ''The Course Of Honour'', though it's set over a decade later and uses almost none of the same characters. It follows the same themes (the rise and fall of Emperors and how Rome survives them) and the same arc plots (a man and a woman fall in love but cannot be together at first, but they are continually pulled into the Empire's struggles) and both [[spoiler: end with the beginning of a new age for Rome: ''The Course of Honour'' ends with Vespasian as Caesar, taking Caenis as his lover, and ''Master and God'' ends with Domitian dead and Nerva the new Emperor as Vinius and Lucilla run for it.]] |
| 262 | * StarCrossedLovers: Justinus and Veleda. They meet in the middle of a clusterfuck and get about five hours together; he then must go back to Rome, and has to leave her behind. By the time they meet again, he's married with a child and she's lost most if not all of her power and is a fugitive on the run -- and at the end of it, [[spoiler: she rejects him.]] |
| 263 | * SuperDrowningSkills: Falco never learned to swim; he was confined to barracks the week all the other recruits learned. Helena tries to teach him a few times, but it never works. |
| 264 | * SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome: At one point in ''Two For the Lions'', Falco is forced to give up on a case because there's just nothing to continue on with. He then goes on a chapter-long rant about how real cases aren't solved in a couple of days and clues don't materialise when it's most convenient. |
| 265 | ** In ''The Silver Pigs'', Sosia decides to go investigate a place where evidence is stored. However, she's a young teenager with no survival skills, [[spoiler: and her note to Falco goes astray, so instead of being rescued at the last minute or managing to escape, she is unceremoniously murdered.]] |
| 266 | ** Gaia Laelia, the six-year-old daughter of a well-known patrician family who boast several members who have held some of the most exclusive and respected religious roles in existence, tells everyone she can that she fears for her life because a member of her family threatened to kill her. Almost nobody believes her, and the few who do are stone-walled when they try to help her. |
| 267 | ** In ''Three Hands In The Fountain'', it's revealed that a serial killer has been murdering women for decades and disposing of their hacked-up remains either by throwing them into one of the rivers that supplies Rome's aqueducts, or by dumping them in the sewers. People have been finding the body parts for years, but no inquiry was ever made officially because everyone viewed the victims as people to be written off (slaves or prostitutes), and the deaths as unimportant and an inconvenience, so, as is the case with [[MissingWhiteWomanSyndrome many murders in real life]], it was believed that there was no point to reporting them. |
| 268 | ** In ''Time To Depart'', Nonnius Albius, a member of an infamous and dangerous gang, is convinced by Petro to turn against his boss and become a witness after being diagnosed with a fatal illness. [[spoiler:It's later revealed that the 'fatal illness' was a story conceived by Petro, who'd sent the doctor to convince Nonnius that he was sick. However, it's revealed a bit later that Nonnius saw through the story all along- he knew perfectly well that he wasn't sick, and once he made inquiries and found that the doctor who told him he was dying had a brother working for the vigiles, the ploy was obvious.]] |
| 269 | ** Helena spends a lot of ''Poseidon's Gold'' trying to mend the rift between Falco and Geminus. It doesn't work, as might be expected- Geminus refuses to apologise and admit he was wrong to walk out on his wife and children, and Falco refuses to forgive him, especially because he won't apologise. Some issues can be resolved, but not when neither party will budge on their stance. |
| 270 | * SympatheticSlaveOwner: Falco himself and most of the sympathetic characters in the books fit this pattern sooner or later. They’re living in Ancient Rome and not dead broke; it would be very weird if they didn’t own slaves. But they’re drawn as likeable for modern readers, so they treat their slaves quite decently on general principles. |
| 271 | * TakeThat: An in-universe one, when [[spoiler: Quinctius Quadratus dies (having previously accidentally got a friend killed and running out on said dying friend)]]: |
| 272 | -->''Because a man has to stick to his personal standards, I stayed with him until he died.'' |
| 273 | * TestosteronePoisoning: Falco's description of an uber-badass athlete, Milo of Croton, from ''Shadows in Bronze'': |
| 274 | -->When Croton captured Sybaris (the original sin city, further round the Tarentine Bay), that Milo had celebrated by sprinting through the stadium with a bull across his shoulders, killing the beast with one blow of his fist, then eating it raw for lunch... |
| 275 | * ThemeSerialKiller: The killers in ''Desperate Undertakings'' theme their murders after plays and myths. The book is divided into parts, with each part being named after the work that the next death is inspired by. |
| 276 | * ThereShouldBeALaw: In ''See Delphi and Die'', Falco and Co. travel to Greece, in part to track down a young woman who disappeared and whose father believes was kidnapped and murdered. When they find out that [[spoiler:she was struck dead by lightning, and her aunt, a fanatic believer in the Greek gods, decided she had been "blessed by Zeus" and therefore concealed her body where she had been struck]], they are profoundly depressed: no murder was committed, and there is no law that will call what [[spoiler:her aunt]] did a crime, even if it subjected the girl's father to years of anguished uncertainty from which he will never fully recover. |
| 277 | * TornApartByTheMob: In ''Venus In Copper'', a shoddily built Roman tenement building collapses killing all the people inside it. The estate agent who has been selling or renting apartments in the building, and assuring tenants the creaking noises are due to a new building "settling" in its foundations, is grabbed and lynched by survivors and distraught relatives of the dead. Cossus does not have an easy death. |
| 278 | * TrenchcoatBrigade: Falco lived seventeen centuries before the invention of the trenchcoat. However, some tropes are too powerful: Falco is often seen on investigations lurking in a dark out-of-the-way corner whilst wearing a big dark hooded cloak, often loosely fastened in front with a belt. |
| 279 | * TwoFaced: |
| 280 | ** Vinius took a spear to the face, leaving him with one horribly-scarred side and another that's almost perfectly intact. |
| 281 | ** Sea captain Laesus in ''Shadows in Bronze'' has a face that looks like a theater mask, one side smiling and the other sad. [[spoiler:This foreshadows his betrayal of Falco and where his true allegiances lie -- with Pertinax.]] |
| 282 | * {{Unperson}}: Two examples: |
| 283 | ** The first is in ''Two For The Lions'': After [[spoiler: Anacrites]] fights as a gladiator in an arena under a false name, Falco uses it against him constantly as if the truth got out, [[spoiler: Anacrites]] would have effectively forfeited all right to his rank. |
| 284 | ** The second is [[spoiler: Negrinus]] in ''The Accusers''. After it's revealed that [[spoiler: he's a ReplacementGoldfish, a substitute that was brought in after the real Negrinus died, he loses all claim to his property, his rank and even his name, as he's not the real Negrinus -- but he also has no idea who he really is.]] |
| 285 | * TheUntwist: In-universe example. In ''Alexandria'', Falco, Helena and co go to Alexandria for two reasons: they want to see the Seven Wonders of the World, and since Falco's uncle lives there, it actually seemed like going to Egypt was a plausible idea. Everyone in the Museion, however, has heard of Didius Falco, the Emperor's man, and thinks he's there to do something involving bureaucracy, possibly involving replacing some of the high-ranking people there. He really hasn't, but after the Librarian dies, nobody is convinced. |
| 286 | * UptownGirl: Falco muses over the possibility of becoming Sosia Camillina's lover and instantly discounts it because [[TemptingFate only a fool tries to advance his position that way]]. Then he falls in love with Helena Justina instead. |
| 287 | * XanatosSpeedChess: ''Time To Depart''. Petro's plan was easily seen through, but then the people who realised decided to use it for themselves, and adapted it, leading to their enemy to make his own plan, which Falco and Petro then had to figure out and counter... |
| 288 | * VigilanteExecution: In ''Venus in Copper'', [[spoiler:when Falco's new apartment building collapses and kills the residents inside it (thankfully, Helena was away to buy bread), his flaky leasing agent Cossus was there at the absolute worst time. The crowd working to rescue residents and salvage the collapse beat him to death and crucify his body, mostly because the victims included a family with several young children.]] |
| 289 | ** The men of the Fourth Cohort of Vigiles [[note]]The nearest thing to a police force in Rome - the Vigiles. think of where the word "vigilante" comes from. [[/note]] also mete out rough justice to one of their own who was in the pay of a criminal overlord; [[spoiler: Porcius]], the corrupt vigilus, was indirectly responsible for the death of a comrade who was on an undercover investigation. Knowing this, the Fourth show him no mercy whatsoever. |
| 290 | * WhamLine: "It's my brother-in-law." [[spoiler: Famia was dead.]] |
| 291 | ** "Antonia Caenis is [[spoiler: recently passed away.]]" |
| 292 | ** 'I turned the bone and read the name: [[spoiler: LINUS]].' |
| 293 | ** 'On it were the initials [[spoiler: T FL DOM- Titus Flavius Domitian, Vespasian's younger son]].' |
| 294 | *** In addition: '...and stabbed her through the heart, ''with his pen.'' He was right, [[spoiler: Sosia Camillina]] could not have expected that.' |
| 295 | ** "So who will she name next, [[spoiler: Timosthenes]]?" |
| 296 | ** 'We had found Statianus.' |
| 297 | ** 'There is another person we know whose eyes are of the same colours: [[spoiler: Anacrites]].' |
| 298 | ** "''That's not Maia!''" |
| 299 | ** "Then, I had no doubt, Scilla had grabbed a spear and followed the lion into the garden. [[spoiler: She had killed Leonidas herself.]]" |
| 300 | ** "I still remember how I mixed the wine for him: I had killed [[spoiler: Viridovix]] myself." |
| 301 | ** "Didius Falco, I am hoping," declared the Senator with significant formality, "you can tell me who has done me the honour of [[spoiler: making me a grandfather."]] |
| 302 | ** Also: 'I knew this man. He was [[spoiler: Helena's ex-husband; his name was Atius Pertinax. According to the ''Daily Gazette'', he was dead too.']] |
| 303 | * WhatHappenedToTheMouse; ''The Grove of the Caesars'' introduces two former palace slaves, boys who have been corrupted (and possibly sexually abused) and then given as gifts by Emperor Domitian. They end up with Albia, who decides she has a moral duty to provide a home and to try to resocialise them to some sort of normal life. One is murdered and Albia realises she has more of a duty than before to the survivor. She accepts him to her home, alongside the orphaned nephews formally adopted by her husband... then the next novel ''A Comedy of Terrors'' occurs a few months later and the surviving Palace slaveboy Galanthus is not mentioned even once. What happened to him? [[note]] The next novel ''Desperate Undertakings''reveals that Galanthus is still in the care of the Didius family, but has been absorbed into the group of slaves employed by Falco's auctioneering house, where he is being taught a trade and presumably straightened out. He no longer lives in Albia and Tiberius' household.[[/note]] |
| 304 | * WrongGenreSavvy: Early in ''The Silver Pigs'', Sosia decides not to be a useless noblewoman who needs to be rescued and [[PluckyGirl takes the initiative when she's kidnapped.]] As it turns out, she does need to be rescued, but that introduces her to Falco, who she decides will be her co-protagonist in bringing down a treasonous plot. Unfortunately, she takes the initiative too far and goes to investigate a possible location of stolen goods, and keep in mind, she's a teenager with absolutely no survival skills. If she'd been in a great adventure tale, Falco might have been able to find her location and get there fast enough to rescue her, but he gets held up through no fault of his own (he didn't quite receive the note in time, and his landlord sent thugs to beat him up for unpaid rent), [[spoiler: and Sosia dies. Even if he'd been there, he probably wouldn't have been able to save her- Sosia was murdered because she stumbled into a key conspirator, Domitian, and saw his face. If Falco was there, Domitian probably would have ordered his death too.]] |
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