Pompey the Great’s youngest son, Sextus, is featured throughout three of my books thus far. Betrayal and murder are not uncommon throughout ancient Roman history, but young Sextus was dealt a particularly cruel hand in every respect.
The teenage chancer who fought Julius Caesar in Libertas did his utmost to keep the Republican flame alive but a life of piracy (in Nest of Vipers) and an emerging cruel streak (in Viper Pit) will leave readers wondering whether he’ll find redemption or annihilation in my next (title tba, due early 2021).
It’s a sad story, and quite an adventure to boot.
I began my research into Sextus when writing Libertas, in which he and his brother Gnaeus almost succeeded in halting Julius Caesar’s relentless mission to control Rome. This fascination with the damaged young man continues as I write the Agents of Rome series – Nest of Vipers and Viper Pit (both 2020) and Book Three, focusing on Sextus’s pirate base in Sicily.
Initially, I couldn’t help but like him and portrayed him as a cocky adventurer with sufficient principles to keep his Republican mission on track, but now the dark side has begun to emerge. As it surely must given these powerful and unkind events in his young life:
The murder of his father
Having watched from a distance as his father Pompey the Great’s war in Greece against Caesar went from bad to worse, this is the defining moment as his father was brutally murdered before his eyes. A sudden shock to the system of a magnitude that’s impossible to imagine.
Defeat by Caesar
With Gnaeus, he rallied the Optimates faithful for a final push to defeat Caesar, first at Thapsus (Africa 46BC), then at Munda (Spain 45BC). The brothers, together with Caesar’s turncoat tribune Labienus, had the numbers if not the training to end the civil war at Munda. But they failed, as recounted in Libertas bringing this comment from Doug Jackson, best-selling author of the Gaius Valerius Verrens series: “The author vividly recreates the epic battle that gave Caesar the prize he sought so avidly.”
The brothers fled, Caesar’s men giving chase before catching and executing Gnaeus. Sextus, however, was more fortunate and escaped by sea. His seamanship and piratical instincts would serve him well. He was now the last of the Pompeys – and destined to share his father’s fate.
His crazy admirals
Nest of Vipers takes up the Sextus story after he has built what can only be called a state-operated pirate base in Sicily, from where he controlled Rome’s grain supplies with a fleet far superior to that of Octavian’s war-ravaged Italy. The key naval admirals under Sextus were Menas, a freedman from his father’s day, and Menacrates, another freedman. Both were unsavoury characters, as was Murcus (yes, the Three Ms of Mayhem!) who had joined Sextus’ cause after the Battle of Philippi. Menas betrayed Sextus, offering his ships to a grateful Octavian whose own navy was inferior to that of Sextus. By now Sextus probably trusted no one, the ambitious Murcus least of all, and had him murdered at his home in Syracuse (Viper Pit has these events). Against his better nature, the darkness took over with Sextus resorting to desperate measures.
After a series of naval defeats by Sextus’ faster ships, Octavian called in the big guns to deal with ‘The Problem That Is Sextus’ once and for all. He gave his ingenious general Agrippa free rein to build a competitive fleet and create a secret weapon – the Harpax – while 14 legions were shipped from Africa to Sicily.
You can see that it’s not going to end well for Sextus, so it’s a good thing that the protagonist in the Agents of Rome series is the noble former centurion Titus Villius Macer who, with his wife Zerenia and his faithful optio Crispus, witness the climax of poor Sextus’s ill-fated defiance against the might of New Rome. A climax with yet more Roman betrayal (as you would expect) to be revealed in the third novella.
Weaving stories around such a tragic life of murder and betrayal is a historical fiction author’s dream although this sensitive soul (me) frequently has to come up for air, take the dogs for a long walk, and be grateful that life isn’t like that anymore. Or is it?
Alistair Forrest, November 1, 2020
