The Course of Honour

The Course of Honour is the love story of the Roman Emperor Vespasian and his mistress Antonia Caenis, during Rome's most turbulent times - the reigns of Tiberius, Caligua, Claudius, Nero and the infamous year of the Four Emperors.

Caenis is an intelligent palace slave, well taught, who is working as a secretary, principally as scribe, for Antonia, Claudius' mother. Claudian Rome and the life of a slave in the palace is well documented. The first meeting between the young senatorial aspirant Vespasian and Caenis is memorably scribed (so to speak: one may skip the Styx...

Romance between a slave and a young senator is forbidden, ditto for a freedwoman and Consul of the City of Rome. Caenis is a woman of strong character who sets her boundaries fiercely, never forgetting her origins.

There is a lot of history recounted in this narrative, for it is necessary to place Caenis within the events of the time and link important relationships that show how Rome suffered under the terrors of the Claudian dynasty. Debased, debauched times, the narrative opens with Tiberius in Capri, and follows in passing, the lives and careers of subsequent emperors. The demise of the young Brittanicus at the hands of the seventeen year old Nero is powerfully recreated.

In the later novels, Vespasian appears briefly, if only to commission Falco and send him on his way. Here, in the course of Honour, Vespasian is one of the central actors and his character is extra ordinarily well formed; this foundation is what makes the subsequent appearances of Vespasian in the later Falco novels so darn powerful and memorable, albeit brief.

Lust is a fire that never goes out, as we read from the excerable lives and courts of the Emperors of the times. The course of true love, love with honour, never deviates as this novel unfolds and wends its way through times of despair, horror, civil war, separation, marriage and years of absence. Vespasian's true honour for the lady scribe Caenis is never extinguished.

A fascinating read, for we have read this narrative only after reading the Falco corpus. We couldn't put it down.

The Emperor Vespasian