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Wednesday, June 30, 2021
[New post] 👤 Guest post for The Winter of Winters by Robert M Kidd
Theodene Allen posted: " Fact, Fiction and Wormholes Just before his death in 1946, that old reprobate W. C. Fields was asked by a friend why he was reading the Bible so avidly? 'Lookin' for loopholes,' Field replied. I know what he meant – not about the Bible, of cour"
Just before his death in 1946, that old reprobate W. C. Fields was asked by a friend why he was reading the Bible so avidly? 'Lookin' for loopholes,' Field replied. I know what he meant – not about the Bible, of course – but those loopholes. They are like nuggets of pure gold for writers of historical fiction. A better word for them might be 'wormholes' – those theoretically unproven phenomena beloved of sci-fi writers – for they take the novelist into an unknown world in an unknown future. Let's start with Navaras and Similce.
In Numidian history (Numidia would have covered where Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria are today), there's a wonderful story about one of its princes, a colourful character called Navaras. After the First Punic War and an outrageous claim from Rome for recompense, Carthage was strapped for cash and couldn't pay off its mercenary armies, who promptly went on the rampage and started a civil war. At first, Navaras sides with the rebels, but on witnessing at first hand their atrocities, he seeks an honourable way to switch sides. He does this by riding alone into the enemy camp and pitches up miraculously unscathed outside the pavilion of his arch-enemy, Hamilcar Barca. There he pledges his Numidians to the cause of Carthage. As in all good fairytale endings, such reckless audacity is rewarded with the hand in marriage of Hamilcar's daughter. Presumably, they lived happily ever after.
To my delight, Navaras and his Barca bride then conveniently disappear from all historical records and sources. Not a single classical historian can tell me what happened to Navaras and – I've called her Similce – after this one recorded historical event. There's the wormhole.
Now I'm free to invent a future for them. Did they have children? A son perhaps? My hero Sphax desperately needs a backstory! Hamilcar Barca is none other than Hannibal's father; which means Similce was his sister (Hannibal had two – but we don't know their names), and that makes Hannibal himself Sphax's uncle. This just gets better and better … too good to pass up!
Sphax is seventeen when the book opens and has spent the last ten years as a miserable slave in Rome. So, somehow I have to get a seven year old taken into slavery. In 229-228 BC Rome declared war on Queen Teuta of Illyria. She's another colourful character, often referred to as the Pirate Queen, and after losing her disastrous war, conveniently disappears from history. Another wormhole? I think so … the dates fit perfectly!
Poor Sphax! I've got a sinking feeling his parents are going to come to a sticky end somewhere off the coast of Illyria, and he'll be taken into slavery and sent to Rome. But at least that explains his loathing of Rome, his desire for revenge and motivation for wanting to join his uncle Hannibal's army. His genes also explain his recklessness, intelligence and culture. Not bad from one wormhole, and the Pirate Queen offers up even more opportunities in the future.
I never play fast and loose with real history: names, dates, places, battles etc. are sacrosanct. But wormholes are free game!
When Cato the Censor demanded that 'Carthage must be destroyed,' Rome did just that. In 146 BC, after a three year siege, Carthage was raised to the ground, its surviving citizens sold into slavery and the fields where this once magnificent city had stood, ploughed by oxen. Carthage was erased from history.
That's why I'm a novelist on a mission! I want to set the historical record straight. Our entire history of Hannibal's wars with Rome is nothing short of propaganda, written by Greeks and Romans for their Roman clients. It intrigues me that Hannibal took two Greek scholars and historians with him on campaign, yet their histories of Rome's deadliest war have never seen the light of day.
My hero, Sphax the Numidian, tells a different story!
When I'm not waging war with my pen, I like to indulge my passion for travel and hill walking, and like my hero, I too love horses. I live in Pembrokeshire, West Wales.
Guest post for The Winter of Winters by Robert M Kidd
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