217 BC. Rome has been savaged, beaten and is in retreat. Yet, in that winter of winters, her garrisons cling on behind the walls of Placentia and Cremona, thanks to her sea-born supplies. If he could be freed, a hostage of Rome may yet hold the key to launching a fleet of pirates that could sweep Rome from the seas. For that hostage is none other than Corinna’s son Cleon, rival heir to the throne of Illyria, held in Brundisium, four hundred miles south of the Rubicon.
But Hannibal is set on a greater prize! Macedon is the great power in Greece, feared even by Rome. Its young king, Philip, is being compared with his illustrious ancestor, Alexander the Great. An alliance with Macedon would surely sound the death knell for Rome.
Given Hannibal’s blessing, Sphax, Idwal and Corinna face an epic journey against impossible odds. Navigating the length of the Padus, past legionary garrisons and hostile Gauls, they must then risk the perils of the storm-torn Adria in the depths of the winter. If the gods favour them and they reach the lands of the pirate queen, only then will their real trials begin.
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Guest Post
The Pirate Queen: women of iron in Hannibal’s world
One of the challenges in writing the second book in The Histories of Sphax series, The Winter of Winters, was creating a strong, credible, female character. I knew she couldn’t be drawn from Republican Rome or the Greek world, where women were largely locked away and treated as chattels, so I had to look elsewhere. Surprisingly, considering the woeful position of women in the ancient world (c. 218 BC), I didn’t have to look far.
Amongst the Celtic peoples of Europe we know that women could hold high social positions – the Princess tombs of Bad Durkheim are a good example – and that their legal status in law was respected, but we also know they could rule in their own right. Almost three hundred years before Boudicca led her rebellion, another queen waged war against Rome. Her name is Queen Teuta of Illyria, and she’s often referred to as the Pirate Queen.
Illyrians were a loose affiliation of tribes whose lands bordered the eastern shores of the Adriatic Sea north of Greece (Albania, Montenegro and Croatia). They had a distinctive culture separate from the Celts to the north and west, and the Greeks and Macedonians to the south and east, and as a seafaring people they’d grown rich on two things: the amber trade, and piracy.
When we think of pirates we imagine ship-on-ship battles at sea, but the Illyrians did things on a far grander scale. Illyrians went viking, using sleek oared vessels called lembi that could carry up to fifty warriors. On a famous raid on the Peloponnese in 231 BC, King Agron, one of Teuta’s husbands (Illyrians probably practised polyandry), had over a hundred of these lembi with him. The classical sources tell us that on his return, Agron threw a huge feast lasting days, during which he literally drank himself to death. That’s the other thing you need to know about Illyrians: they liked to party!
On the death of her husband, Teuta proclaimed herself queen, but two years later she fell foul of Rome because of the ongoing problem of … you’ve guessed it – piracy! If anything is going to send a Republican senator into an apoplectic fit it’s piracy. Rome loathed the practice, and Rome’s apologists, the historians Livy and Polybius rise to new heights of condemnation in their descriptions of the Illyrians and their headstrong queen. Polybius is a notorious misogynist, but to be fair to Rome, Teuta did license individual privateers for a share in their booty – I’m reminded of Francis Drake and Elizabeth I.
What happened next is chronicled by Polybius, but his account is suspiciously vivid, suggesting it was little short of trumped-up propaganda to justify Rome’s war with Illyria in 229 BC. According to him, a member of the Roman delegation sent to negotiate with the queen offended her, and ‘with womanish passion and unreasoning anger,’ arranged for the insolent envoy to be assassinated on his homeward voyage. In other words, offering Rome a cast-iron pretext to invade Illyria.
Queen Teuta’s brief war with Rome was just as disastrous as Boudicca’s. And certainly not helped by her ex-lover (hinted at by all the classical sources), Demetrius of Pharos, switching sides. But at least Teuta escaped with her life, signing a peace treaty with Rome in 228/7 BC and suffering a comfortable banishment to the northerly province of Rhizon (Risan in modern day Montenegro).
At which point Queen Teuta completely disappears from history and a veil is drawn over the rest of her life. That is, until I turned up!
Conveniently for me, history doesn’t record whether she had any children. In The Hostage of Rome, Queen Teuta is resurrected as the Pirate Queen and looms larger than life once again. As for her daughter, Corinna: as Sphax’s lover she now takes centre stage in their attempt to rescue her son Cleon, held hostage of Rome.
Thank you
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About the author
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.
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Author Links
https://twitter.com/RobertMKidd1
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064169594911
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Book Links
UK – https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hostage-Rome-Histories-Sphax-Book-ebook/dp/B09X3L8WLB/
US – https://www.amazon.com/Hostage-Rome-Histories-Sphax-Book-ebook/dp/B09X3L8WLB/
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Giveaway
Win Book 6 in The Histories of Sphax series to be dedicated to the winner, & a signed dedicated copy too
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