ricardienne | "Ist Tacitus vielleicht dein Hirngespinst?"

So as you know, I have a thing about finding novels, the trashier the better, about Tacitus, because there really aren't that many.* And I have just found another one, a German (self-published?) YA time-travel fantasy.

As far as I can tell, it's about a young boy named Steve who, while his family is on vacation in Ephesus, gets thrown back in time to Domitian's reign, where he gets embroiled in some sort of prophecy about a mysterious child who will show the emperor how to become a god...

Anyway, "der junge Senator Tacitus" seems to be skulking around the corners quite a bit, although in at least one point he's ranting about how evil Domitian is for persecuting Christians (which makes no sense); I've been looking at the preview on Amazon, and I can't quite tell whether Domitian is affably evil and Steve is deceived about his new friend/patron's intentions, or whether Domitian is Misunderstood By The Senatorial Establishment and Tacitus is the Villain.

In his first appearance, Tacitus shows up with "disheveled hair and wild eyes" and totally loses it during a senatorial embassy and pulls a dagger on Domitian (!!!!!!). It's pretty hilarious, because everyone decides that they should really pretend he hasn't and an older senator (Agricola?) drags him away with a scolding.

It's entirely possible, in fact, that Tacitus is utterly out of his mind in this novel, because he then shows up sneaking around Steve's bedroom with "eyes that were not eyes, but dark voids" and frothing at the mouth to tell Steve (I think, because a page is unavailable in the preview), that Domitian is evil and murders Christians etc. (It's like he's the anti-Tacitus!) It's possible that Tacitus is supposed to be either playing the fool or actually epileptic (?)**, given the number of times he practically has a fit. Anyway, when Steve is less than credulous of Domitian's crimes against the Christians, Tacitus tries to scare him with the news that Domitian is a pederast, and even... a passive homosexual. Which means that our hero gets to give the "Some men love women; some men love other men; why should it matter?" speech. That was the point at which I opened up an lj-window to make this post, in fact, because it was so unbelievably hilariously surreal. But then Domitian bursts in with the utterly clever, "ah hah hah, Tacitus, sine ira et studio indeed!"

Sadly, after a bit more discussion in which Domitian gets really upset by accusations of homosexuality and reminds Tacitus that he outlawed castration, thank you very much,*** I couldn't get any more preview. Which means that I shall never figure out whether or not there's going to be a big reveal/realization that Domitian is a monster, or whether the tone is revisionist throughout.

*He sometimes has cameo appearances in those traditional 1st century Christians-to-the-Lions epics, but not as often, indeed, as one might think.

**Pliny the Elder says he has a friend from Gaul named Tacitus who had an epileptic son. This son is probably not our historian, because Pliny mentions that he (the son) died young, and Tacitus long outlived that Pliny.

***True, by the way. There's a really awkward poem by Statius about it that makes everyone either hate Statius or decide he *must* have been a secret subversive, because there's Just No Way he could have written that seriously.