I’m also the lucky beneficiary of centuries of incredible scholarship about ancient Rome. SS: I’ve traveled to many of the places where the stories occur nothing can take the place of on-site research. : What kind of research must go into the writing of these historical fictions? There are ten titles in the series now, translated into a dozen languages. The result was Roman Blood, which turned out to be the first in my ongoing series featuring Gordianus the Finder, a sleuth who wends his way among the treacherous ruling class of ancient Rome. At that time, no such novel seemed to exist-so I wrote it myself, taking as inspiration Cicero’s first big murder case, which involved a man accused of killing his father. Making contact with those ancient ruins electrified my imagination, and I found myself craving a murder mystery set in ancient Rome. Gwyn Morgan (who’s still teaching there), but I didn’t actually visit Rome until about ten years later. Steven Saylor: I studied Roman history at UT in Austin in the late 1970’s under M. : What inspired you to write the series Roma Sub Rosa ? Here, the author reveals all that goes into creating the popular series. He has now completed his tenth installment, A Mist of Prophecies. Murder, sex, political scandal, it’s all in there. For more than a decade he has been writing books that reveal the sordid side of the great city. Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither was Steven Saylor’s mystery series Roma Sub Rosa.

Steven saylor roma series