A bear and a bear walk into a taberna…
One of the three comics slowly in progress.
Hey, by the way: Loyal reader Pab Sungenis is doing a Kickstarter campaign! It’s just getting up and running–check it out 🙂
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One of the three comics slowly in progress.
Hey, by the way: Loyal reader Pab Sungenis is doing a Kickstarter campaign! It’s just getting up and running–check it out 🙂
Felix as Domitian’s bodyguard. 😮
Well, it depends on how much this Domitian is based upon the posthumous telling someone of Suitonius and Tacitus, or if modern theories of him being an able ruler who was smeared by his enemies after he died win out. Felix would fit in with both versions, becoming an able enforcer if you ask me. Domitian was smart and needed men with Felix’ particular talents.
I have trouble seeing Domitian as a calm and stable individual. Modern biographers whose aim is to rehabilitate his character can only bring him so far. Some begin to sound as if, once they strip ancient opinions from simple facts/incidents/archaeological evidence, then they have to tiptoe over facts a bit as well to make him look nice. But he doesn’t have to be nice to be human. I don’t think he was a crazed and slavering monster destroying the state, an excessive hedonistic wastrel gutting the treasury, or a wildly rampaging lunatic–except on certain issues, where he did rampage. But dangerously paranoid, resentful, and sadistic, yes, I see that.
But I think he 1) was smart, 2) got the “only talk about the bad stuff and toss in some ludicrous rumours” treatment posthumously, 3) was underappreciated and underused by his father, brother, cousins, etc. It’s hard to say how his (working) relationship with Titus might have developed with more time, whether he would have taken on more responsibilities to go with the titles. There seems to have been some internal family conflict over some of his personal choices/filial disobediences, and I don’t put it past any family to hold small or large slights against one another.
To biographers who say Titus and Domitian were so far apart in age and so often apart in location that they must have had no close brotherly relationship I say pfft. The relationship might have been even more layered and complicated and important to each of them because of that. But they don’t seem to have worked hand in hand together the way Titus and their father did.
I’ll stop meandering. Suffice it to say, the odds of Domitian immediately stabbing, poisoning, hanging, or setting fire to Felix on first sight are relatively low. But time will tell.
Oh, I think we are on the same page, that Domitian had the sort of healthy paranoia that comes with his childhood, and about the average amount of unsavoury appetites. But I do see him as getting the sort of treatment a modern politician like President Obama got, that the Senate damned his memory for personal reasons, not because of incompetence.
It is your tale, and as a reader I have less insight as you do to how Domitian and Felix will react, but both men are professionals, though both chess pieces of Minerva and Venus, and games goddesses play are often inscrutable.
Not actually incompetent–what better epitaph can a Roman emperor hope for? 🙂
I can just imagine what a future historian would conclude when digging through ancient Senatorial records about President Obama.
In all seriousness: I’d like the most historically plausible information to drive the plot and the characters, rather than going B-Movie-style wild with the reports of shenanigans, as fun as shenanigans are. There’s enough in an unexaggerated Domitian for there to be plenty of danger to our Felix. They were partners and friendly, once…if anyone is likely to be feeling vengeful for past wrongs–as opposed to feeling that the score has been settled–it might not be Domitian.
And, as you say, add in Minerva and Venus moving the pieces around, and anything can happen.
Domitian may well see the hand of the goddess in the fact that Felix has survived without injury whatever he has tried tobrhrow at him, up to an including an angry volcano.
The fact that Titus forgave Felix, despite his level best to foment an enmity between the two men will also make him think.
He knows Felix was kissed by a goddess, even if it was an air kiss 🙂 , so being the good, highly supersticious Roman, thst he is, it is quite probable that he will take a “wait and see” attitude towards Felix.
Sweetums as Felix’s bodyguard. 😀
That volcano was so reasonable compared to Domitian.
“do it for your family” sounds like a threat.
And all his threats are very well calculated….
And a promise
Yay, Sweetums!