Athene's Prophecy (Gaius Claudius Scaevola Trilogy) (47 page)

The portrayal of Tiberius is, perforce, difficult, because there are so many different accounts of what happened and what he was like, however we know he was interested in astronomy, while the short speech in which he likened Gaius Julius Caesar to Sulla was a lift from Tacitus. Of course Tiberius said it somewhere else, but a good comparison is worth saying twice, and in any case, it gives a good insight into who I think Tiberius was.

Gaius Julius Caesar was an even worse problem. There are various accounts of his behaviour, mostly from people who did not like him, but in portraying him, I recall a comment by Donald Tovey when editing Beethoven's sonatas: there may be different versions, but in a performance you have to settle on one, and be consistent. I hope I have succeeded.

There is little doubt he was reviled by the senatorial class, and history has put him down as a mad tyrant. There is also no doubt that the masses really approved of him. On the whole, I have tried to follow the interpretation by Anthony Barrett, but as he notes, in many examples of what happened, details are ambiguous and often unreliable. Unfortunately, or fortunately, the events of this book fall in the period where the necessary volumes of Tacitus' Annals are lost. The fortunate part is that the writer has a certain degree of freedom to interpret, and I have tried to do that with consistency so that at least there is just one Gaius Julius Caesar in the novel, even if he is a little distant. If I am wrong, I apologize.

One of the problems of having the name Gaius Julius Caesar would be that he would feel he had to behave like his more illustrious namesake. The problem then was that he knew the first Julius Caesar was assassinated, and this would give him a continual fear. He also tried to appeal to the masses, as did the first Julius Caesar, and he tried to behave like Augustus and Julius Caesar as far as administration went. There is no doubt whatsoever that he was very intelligent, but unfortunately he did not have Augustus' ability to manipulate, he did not have an Agrippa, and he did not have the first Julius Caesar's ability at command. This is the Caligulae I have tried to portray: intelligent, spiteful, fearful, and corrupted by power.

I have also played a little loosely with the timing and sequence of events. However, whatever else he was, as Barrett notes, there were surprisingly few executions under Gaius' imperium, and most of those involved plots against him. There were at least four attempts at assassinating him, the last one successful, so it is not entirely surprising that there were some executions. The details in the letters from Claudius are, to the best of my ability, correct accounts of what happened in Rome, but they may not be in the correct sequence regarding timing.

There is no evidence the
Cyrenaica
was in Bostra at the time, however this legion was based there when Nabatea was incorporated into the Roman Empire about eighty years later, and it would seem reasonable that it had been there on previous occasions.

In my previous novels, I have tried to be scientifically accurate, apart from postulating some "new science", but in this trilogy I am trying to go one step further. Carl Sagan identified a major problem with the following quote from him: “We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.” More to the point, most people do not have any understanding at all of how scientific discoveries are made, and part of the purpose of this trilogy is to illustrate some basic science, and show how discoveries are made, by requiring Scaevola to get to where Galileo got to, although by slightly different means.

For those who saw the film
Agora
, you will have seen another attempt at portraying the heliocentric theory, but while Hypatia made an extremely important advance in that film (Galilean relativity, the significance of which was not really brought to the fore in the film) she never really made the right progression. Whether the scriptwriter actually understood the scientific process is another matter. Still, you, the reader, know what the answer is, but the question is, can you formulate a means of proving it adequately before the next ebook? The problem is, you have to prove the Earth moves.

In this and the following novel, I hope I can give you some idea of what scientific discovery involves. I also hope to be able to give an indication of the weird feeling that comes over you when you make a really fundamental discovery, when all the puzzling pieces seem to fall together. And the funny thing about this feeling is, strictly speaking, you do not know for certain that you are correct. You probably get this feeling even if you are wrong but think you are right.

As indicated above, I have written other novels. For more information, please visit my website
http://www.ianmiller.co.nz
. I also have a scientific blog at
http://my.rsc.org/blogs/84
and I have discussed and will continue to discuss some of the scientific issues raised in my novels. I also have a more general blog
http://ianmillerblog.wordpress.com
that discusses some of the other issues raised in these novels, such as governance, socioeconomics, etc, in a more general way, and also some of the current scientific issues in what I hope is a generally accessible way to anyone without detailed scientific knowledge but with an interest.

My previous novels form what I call a future history. Each are intended to stand alone, although books in the
First Contact
trilogy are probably better read in sequence. The other books are:

1. Puppeteer
   Set in 2030, it deals with a faltering government that arose through excess debt, terrorism and the energy crisis. The background is based on one interpretation of what will happen when oil becomes excessively expensive, and we have not become prepared.
   
2. Troubles
   Set in 2050, an anarchic society is coming out of the energy crisis, thanks to the invention of fusion power. At the same time, I try to show how one invention can lead to a whole lot of extra technologies.
   
3. Red Gold
   Set in 2070, it covers the colonization of Mars, fraud, and when a scientific discovery is made that makes Mars viable, I introduce one of my theories in what I hope is a reader-friendly way. It also shows the start of corporatization that will be a feature of following books.
   
4. A Face on Cydonia
   The first of the
   First Contact
   trilogy, it describes how evil has entered an entrenched corporate society, how some independent but poorer people try to oppose the corporate overlords and how a disparate party set out to prove this rock has nothing to do with aliens, but instead each discovers exactly what they do not want.
   
5. Dreams Defiled
   shows how all their ambitions come to nothing.
   
6. Jonathon Munros
   The conclusion of the trilogy, where Jonathon Munro achieves immortality.
   

I hope I have been entertaining, but I also hope that I have given something to think about.