A taste of Homer, Virgil and Ovid by Caroline K. Mackenzie

Five years ago, almost to the day, in March 2020, the pandemic had taken hold and daily life as we knew it was turned upside down. Everyone scrambled to find ways of keeping in touch, since meeting up in person was out of the question, and plans that had been made had to be abandoned. And so my Classics Club, newly formed and a weekly event in the picturesque Pavilion of Burwash Common migrated to Zoom instead. We had no idea how long the restrictions, or our reading material, would last so agreed simply to continue meeting for as long as everyone wished.

One of our members recently mentioned that we are about to celebrate our fifth birthday – tempus fugit, as Virgil observed. When Classics Club was just one year old, I wrote a History Girls' blog about its origins. Now, five years in, seems a good time to reflect on the works we have read and to share some of the highlights.

It is almost impossible to pick the ‘best bits’, as each week we have read something that resonates, entertains, surprises or even comforts us. Therefore, I decided to flick through my well-worn copies of each of the books and to stop where I noticed the most scribbles in the margin, or perhaps highlighted sections of the text, and have chosen from those pages a selection of passages which I hope you will enjoy. If you are new to Homer, Virgil and Ovid, this may give you a flavour of the style and subject matter of these wonderful poets and, I hope, tempt you to read more.

All quotations are taken from the Penguin Classics series, the cover images of which I have included for each work. I have chosen this set of translations as they were the first versions of these poems which I read and have therefore been on my bookshelves for as long as I have been studying and teaching Classics. But the variations between translations and the difficulty of choosing just one for each Greek or Latin work was the topic of a History Girls’ blog I wrote last year.

As these passages are simply a taster, I have not attempted to summarise the stories of the epics or provide a detailed background. Some of the themes, such as the Trojan War, or characters from Greek mythology, such as the Cyclops, may be familiar in any event. However, for each one I have noted whether the original poem was Greek or Latin and the approximate date when the poem was composed and/or completed. The dates for Homer’s epics are approximate and the source of much academic debate.

Homer’s Iliad - Greek - around 750BC

Homer’s characters often utter observations which have a distinctly proverbial flavour, such as this musing by one of the warriors on the battlefield outside Troy:

The generation of men is just like that of leaves. The wind scatters one year’s leaves on the ground, but the forest burgeons and puts out others, as the season of spring comes round. So it is with men: one generation grows on, and another is passing away. (Book 6: 146-9.)

Or this:

…whatever we do, the fates of death stand over us in a thousand forms, and no mortal can run from them or escape them… (Book 12: 326-7.)

Homer is also known for his vivid and striking similes. The Trojan prince, Paris, whose love affair with Helen was the cause of the Trojan war, is cleverly captured with this simile:

Paris did not dally long in his high house, but once he had put on his glorious armour of intricate bronze, he dashed through the city, sure of the speed of his legs. As when some stalled horse who has fed full at the manger breaks his halter and gallops thudding across the plain, eager for his usual bathe in the lovely flow of a river, and glorying as he runs. He holds his head high, and the mane streams back along his shoulders: sure of his own magnificence, his legs carry him lightly to the haunts where the mares are at pasture. So Paris, son of Priam, came down from the height of Pergamos, bright in his armour like the beaming sun, and laughing as he came, his quick legs carrying him on. (Book 6: 503-14.)

Similes are also used to heighten the pathos of a scene. Note here the reference to Menelaos, the Spartan king and husband of Helen, now in the thick of the Trojan war and trying to reclaim his wife from Paris:

As when a woman stains ivory with crimson dye, in Maionia or Caria, making a cheek-piece for horses. It lies there in her room, and many horsemen yearn to have it for the wearing: but it waits there to be a treasure for a king, both horse’s finery and rider’s glory. Such, Menelaos was the staining with blood of your sturdy thighs, and your legs, and your fine ankles below. (Book 4: 141-7.)

A simile is used to great effect to describe the leader of the Greeks, and brother of Menelaos, Agamemnon:

Agamemnon rose to speak, letting his tears fall like a spring of black water which trickles its dark stream down a sheer rock’s face. (Book 9: 13-15.)

Words, so important in Homer’s oral tradition, are often likened to nature:

But when he released that great voice from his chest and the words which flocked down like snowflakes in winter, no other mortal man could then rival Odysseus. (Book 3: 221-3.)

Nestor the sweet-spoken, … from his tongue the words flowed sweeter than honey. (Book 1: 247-9.)

Homer’s Odyssey - Greek - around 725BC

Odysseus returns home to Ithaca after twenty years of absence: 10 years at the Trojan war and 10 years making his tumultuous journey home. He is disguised but his faithful dog recognises him:

As they stood talking, a dog lying there lifted his head and pricked up his ears. Argus was his name. Patient Odysseus himself had owned and bred him, though he had sailed for holy Ilium [Troy] before he could reap the benefit… in his owner’s absence, he lay abandoned on the heaps of dung from the mules and cattle which lay in profusion at the gate…. But directly he became aware of Odysseus’ presence, he wagged his tail and dropped his ears, though he lacked the strength now to come nearer his master. Odysseus turned his eyes away, and, making sure Eumaeus did not notice, brushed away a tear….. As for Argus, the black hand of Death descended on him the moment he caught sight of Odysseus – after twenty years. (Book 17: 291-305… 326-7.)

Odysseus is cunning, crafty and has a way with words. The word-play in the following episode is one of his more famous tricks. The Cyclops has just eaten alive some of Odysseus’ companions and washes them down with wine. Odysseus is narrating the story:

The Cyclops took the wine and drank it up. And the delicious drink gave him such exquisite pleasure that he asked me for another bowlful. “Give me more, please, and tell me your name, here and now – I would like to make you a gift that will please you. We Cyclopes have wine of our own made from the grapes that our rich soil and rains from Zeus produce. But this vintage of yours is a drop of the real nectar and ambrosia.”…

“Cyclops,” I said, “you ask me my name. I’ll tell it to you; and in return give me the gift you promised me. My name is Nobody.”…

The Cyclops answered me from his cruel heart. “Of all his company I will eat Nobody last, and the rest before him. That shall be your gift.” He had hardly spoken before he toppled over and fell face upwards on the floor, where he lay with his great neck twisted to one side, and all-compelling sleep overpowered him. In his drunken stupor he vomited, and a stream of wine mixed with morsels of men’s flesh poured from his throat. (Book 9: 353-9… 364-74.)

Odysseus and his men seize the opportunity and drive a sharpened olive stake, heated in fire, into the Cyclops’ single eye, blinding him. He shrieks and calls for help from his fellow Cyclopes who gather outside his cave and ask what is wrong and whether somebody is trying to kill him. The conversation that follows goes like this:

“O my friends, it's Nobody’s treachery… that is doing me to death.”

“Well then," came the immediate reply, "if you are alone and nobody is assaulting you, you must be sick… and cannot be helped.” (Book 9: 408, 410-11.)

Odysseus’ trick has worked, just as the Trojan horse trick worked, another of Odysseus’ cunning plans, which brought an end to the ten year Trojan war. That story was not told by Homer but by our next poet, Virgil, in his epic poem, the Aeneid.

Virgil’s Aeneid - Latin - 19 BC

Virgil’s use of personification is perhaps best showcased in this wonderful description of rumour. An ancient take on ‘fake news’:

Rumour did not take long to go through the great cities of Libya. Of all the ills there are, Rumour is the swiftest. She thrives on movement and gathers strength as she goes. From small and timorous beginnings she soon lifts herself up into the air, her feet still on the ground and her head hidden in the clouds…. Rumour is quick of foot and swift on the wing, a huge and horrible monster, and under every feather on her body, strange to tell, there lies an eye that never sleeps, a mouth and tongue that are never silent and an ear always pricked. By night she flies between earth and sky, squawking through the darkness, and never lowers her eyelids in sweet sleep. By day she keeps watch perched on the tops of gables or on high towers and causes fear in great cities, holding fast to her lies and distortions as often as she tells the truth. (Book 4: 173-88.)

Book 4 is dedicated to the story of Dido and Aeneas. If you only have time to read one book of the Aeneid, this might be the one to pick. It inspired Purcell’s opera Dido and Aeneas which includes the haunting and exquisite Dido’s Lament. Virgil’s account hints at the tragic ending with this observation:

Love is a cruel master. There are no lengths to which it does not force the human heart. (Book 4: 412.)

Ovid’s Metamorphoses - Latin - AD 8

Perhaps what sets Ovid apart from Homer and Virgil is his wit and rather mischievous take on popular myths. He can certainly rival his predecessors in beautiful narrative and storytelling but this passage demonstrates his comic portrayal of the man-eating monster, the Cyclops, named Polyphemus, whom we met above. In Ovid’s version, Polyphemus has fallen in love with a beautiful nymph, Galatea, and attempts to win her affections:

The wild Polyphemus was combing his prickly locks with a mattock, attempting to trim his shaggy beard with a pruning-hook, and trying to look less fierce when he gazed at his face in a pool…. (Book 13: 765-7.)

“Truly, I know myself, I recently saw my reflection in pure clear water and liked the image that met my gaze…Don’t think me ugly because my body’s a bristling thicket of prickly hair….I’ve only one eye on my brow, in the middle, but that is as big as a fair-sized shield. Does it matter?” (Book 13: 840-1, 846, 851-2.)

Ovid invites sympathy for Polyphemus and shows his romantic side when Polyphemus attempts to woo Galatea with promises of gifts: 

“My orchards are groaning with apples, my trailing vines are swollen with grapes, both golden yellow and purply red; I am storing each harvest for your delight.” (Book 13: 812-4.)

Sadly for Polyphemus his love is unrequited and, to add insult to injury, his beloved Galatea is smitten instead with ‘a beautiful boy of sixteen, with the first smooth down on his cheeks’ (753-4) – quite the opposite of a huge, hairy monster. Polyphemus’ romantic side soon turns to anger when he is rejected and he issues this threat about his love rival: 

“I’ll draw his guts from his living body, then tear it to pieces and scatter his limbs all over the fields and the waves where your home is.” (Book 13: 865-6.)

This sounds more like the Cyclops we met in Homer.

What next? Greek plays - 5th century BC

It is hard to follow the works of Homer, Virgil and Ovid but, inspired by our theatre trips to West End productions of Oedipus (two different ones within just a few months) and Elektra, Classics Club will spend the summer term reading Greek tragedies written by the playwrights, Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. One of our members discovered this lovely edition with 16 plays in total: how will we choose which ones to read together? Perhaps we shall simply read them all.

www.carolinetutor.co.uk

Virgil and the 9/11 Memorial

by Caroline Lawrence

The 9/11 Memorial Museum opened to the public in 2014. It is impressive on many levels but what interests me most is a quote from Virgil on the wall of the Memorial Hall, deep underground: No day shall erase you from the memory of time.

The capital letters of the quote are just over a foot tall, forged from steel recovered from the ruins of the World Trade Centre. The quote is surrounded by 2983 squares of paper, one for each life lost, in shades of blue ‘trying to remember the colour of the sky on that September morning’.

When the memorial first opened there was some controversy about the use of the quote based on its original context. 

So when did Virgil say No day shall erase you from the memory of time?

And why?

He didn’t actually say it in a speech, like a Caesar or a Cicero. 

He wrote it down in a poem, his great epic poem: the Aeneid. 

And yet in a way he did say it. 

Here are the two verses from which the 9/11 quote was pulled:

Fortunati ambo! writes Virgil, si quid mea carmina possunt, nulla dies umquam memori vos eximet aevo... Literally: ‘Lucky pair! If my verses have any power, no day ever shall remove you (plural) from the memory of time.’ Aeneid IX.446-7

Modern bust of Virgil at his tomb in Naples

These words are not put into the mouth of a character in the poem, they are the words of the poet himself. This is one of the few places where Virgil steps out of the story, as it were, to utter this prayer: if my poem lasts, so will the memory of what you did.

So who are the lucky pair? And what did they do?

The short answer is that they are two teenage refugees from a war torn city who die in a failed raid against the inhabitants of the land they hope to settle. 

For the longer answer, we have to go back to the sack of Troy.

Remember the story of the Trojan Horse?

How it wasn’t really a Trojan Horse but a Greek Horse, full of soldiers?

How they sneakily smuggled themselves into the city they had been besieging for ten years?

How the Greeks dropped out of the giant horse’s wooden belly in the middle of the night and set about burning Troy and killing everyone in it?

Well, the Greeks didn't kill quite everyone. Aeneas was a hero who had fought in the Trojan war escaped with his aged father and young son. 

Trautmann 'Burning of Troy' 1759

Once safely outside the town walls, Aeneas hides on the slopes of Mount Ida among the trees of a sacred grove. Over the next few days and even weeks he receives a steady trickle of refugees from the sacked city, many of them probably traumatised orphans. Aeneas is conscientious, responsible and also reputedly the son of a goddess (Venus). So he soon became their natural leader.

For various reasons, Aeneas decides to seek a new place to live rather than rebuild the old one. So he cuts down the trees of the sacred grove, uses the wood to make a dozen ships and sets off in search of his ‘New Troy’. 

'Where Aeneas Disembarked' restaurant in Ostia

For seven years Aeneas and his twelve boatloads of refugees sail the Mediterranean. The children grow up. The older refugees die and are buried on strange soil. This is the fate of Aeneas's father. Aeneas’s young son Ascanius, probably about seven when they fled Troy is fourteen when they finally find the place to build their new city: on the banks of the River Tiber in Italy, eight hundred miles west of Troy.

Virgil famously modelled the first six books of the Aeneid (the sea voyage) on the Odyssey and the last six (land battles) on the the Iliad. 

When Aeneas sails up the river Tiber, it seems to him that there is enough space for them to settle. One of the local kings is even happy to marry his daughter to the Trojan. But other Latin tribes are unhappy, especially the Rutulians, whose leader Turnus was engaged to the princess now promised to Aeneas. 

The Rutulians threaten to attack

The refugee Trojans hear rumours that Turnus is planning to attack them, so they build a wooden fort on the banks of the Tiber. When Aeneas hears that Turnus is on his way, he leaves his fourteen-year-old son Ascanius in charge and goes off with a couple of scouts to seek additional forces from an Etruscan a few miles upstream. 

No sooner has Aeneas is gone, than Turnus arrives with many allied troops. The Trojans retreat to the safety of the fort and although Turnus calls them cowards, they refuse to come out and fight. But the fort on the banks of the Tiber is wood, not stone, and Turnus threatens to burn it down in the morning. He wants to force them to come out and be slaughtered. Having burned the Trojan ships so that they can’t escape by river, Turnus and his troops surround the fort and settle in for the night. They celebrate their anticipated victory with food, wine and dicing.  

Euryalus and Nisus

Meanwhile in the fort, Ascanius assigns guards to patrol the ramparts and watch for a night attack. At midnight guards are changed and two youths come up together. Their names are Nisus and Euryalus. Virgil's description hints that Euryalus is about Ascanius’s age, fourteen, and Nisus is about seventeen or eighteen. They may be lovers or just good friends, but they are devoted to each other. In my retelling of their story in The Night Raid, a book for teens, I have them meeting during the sack of Troy when Nisus is seven and Euryalus ten or eleven. I try to imagine how traumatic it must have been for the two boys to flee the burning city.

Now, seven years later, they are once again besieged with a threat of burning and destruction. As the two friends pace the lofty ramparts of the wooden fort and look down on the sleeping enemy, the older boy has an idea. If just one of them could creep unseen through the sleeping enemy troops, he might reach Aeneas and bring back reinforcements before dawn, thereby saving his comrades and winning glory for himself. Euryalus won’t hear of Nisus going on his own; they will go together. They have hunted together in the woods and think they know the way. This is something they feel they can do.

They take their proposal to young Ascanius who is standing by a campfire with some of the older Trojan leaders, worrying about what to do. They eagerly agree to Nisus’s plan and promise the two friends great rewards if they succeed. Without offering sacrifice or taking the omens, they almost push the two friends outside the fort. Nisus and Euryalus go down into a ditch and when they come up they are among the sleeping enemy soldiers. 

At first all goes well as they sneak through the snoring enemy. Then they discover how easy it is to kill drunken and sleeping enemy soldiers. Soon they forget the urgency of their mission and start to loot as well as kill. Euryalus, the younger boy, takes a shiny helmet and puts it on. This is their fatal mistake. A band of enemy allies have just arrived on horseback to join Turnus. They see the moonlight flashing on the bright metal of the helmet and chase the youths into the dark and tangled woods.  

Confused by the limited visibility and unaccustomed weight of the helmet, Euryalus stumbles into the open and is surrounded by the enemy. 

Nisus has been hiding in the woods, but when he sees his young friend surrounded by enemy troops, he runs out of the woods crying ‘Me, me! Kill me instead!’ But Euryalus is already mortally wounded. He falls like a white poppy beaten down by rain. Instead of turning around and running for safety, Nisus makes a suicidal rush into the heavily armed soldiers. Pierced by several swords, he falls dying on top of his friend to protect his body from mutilation. 

This is when Virgil steps out of the poem to state that the two will never be forgotten if his verses have any power. 

The quote shows one thing common to humans in the past two thousand years: the desire not to be forgotten. And more than that: the desire to be well-thought of. This is true not just of the warrior and his victim but of the artists who help us remember.

You can read the original Latin HERE. It starts at line 175 and our quote is at line 447. You can read the English poet Dryden’s translation HERE. You can read what various scholars have said about the controversy HERE. And you can read my version of the story in The Night Raid. 

A version of this post first appeared on the now defunct Wonders and Marvels blog in 2014...

Tony Soprano's Naples by Caroline Lawrence

A few years ago, my husband and I visited Naples properly for the first time. 

On previous visits to Pompeii and Herculaneum everybody warned us to avoid Naples like the plague. They spoke of gangs of street-urchin pickpockets who would descend on us like locusts, fleets of Vespa-riding handbag-snatchers, piles of garbage and walls covered with rude graffiti. And then there were the suicidal drivers. In Milan, goes the saying, traffic lights are the law; in Rome they are a suggestion; in Naples they are Christmas decoration!

So whenever we found ourselves in Naples we hardly dared pop our heads above ground. Instead, we would hurry from the airport to the train station and only breathe a sigh of relief when we were safely on the Circumvesuviana train to Sorrento. Once we went so far as to stay at Sant’Agata sui Due Golfi. We had to use ferries, buses and taxis to visit Misenum, Baia, Ischia and Piscina Mirabilis. It was fun but cumbersome and not entirely successful. The Piscina Mirabilis was closed and we couldn’t manage to fit in Solfatara or Cumae. How much easier if we had made Naples our base. But we didn’t realise that then.

In January 2013 we went on our first Andante Travels Tour to Pompeii and Herculaneum. It was fabulous. Our brilliant and learned lecturer, Professor Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, proceeded to explode one myth after another: ‘Vesuvius’s first eruption wasn’t on 24 August; don’t call it a lararium; don’t call it the Decumanus Maximus; we don’t know if this is the Villa Poppaea; we don’t even know if this place is called Oplontis.’ (Read more about his myth-busting HERE.)

Another myth he busted was the Avoid Naples Myth: ‘Don’t be afraid of Naples,’ said Andrew Wallace-Hadrill. ‘It’s a vibrant, exciting city. Be sensible and keep your money and valuables out of reach, but enjoy it!’ So, we took his advice and booked another Andante Tour based in Naples. It promised us access to sites we had tried and failed to visit before: the Piscina Mirabilis, Solfatara and Cumae (home of the Sibyl). Also, I was cooking up some books based on Virgil’s Aeneid and wanted to see the place he loved so much so that I could somehow connect with the Bard of Mantua. 

The excitement started for me when Andante told us we would be staying at the Grand Hotel Santa Lucia right down on the waterfront. Googling the hotel, I thought a nearby fountain arch looked familiar. Then I remembered where I had seen it: in an episode of the ground-breaking, award-winning TV series The Sopranos. In season 2, aired in the year 2000, Tony (a mafia don from New Jersey) and two of his men go to Naples. I looked up Commendatori, and sure enough, it was the same arch: the Fountain Santa Lucia. Tony stayed at the Hotel Excelsior right next door to the Santa Lucia.

From that moment on, Virgil was overshadowed by the don from New Jersey. Played by the late great James Gandolfini, Tony Soprano is not likeable, but he is compelling.

The first full day after our arrival I coerced some of my fellow travellers to venture inside the Hotel Excelsior. We walked through the plush lobby where Tony is first addressed as commendatore, “commander”. Up on the 8th floor we discovered a gem of a bar with stunning views of Vesuvius. Sipping Campari sodas and nibbling typical Neapolitan tidbits, we watched the setting sun gild the famous volcano. 

A few days later our tour took us into the centre of Naples. It is a vibrant noisy city full of colour and life. The ancient road called Spaccanapoli is supposed to be the charming one, but I preferred Via dei Tribunale with its vegetable stalls, cafés, graffiti and a wonderful bulldog. This is where Paulie from The Sopranos goes to have an espresso and greets some Italians at a nearby table with a cheerful ‘Commendatori!’ The three Italians ignore him. One of them is series creator David Chase in a cameo role. In real life, Neapolitans are very friendly.

One day we made a pilgrimage to Virgil’s tomb just a short distance from our hotel. Virgil is my favourite Latin poet and I was hoping to find some inspiration for two retellings of stories from his Aeneid. In the gardens surrounding the tomb was a marble bust of the poet along with shrubs and trees mentioned in Virgil’s three works, next to signs with relevant excerpts. It is a beautiful spot but I didn’t feel any sense of the bard, despite a tripod and garland of flowers left by another Virgil fan in the lofty tomb. 

Opposite our hotel was a delightful castle called Castel dell’Ovo AKA the Castle of the Egg. Medieval Neapolitans believed Virgil was a magician and thought he had built this castle on a magic egg. As long as the egg was safe, it was believed, Naples would prosper. The little cobbled village at its foot was pretty enough to be a film set and they were in fact filming the remake of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. the week we were there. A helicopter was constantly buzzing around, filming establishing shots.

In Commendatori, Tony meets Annalisa, the beautiful acting head of the local Mafia, (which in Naples is called the Camorra). Tony and Annalisa have a seafood lunch in front of another castle and the OMLIN shipyard, and then go walking on a beach. I kept my eyes open for this location and found it on the day we visited Baia. Baiae as it was known 2000 years ago, was the St Tropez of the Roman World; it was a place of decadence and immorality where men bathed with women. I used it as the setting for my 11th Roman Mystery, The Sirens of Surrentum.

After visiting the so called Temple of Mercury, with its flooded floor and atmospheric dome, and saluting the upside down fig tree in a vault nearby, my husband and I had lunch down at the seafront in Bacoli at a pretty beige building called Locanda dei Re. After lunch, I skipped dessert to see if I could find the exact location of Tony’s meal with Annalisa. It turned out to be a seafood restaurant called Lucullo. 

Appropriately, Lucullus was an ancient Roman famous for his banquets. In fact, the Castel dell’Ovo is built on the foundations of his once opulent villa. 

On our final day of the Andante tour we went to Cumae, home of the Sibyl, the wise prophetess who tells Aeneas how to get to the underworld. But once again Virgil was eclipsed by Tony and friends. Cumae is where Annalisa ‘prophesies’ Tony’s future and also propositions him. He is tempted by her, but wisely demurs. I was glad to see they’ve cleaned up the garbage since they filmed that episode. In fact Naples was remarkable free of garbage and the graffiti can be quite charming. 

My husband and I supplemented our excellent Andante tour with one of the open top tourist buses. This turned out to be one of the highlights of our trip. We also listened to Rick Steve’s excellent podcasts and read Naples ’44, the harrowing and hilarious wartime diaries of Norman Lewis. 

When Tony Soprano arrives back in New Jersey, you can see the regret on his face. He has obviously fallen in love with Naples and already misses it. We fell in love with Naples, too. So if you are tempted to go, don’t be afraid. Wear a money belt, or just take small notes spread about your person. Be sensible and you will have a great time.

Caroline’s two retellings of stories from Virgil’s Aeneid are The Night Raid, about Nisus and Euryalus from book 9, and Queen of the Silver Arrow, about Camilla from books 7 and 11. The reading level is easy but the content is dark. 

A version of this post was originally published on the now-defunct Wonders and Marvels blog. 

The Mystery of Virgil's Camilla by Caroline Lawrence

A few years ago I took a City Lit class to revive my Latin and we read Virgil’s Aeneid book 9, which includes the story of the so-called Night Raid by two young Trojan warriors, Nisus and Euryalus. About the same time, Barrington Stoke, specialist publishers for reluctant and dyslexic readers, asked me if I would like to write a classical-themed book for them. I immediately thought that a re-telling of the Night Raid would be perfect, because it is a one-off story. Spoiler alert! Nisus and Euryalus both die at the end. It is to them that Virgil addresses his famous No day shall erase you from the memory of time, (quoted in the museum at the 9/11 memorial in New York) In the original Latin it is Nulla dies umquam memori vos eximet aevo.

Barrington Stoke produced a beautifully illustrated version of The Night Raid and asked if I’d like to do another. I thought Camilla, another character from Virgil's Aeneid, would be the perfect complement to the story of Nisus and Euryalus. Like them she is a warrior whose downfall* is caused by her lust for booty. But unlike Nisus and Euryalus, who are both mentioned in other sources, Camilla is Virgil's creation and her first appearance is in his Aeneid, books 7 and 11. As Trudy Harrington Becker says, 'Camilla herself is extraordinary in that she is a creation of Vergil, unknown before him and unattested after.'

Of course Virgil was inspired by Amazons like Penthesilea and girls consecrated to Diana like Thracian Harpalyce, but like Dido, Camilla is a unique and complex character.

Her back story is extraordinary, too. She is the baby tied to a spear and lobbed by her father across a raging torrent. 

What is frustrating about Virgil’s account is that the events of Camilla's life come out of order and there are tantalising gaps. The Aeneid is famously 'unfinished'. Would her creator have fleshed out Camilla's story? Maybe. Maybe not. But I thought it would be fun to tell the story of this bellatrix (female warrior) in a linear fashion, using my imagination in conjunction with the 'facts' that Virgil mentions. 

It was a little like solving a mystery, piecing together clues and filling in the blanks. It took several false starts and many drafts before I finally found the voice and story. 

Here is a film clip I put together – my very first effort! – to explain why I found her story so compelling. 

As always, one of my motivations in writing fiction set in the Classical world is to whet kids’ appetites for more. But I mainly wrote this for myself, to flesh out the story of this fierce young warrioress, one of Virgil's most complex and fascinating female characters. 

Queen of the Silver Arrow is out on 15 January 2016. You can order it here or from any good bookshop. 

*NB parents! I try to deal with it sensitively, but Camilla dies in a fairly horrific way, so although the reading age is only 8+, the content is PG12.