Commentarii de Bestia Romae

A few marginal notes on The Beast of Rome so far

We’re five chapters in on The Beast of Rome, so if you’re caught up, you’ve read roughly 20,000 words of supernatural Roman noir so far. That feels like the right time to take stock.

In general, I hate metaposting. Reading about other people’s writing process, or worse, their musing on what being a writer really means, is, as my 4-year-old says, not my favorite. But I do like it when people dissect, criticize, or annotate their own work — specifics about how the sausage I just tasted was made are of great interest, because I can often find something that helps me as a reader or writer.

One of the nice things about publishing a serial live is the possibility of a live-ish conversation with the readers to see what’s landing and what isn’t. One of the less nice things is that mistakes must be lived with, or, in particularly dire cases, retconned with all due ceremony. While I’m taking the week off, I thought I’d share some thoughts on what I’m feeling good about and what I want to push harder on.

Just a few marginal notes. // Source: Midjourney

Working: The Duoviri

Duoviri is Latin for “two men,” commonly used to describe the Roman state’s habit of having many important political offices shared by two appointees. Our duoviri are Cursor and Macro, and the thing I’m happiest with in the serial is them as a pair. I think they’re both exemplars of their class—Cursor a striving equites, Macro a humble pleb veteran—but with good nuance built in. Cursor feels the weight of the obligation that his great-grandfather passed down along with his name, and strives to uphold his obligations to his clients, even though he’s struggling himself:

Cursor grits his teeth. Philomusus is almost painfully honest—the very type of hardworking freedman his father always waxed eloquent about. And without Cursor’s help, he’ll be sleeping in a doorway or worse by next Ides.

Macro cheerfully shows loyalty and deference to the slightly younger Cursor:

Good man, Cursor. Small in stature and status, but he gets things done. Doesn’t flinch at blood, asks the right questions, treats me like a man instead of a tool. Macro’s served with worse officers, and Cursor wasn’t even a proper officer in the legion.

And as a veteran of Rome’s wars, he has built a stoic mindset that he hopes will protect him from what he’s seen:

Whether you’re marching to Germania or just crossing the city to drink at the wrong tavern, you’re putting yourself in fate’s hands. Sometimes those hands decide to tear you apart. Sic est; It is what it is.

I wanted these guys to be good men in ways recognizable to us moderns, yet still in keeping with their ancient mores. So far, I think, so good. Is there a side of either man you're curious to see more of? Macro at home, Cursor among other men of the equites class?

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Needs Work: The Supernatural Slow Burn

When I got started with this, the pitch in my head vacillated between “True Detective Season 1, but in the Roman Empire” and “The Dresden Files/The Laundry Files¹, but in the Roman Empire.” I think that vacillation is present on the page — Cursor and Macro are not knowledgeable in supernatural matters, and Macro is a full-on skeptic², much more like True Detective than the more full-on supernatural Laundry and Dresden Files. But fairly quickly, we’ve confirmed the presence of the supernatural: The shape in the mist, a fleeting mention of Cursor’s strange dreams during a previous case, the mysterious circumstances of Cursor’s old patron’s death.

My current intention is to dive deeper into the supernatural elements of the setting while keeping it firmly grounded in a realistic Rome — a bit of a hybrid of our many influences. But as I’ve headed in that direction, I think I’ve made a few missteps in what I’ve allowed to be mundane. One, in particular, is how Amphion was introduced.

Early in the serial, Cursor thought about Amphion with dread:

Our friend on the Palatine. Gaius Julius Amphion. Thinking of the man makes Cursor’s guts churn.

But then, when we met the man, he was just a sharp-tongued bureaucrat. I’m disappointed I didn’t make Amphion genuinely uncanny and unsettling in our first brush with him — Cursor spoke fairly sharply to him, even though he is supposed to be a fearsome figure.

Ah, well. There will be other opportunities to make him a bit weird, and show why he makes Cursor’s guts churn. How are you feeling about the pace of the supernatural elements — too slow, about right, or do you want me to keep the leash tight a while longer?

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Working: The World

I’ve put a lot of work into making Rome feel like a living place rather than a backdrop. The salutatio, the bathhouse culture, the collegium tokens on dead men’s bodies — I’m striving to make these more than details for detail’s sake; I want them to be how the plot moves forward.

I would be remiss here if I didn’t mention that AI has played a significant role in the research behind this world. I constantly send Claude (my LLM of choice) on deep dives to inform my worldbuilding — reports on topics like Rome’s neighborhoods under Tiberius, equestrian daily life, arena beasts and their wounds, and the topography of the Palatine sanctuary.

I know AI isn’t everyone’s cuppa, but it’s let me chase down questions I wouldn’t have had time to ask, and dig into corners of Roman life I’d never have found on my own. Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis.

The result, I hope, is a Rome where the details earn their place. The fuller’s shops and popinae, the culture and practices of Rome’s many ethnic communities, the Imperial mythology surrounding the fall of the Republic — these have been a blast to research and weave into the storyline. I’ve learned a great deal as I’ve written, and I hope you’re learning interesting new things, too. Are the historical details pulling you in or slowing you down? I'm always trying to calibrate how much texture is enriching versus how much is furniture.

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Needs work: The Tone

The Rome depicted in the story thus far is a pretty grim place. Maybe too grim.

I think it works for the genre — this is at least in part a noir story, and noir is characterized by cynicism and fatalism. It’s also a bit Lovecraftian, and Lovecraft also comes with a healthy dose of grimdark.

But pure cynicism was not my tonal intention. And there's a practical problem with a Rome that's nothing but grime and grinding: if the city is only cruel, why should anyone care when it's threatened? The beast, the conspiracy, the whispers about the she-wolf's curse — they only matter if Rome is worth defending. Cursor says he wants to be a shepherd, not a wolf. But we need to see what he's shepherding.

I think Rome was a cruel place in a cruel world, but that cruelty came with a lot of greatness, beauty, and nobility. There’s a little bit of it in the story so far: The beauty of Apollo’s temple and the hopeful myth of good conquering evil that Cursor still kinda-sorta believes in, and Cursor upholding his obligations to his client Philomusus, showing the patron-client system actually working, rather than only as a cynical power game.

But overall, I think I haven’t done a great job showing the beauty of this ancient world on the page. It’s right there in the very first sentence of the serial: “Bread or piss.” Ick! But likely true.

I wish I had made Rome a little more welcoming, and in future chapters, I aim to correct that. Has the grimness bothered you, or does it work for the story? And if you've spotted a moment where Rome's beauty or nobility did come through, I'd genuinely like to know which one.

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Gratias pro lectione

That’s where my head is at. Thanks for reading along — a serial lives or dies on the patience of its audience, and I try not to take yours for granted. If any of this matches your experience of the story—or if I'm dead wrong about what's working—I'd love to hear it in the comments below. See you next chapter!

1. The Laundry Files are an excellent genremash by Charles Stross that combine Lovecraftian Horror, spy thrillers, sci-fi, and office comedy. I strongly vouch for the first five — I haven’t read the others!

2. Can’t do a story like this without a Mulder-Scully axis!