The Novel Guide to Alric’s Rome

AS YOU READ ON, I recommend using the interactive Nolli App, a map produced by the University of Oregon for navigating around ancient Rome, to gain a better understanding of the geography of this ancient city.

The App overlays current SatNav images with the C18th Nolli map, so you can easily switch between the past and the present. The App is available to download free at:

www.nolli-app.com

AT THE BEGINNING of the novel, Scavengers from the Sea, Alric and Cadmon, two Saxon boys captured as slaves, pass through the Boarium en route to a slave market at the Septa Julia.

The Forum Boarium is located on the banks of the River Tiber, once home to Rome’s biggest meat and fish market from the 2^nd century BC onwards.

The market was located on level ground alongside the Tiber, between the Aventine, Palatine and Capitoline hills. Positioned close to the warehouses of Rome along the Tiber, the Forum was a place of significant activity. It is still the site of the Temple of Hercules Victor, the Temple of Fortuna Virilis, and the Great Altar of Hercules.

A church, Santa Maria in Cosmedin, replaced an earlier Customs Office in the Boarium as one of the major distribution points for ‘step bread,’ rations of flour doled out to citizens and refugees from the steps of this former Customs House.

The Forum Boarium is now an unremarkable car park.

CLOSE TO THE FORUM BOARIUM is the ancient Arch of Janus, the only open, four-sided archway preserved in Rome, erected at a crossroads at the northeastern limit of the Forum Boarium.

The Arch comprised of material from earlier buildings, including bricks and pottery shards, covered with recycled white marble. It may have been a boundary marker rather than a triumphal arch, or built to provide shelter for the traders at the Forum Boarium cattle market. The Arch was built in the 4th century AD, over the Cloaca Maxima, a large subterranean sewage drain system that began above the Roman Forum and finally discharged as raw sewage into the Tiber River.

The Arch of Janus is also where Alric unexpectedly meets Theodore, a young urchin, before they escape from pursuers through the Cloaca Maxima.