Damnatio Memoriae (Nero and Sporus)
Originally two books, Damnatio Memoriae is the last of a trilogy, first written for Amazon Vella, featuring the puer delicatus, Sporus, who relates the events of his life in his own words on the eve of his death. Beginning where Imperatrix left off, Nero has made Sporus his third wife (and empress) and ordered Sporus’s castration. Waking up in severe pain, he discovers he and Nero are on a ship bound for Corinth, Greece, where Sporus tests the bounds of his freedom along with his personal slave and friend, Hylas. Back in Rome, he relates Nero’s suicide, his contact with three of the ‘four emperors’ and his wait for his brutal death in the arena, which Somtow leaves open-ended.
Somtow’s accessible style portrays day-to-day life in Rome, the antithesis of a contemporary reader’s experience. Coloured illustrations, using models in period dress against Roman backgrounds, are an unusual touch and a welcome bonus. In our digitally visual age, these illustrations aid in acceptance of how a male child-slave can also be an empress, assisting in our understanding of the characters’ minds and actions in their world. Somtow captures the confusion of the child-slave/eunuch/woman/empress, and has done this, with masterful control, in the voice of a boy not yet twenty, forced into a maturity beyond his years. Slavery was a normal part of 1st-century Roman life, sex and violence were routine entertainment, slaves expected to be raped, and suicide was considered an honourable death. In Sporus’ case, we are shown a reciprocal love/hate relationship with his owners, particularly Nero. In his historical notes the author admits he writes books that he would like to read. If it were invented fiction, this trilogy (which would be marvelous published as one book) likely wouldn’t seem at all credible. It is poignant and heart-breaking, and it’s hard to avoid mourning the death of Somtow’s Sporus.
