The River Through Rome
As Nicholas Nicastro’s The River Through Rome opens, Nonius, a minor but talented engineer in the last days of the Roman Republic, is receiving a new commission—an urban aqueduct to bring water and respectability to a notoriously seedy quarter of the Eternal City. As he begins to oversee the tearing up of the Via Labia, routed through the townhouse of a Senator, Nonius sees a strikingly beautiful red-haired slave girl fetching jugs of water from a well. The girl, Amaris, belongs to the Senator, who has begun to make increasingly physical demands of her as she comes of age. Nonius’s growing infatuation gives the girl a potential escape route, endangering them both.
Shifting between limited third person for each of Nonius’s and Amaris’s points of view, Nicastro’s novel depicts the cynical detachment bred into the Celtic girl as she grew up in the Senator’s house, revealing it as an intrinsically Roman trait. Only Nonius does not fully display it, preferring a more mathematical escapism that veers into naïveté.
Rome itself, in its splendor and vulgarity, is the third main character. Both main human characters change in a realistic way as their fortunes rise and fall, and it is enjoyable to watch them and feel your sympathy for each of them deepen. What might first seem like a dry archaeology lesson more than a story is actually a perfectly balanced examination of a relationship only possible in this setting.
This is a wonderful novel that makes the reader feel that they have been a fly on several Roman walls. As someone unfamiliar with the realities of daily Roman society, it was an immersive treat. The characters are vividly alive, even (or especially) at their most cynical. Due to the amount of blunt sexual imagery, it is appropriate for adults only.
