The Roman Empire And Alternate History With Alison Morton

Travel can be about place, but it can also be about time, and in this interview, I talk to Alison Morton about how the ancient Roman empire continues to inspire her alternate-history Roma Nova thrillers. Alison Morton is the author of the Roma Nova series, Roman-themed alternate history thrillers with tough heroines. Show notes * The early genesis of an idea for books about an alternative history based on Ancient Rome * How the past and the present are connected by landscape * Places that have inspired aspects of the Roma Nova books * Bringing Alison’s personal military experience into fiction * Language and how it can impact appreciation of a place and culture * Recommended books about ancient Rome and some alt-history novels You can find Alison Morton at Alison-Morton.com. Transcript of the interview Joanna: Alison Morton is the author of the Roma Nova series, Roman-themed alternate history thrillers with tough heroines. Welcome to the show, Alison. Alison: Thanks very much, Joanna. It’s an absolute pleasure to be here. Joanna: It’s great to talk to you about this because I know you’re such an expert on this. What drives your fascination with ancient Rome? Alison: How long have you got? It’s a lifelong fascination if you like. It started when I was 11. And I don’t know whether they still do it now but after each holiday, first thing back at school in September you had to do, ‘My holiday project.’ Although then photography wasn’t up to it, you had to do drawing. So I was drawing this mosaic. There’s this huge Greco-Roman port, Ampurias, which is northeast Spain. I was traveling, you see? And I was drawing all the pretty patterns of the mosaics and all that. I asked my father, ‘Who are the people that lived here?’ We touched on Romans at school but touched. And he was a real Roman nut, and he told me all about the sailors and the senators and the slaves and the colonizers and all the rest. I said to him, ‘What did the mummies do?’ My mother was a head of geography department; women worked. And he said, ‘Well, they stayed at home and looked after the children.’ So I went on drawing, and I turned around to him and said, ‘Well, what would it have been like if the mummies and the ladies had run Rome instead of the men?’ It was a good one. And he looked at me, now he’s clever. And he said, ‘Well, what do you think it would have been like?’ And that sort of went into the back of my brain at 11. Joanna: Wow. So wait. At what age did you write the first of the Roma Novans? Alison: Oh, many, many decades later. Joanna: Seriously? Did you pursue that as you went through school and later? Alison: Seriously. I’ve clambered over most of Roman Europe. We know they had a slave society like all the ancient societies. They were arch colonizers, they were exploiters. They were superstitious, but I’m going to end up like Monty Python now. They gave us systems and organizations and roads and admin and you can’t but admire somebody that’s that organized, that cultural, that literary, that technological. The more I found out about them, as I went through the decades and started reading sources, Pliny and Tacitus and all that, I came to admire them even more. Yes, you have to take the fact that they would not have been entirely pleasant to have lived under unless you were white. Well, not so much white because they were very multi-ethnic. Unless you were a male of a senior family and then you were probably okay. But because of their complexity, I was totally fascinated.