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Roman Hostage
Book by Schurfranz, Vivian
224 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1975
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 24, 2018
Story: 4 (Basic coming-of-age material that doesn’t always work)
Characters: 5 (Not deep but likeable and understandable for children)
Accuracy: 4 (A mess of mistakes and half-truths, but it does try)
There’s a lot to recommend about this book, but in the end it just doesn’t hold together under the weight of its own absurdities. You expect a certain degree of simplification and making nice from a young adult novel (no rapine and pillaging by our heroes for example), but there comes a certain point beyond which even that audience recognizes that they’re being coddled.
I think the big problem here is that a lot of the chosen storytelling tropes just don’t work for the story it wants to tell. This is essentially written as if it’s a peacetime book about prejudice when in fact the plot is that of a war story. Imagine Johnny Tremain if it had treated the British occupation of Boston and the battles of Lexington and Concord as if they were just inconvenient events that got in the way of what was truly important and you have a pretty good idea of what the storytelling is like. It refuses to take sides between the Romans and the Goths, which is fine theoretically, but in this case what that means is that nobody takes this conflict very seriously. The Romans aren’t overly upset at the Gothic revolt and the Goths aren’t cross at repeated Roman treachery. Which is why when people die it doesn’t really seem to matter. Even to them. People die with a smile and forgiveness on their lips when they’re killed to protect random enemies. Because they understand how hard this is for Rurik. Oy!
The good news of course, is that the peacetime stuff works fairly well. Rurik’s relationship with his guardian, the general Julian, and Julian’s son Aruuns (an absurd name for a Roman) is well done and gets into a lot of the father-son relationship issues that are the bread and butter of young adult novels. This is doubly true because Rurik already has a real father, Fritigern, who’s on the opposing side and he has to balance his attachments to his two fathers. It is rather simplistic and often cliched, but it does work. The first part of the plot is fairly episodic, which gives the novel leave to explore more ideas than the more continuous plot of the ending. I imagine the tour around Constantinople and late Roman society would appeal to children. There are several scenes thrown in, including bathing, schooling, and slave-trading, which explore the Roman world in a way that’s accessible for a child. Bonus points for setting it in such a little-explored era.
But it’s impossible to get around the fact that this peacetime stuff should never be happening. The big question I have is: what is the purpose of taking hostages? Isn’t it to keep the hostage’s family under control by killing their relatives if they move against you? That seems fairly obvious, doesn’t it? Even to a child? So how on earth can anyone believe that these hostages would be given essentially free reign of the empire? Rurik’s the son of Fritigern, the Gothic leader, and he’s left to wander the capital and anywhere else at will. He’s even given a horse and allowed to sit in military zones counting ships. And when he returns after betraying the Romans and even fighting against them in battle it’s dismissed as only natural and he’s allowed to continue his life as a Roman ward. Actually, he’s treated with rather more respect than before he left. Even when I fell within the age bracket this book was aimed at I would have found this absurd. And everyone knows that Romans were even less forgiving than ten-year-old boys.
In terms of accuracy, it’s a little unfair to expect much since most of the best scholarship on this period was written after the book was written. The biggest general issue is that the book frequently presents the late empire as if it was identical in all respects to the early empire. This is depressingly common in fiction, but this book is far from the worst offender. In fact it avoids some of the mistakes I’d expected to see. But just to list some of the issues: senators no longer led armies, wore togas, or debated policy, all inhabitants of the empire were citizens, Byzantines were Romans, Rome was a center of no political importance, Roman soldiers no longer used rectangular shields and decimation was unheard of, gladiatorial combat had died out, Constantine never beheaded his nephew Gallus nor his entire court, and the Goths never captured Adrianople, which was far from the first defeat of Romans by barbarians.
There are also plenty of depictions that just feel wrong. For example, there is no way that the Romans would seek to marry off a Gothic hostage to a Persian ambassador. Create marriage ties between two of Rome’s most deadly enemies? Are you serious? In general the treatment of barbarian groups needed work. They’re all shown to be in cahoots, with Franks, Alemanni, Huns, and Sarmatians all shown as joining the 500,000 strong(!) Gothic army in their war against Rome. A true barbarian conspiracy that never happened. The really odd thing is that barbarian groups are mentioned which Rome wasn’t to encounter for centuries (if at all), including Bulgars, Khazars, Patzinaks, and, most bizarrely of all, the Mongols. One of the worst parts is the description of the Huns: “He had heard horror tales about these wild slant-eyed men who tattooed their yellow bodies and ate raw horseflesh, which they softened by tucking slabs of it beneath their saddles and riding on it all day.” The last part is taken from Ammianus (a Roman historian). The rest is pure 19th century ethnoracism. It’s depressing to find it still appearing in a book from the 1970s.
So I didn’t hate this book, but I definitely didn’t feel it lived up to its full potential. The coming-of-age, torn between two worlds, changing families children’s novel that it wanted to be simply doesn’t work for the period or plot in question. In particular, it is difficult to be torn between two worlds when one of those worlds is consistently trying to murder you. And after a promising start it ends in a muddled mess where it’s unclear why you should feel the emotions you’re obviously meant to. There are many better books set in this era which are accessible for a young audience. The Beacon at Alexandria is probably the best, and covers the exact same period, but Julian, Imperial Purple, the Twilight of Empire series, and The Death of Attila are very good as well. From a somewhat later period we also have The Bearkeeper’s Daughter and the Aelric series, although the latter isn’t really suitable for young children. Or there’s the old British favorite of Rosemary Sutcliffe’s Eagle of the Ninth YA novels, of which The Silver Branch, Frontier Wolf, and The Lantern Bearers are set at around this time. I’d go with one of those before seeking out this difficult-to-find book.
Characters: 5 (Not deep but likeable and understandable for children)
Accuracy: 4 (A mess of mistakes and half-truths, but it does try)
There’s a lot to recommend about this book, but in the end it just doesn’t hold together under the weight of its own absurdities. You expect a certain degree of simplification and making nice from a young adult novel (no rapine and pillaging by our heroes for example), but there comes a certain point beyond which even that audience recognizes that they’re being coddled.
I think the big problem here is that a lot of the chosen storytelling tropes just don’t work for the story it wants to tell. This is essentially written as if it’s a peacetime book about prejudice when in fact the plot is that of a war story. Imagine Johnny Tremain if it had treated the British occupation of Boston and the battles of Lexington and Concord as if they were just inconvenient events that got in the way of what was truly important and you have a pretty good idea of what the storytelling is like. It refuses to take sides between the Romans and the Goths, which is fine theoretically, but in this case what that means is that nobody takes this conflict very seriously. The Romans aren’t overly upset at the Gothic revolt and the Goths aren’t cross at repeated Roman treachery. Which is why when people die it doesn’t really seem to matter. Even to them. People die with a smile and forgiveness on their lips when they’re killed to protect random enemies. Because they understand how hard this is for Rurik. Oy!
The good news of course, is that the peacetime stuff works fairly well. Rurik’s relationship with his guardian, the general Julian, and Julian’s son Aruuns (an absurd name for a Roman) is well done and gets into a lot of the father-son relationship issues that are the bread and butter of young adult novels. This is doubly true because Rurik already has a real father, Fritigern, who’s on the opposing side and he has to balance his attachments to his two fathers. It is rather simplistic and often cliched, but it does work. The first part of the plot is fairly episodic, which gives the novel leave to explore more ideas than the more continuous plot of the ending. I imagine the tour around Constantinople and late Roman society would appeal to children. There are several scenes thrown in, including bathing, schooling, and slave-trading, which explore the Roman world in a way that’s accessible for a child. Bonus points for setting it in such a little-explored era.
But it’s impossible to get around the fact that this peacetime stuff should never be happening. The big question I have is: what is the purpose of taking hostages? Isn’t it to keep the hostage’s family under control by killing their relatives if they move against you? That seems fairly obvious, doesn’t it? Even to a child? So how on earth can anyone believe that these hostages would be given essentially free reign of the empire? Rurik’s the son of Fritigern, the Gothic leader, and he’s left to wander the capital and anywhere else at will. He’s even given a horse and allowed to sit in military zones counting ships. And when he returns after betraying the Romans and even fighting against them in battle it’s dismissed as only natural and he’s allowed to continue his life as a Roman ward. Actually, he’s treated with rather more respect than before he left. Even when I fell within the age bracket this book was aimed at I would have found this absurd. And everyone knows that Romans were even less forgiving than ten-year-old boys.
In terms of accuracy, it’s a little unfair to expect much since most of the best scholarship on this period was written after the book was written. The biggest general issue is that the book frequently presents the late empire as if it was identical in all respects to the early empire. This is depressingly common in fiction, but this book is far from the worst offender. In fact it avoids some of the mistakes I’d expected to see. But just to list some of the issues: senators no longer led armies, wore togas, or debated policy, all inhabitants of the empire were citizens, Byzantines were Romans, Rome was a center of no political importance, Roman soldiers no longer used rectangular shields and decimation was unheard of, gladiatorial combat had died out, Constantine never beheaded his nephew Gallus nor his entire court, and the Goths never captured Adrianople, which was far from the first defeat of Romans by barbarians.
There are also plenty of depictions that just feel wrong. For example, there is no way that the Romans would seek to marry off a Gothic hostage to a Persian ambassador. Create marriage ties between two of Rome’s most deadly enemies? Are you serious? In general the treatment of barbarian groups needed work. They’re all shown to be in cahoots, with Franks, Alemanni, Huns, and Sarmatians all shown as joining the 500,000 strong(!) Gothic army in their war against Rome. A true barbarian conspiracy that never happened. The really odd thing is that barbarian groups are mentioned which Rome wasn’t to encounter for centuries (if at all), including Bulgars, Khazars, Patzinaks, and, most bizarrely of all, the Mongols. One of the worst parts is the description of the Huns: “He had heard horror tales about these wild slant-eyed men who tattooed their yellow bodies and ate raw horseflesh, which they softened by tucking slabs of it beneath their saddles and riding on it all day.” The last part is taken from Ammianus (a Roman historian). The rest is pure 19th century ethnoracism. It’s depressing to find it still appearing in a book from the 1970s.
So I didn’t hate this book, but I definitely didn’t feel it lived up to its full potential. The coming-of-age, torn between two worlds, changing families children’s novel that it wanted to be simply doesn’t work for the period or plot in question. In particular, it is difficult to be torn between two worlds when one of those worlds is consistently trying to murder you. And after a promising start it ends in a muddled mess where it’s unclear why you should feel the emotions you’re obviously meant to. There are many better books set in this era which are accessible for a young audience. The Beacon at Alexandria is probably the best, and covers the exact same period, but Julian, Imperial Purple, the Twilight of Empire series, and The Death of Attila are very good as well. From a somewhat later period we also have The Bearkeeper’s Daughter and the Aelric series, although the latter isn’t really suitable for young children. Or there’s the old British favorite of Rosemary Sutcliffe’s Eagle of the Ninth YA novels, of which The Silver Branch, Frontier Wolf, and The Lantern Bearers are set at around this time. I’d go with one of those before seeking out this difficult-to-find book.
January 13, 2015
This YA historical fiction novel set in the Roman Empire is mildly okay. I learned about hostage taking as a Roman method of control from it. What is more interesting -- and was, when I read it incredulously at age 18 or so -- is that my European History AP teacher wrote it. I found it independently at the local library and was hella surprised by the author's name. Most of the YA historical fiction she wrote has single word titles that are the names of girls -- romances, in other words. She was no competition for Elizabeth Speare or Elizabeth Marie Pope, that's for sure. But I was impressed she'd found the time to write and get published. They didn't make her a ton of money, that's for sure.
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