To Spare the Conquered

by Stephanie Plowman, Richard Kennedy (Cover Art)

VG condition book with dust jacket. DJ is clean, has fresh colours and has little wear to edges. Book has clean and bright contents.

Genres: Historical Fiction

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1965

Reviews

[Hyarrowen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I re-read this book recently, for the first time in forty years or so. I loved it as an adolescent, and was interested to see how my perceptions have changed. It was written in the early 1950s, and the attitudes of Empire are very clear to me now, but they're not entirely inappropriate given that the book is the story of a young Roman officer, stationed in Britain in the years preceding Boudicca's rebellion, and the part he plays during that rebellion.

Martius is the son of a disgraced Roman general, intent on proving himself, and this might be what drives him to excel at all he does - and he is rather tiresomely all-round competent. But the atmosphere of a frontier province on the brink of rebellion is very convincingly done, and there are some vivid characters. I particularly like Flaviola, Bouddica's scholarly daughter; Gaetulicus, the very pattern of a stolid centurion; Carus the brilliant commander of the Fourteenth who suffers with endless stomach complaints. And then there's Cerialis, the incoming commander of the Ninth - loud, good-hearted, and in the cinema of my mind played by Brian Blessed.

A period piece, but a very good story, and the writing is excellent. I was also rather startled to realise that my powers of concentration were much better as a teenager than they are now!

[Veronica · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a book that I really loved when I was a teenager, enough that I still have a copy on my shelves over 40 years later (not the same copy -- someone borrowed that and never returned it). It's another novel about the Boudicca episode, told by a young Roman, Quintus, who becomes aide-de-camp to Suetonius. On re-reading it (still thanks to that persistent cold), I was surprised at how badly it had stood the test of time. Quintus is so perfect that he is positively priggish, and most of the characters show little subtlety. The whole book is pervaded with a 19th-century sense of Empire too, the Romans like British civil servants in India sipping G&T on the terrace, and treating childlike natives with affection as long as they accept the benefits of true civilisation and don't get uppity. Boudicca is particularly badly served, being portrayed simply as a madwoman who needs a male mastermind to get anywhere. All a bit disappointing -- I'll stick to Rosemary Sutcliff, who did know how to write more complex, flawed characters.

Note, Plowman's The Road to Sardis is much better than this. I think, haven't read it for many years!

[Jocelyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved this as a teenager. Reading it in the year I turned 60, I see it is quite flawed, but still attractive.
I had a taste for the melancholy, and Plowman writes very emotional history, with plenty of invitation to weep for the long-dead.
I'm struggling with how to think about our narrator's racism - a Greek-Roman of the officer-class in 60 AD *would* be very smug and conscious of his natural superiority, but at the same time the description of the Bavarian cavalry auxiliaries as like big children grated on me.

[Caroline Thomson · Rating 3 out of 5]

A lot of echoes of "The Road to Sardis" but somehow the characters didn't 'catch' in the same way and especially at the start I got somewhat confused. A good read but one that didn't arose my emotions the way RTS did.

[Peter Lawson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not as good as Rosemary Sutcliffe, but still an interesting insight into Roman Britain