Doctor Who_ The Romans - Donald Cotton [1]
One would have thought that even an Empire in Decline and Fall might have seen fit to employ a scholar in the august position you have the effrontery to occupy, rather than a denarius-pinching, acidulous accountant with no apparent grounding in the Humanities.
However, I realise that times are what they weren’t, and that the general decline in education standards has left it likely that the technocrat shall inherit the Senate, no matter what the embitterment of the literate.
I must ask you, therefore, to attribute the fact that I now apply stylus to tablet in response – rather than inserting your impertinences into my incineratoriurn as they deserve – not to any old world courtesy on my part - should you be fool enough to fancy you detect any such consideration between the lines - but to the irritating circumstance that your communication is merely the latest in a dreary series of querulous queries; and I now wish to stem this nuisance at its source, before my desk becomes quite buried beneath a pile of junk mail, all of it bearing your indecipherable signature.
Now, having completed the civilities, let me at once address myself to the matter of the burden of your repetitive song.
You speak, confound you, of breach of contract; and have the further temerity to threaten the invocation of penalty clauses, if I do not at once submit for your inspection those chapters of my Annals which cover the Great Fire of Rome and the last few years of Nero Caesar’s reign, described so aptly by my colleague Suetonius as ‘The Terror’.
Now, I must make it quite clear to you that I, Tacitus, am not accustomed to being thus pestered and berated by jumped-up lagos-in-office who are apparently incapable of recognising a hot property when they read one: for must I remind you that those sections of the book already completed have received extremely favourable advance notices from all discerning critics? And already there is talk of its dramatisation by Juvenal as the centre-piece of next year’s ‘Festival of Roman Arts, Culture, and Blood Sports’ at the Circus Maximus.
However, since you have the infernal bad taste to speak of the possibility of your withholding not only the final down-payment, but the royalties themselves, in the event of my not delivering the goods, it seems I have no alternative but to explain the set of somewhat bizarre circumstances which have persuaded me to retain the remainder of the work - at least, until I have completed further research as to the authenticity of certain documents which have only recently come into my possession; and which would, if genuine, necessitate not only the postponement of publication, but the rewriting of History itself!
I will not detain an incompetent dunderhead like your goodself with a detailed account of how I acquired these extraordinary papers - which I now enclose for your attention. Suffice it to say that my field workers are constantly abroad about my business, and it is not for me to enquire too closely into the methods they employ in the collection of information.
It is possible, I admit, that I am in danger of becoming the victim of an elaborate hoax, devised - possibly by Suetonius - for my discomfiture. Hence my caution. But the new facts herein revealed would, if true, explain a great deal which has previously puzzled me, and I am therefore tempted to believe them.
You will remember, from your, no doubt, laborious perusal of my last manuscript, that it contains references to a series of prodigies and portents which heralded the year of the Great Fire: and that these included unnatural births, such as two-headed calves and the like; sea-monsters sporting in the Tiber; apparitions of the gibbering and squeaking, sheeted dead variety; and finally, a clutch of comets, which flamed and flared furiously over the Forum, to the horror of the opprobrious populace.
Also, unearthly noises were