The Seven Wonders - Anna’s Archive (2024)

“The Seven Wonders: A Novel of the Ancient World SSC

The year is 92 B. C. Gordianus has just turned eighteen and is about to embark on the adventure of a lifetime: a far-flung journey to see the Seven Wonders of the World. Gordianus is not yet called the Finderbut at each of the Seven Wonders, the wide-eyed young Roman encounters a mystery to challenge the powers of deduction.

Accompanying Gordianus on his travels is his tutor, Antipater of Sidon, the worlds most celebrated poet. But there is more to the apparently harmless old poet than meets the eye. Before they leave home, Antipater fakes his own death and travels under an assumed identity. Looming in the background are the first rumblings of a political upheaval that will shake the entire Roman world.

Teacher and pupil journey to the fabled cities of Greece and Asia Minor, and then to Babylon and Egypt. They attend the Olympic Games, take part in exotic festivals, and marvel at the most spectacular constructions ever devised by mankind. Along the way they encounter murder, witchcraft and ghostly hauntings. Traveling the world for the first time, Gordianus discovers that amorous exploration goes hand-in-hand with crime-solving. The mysteries of love are the true wonders of the world, and at the end of the journey, an Eighth Wonder awaits him in Alexandria. Her name is Bethesda.

About the Author STEVEN SAYLOR is the author of acclaimed historical mystery novels featuring Gordianus the Finder, including The Triumph of Caesar, as well as the internationally bestselling historical novels Empire and Roma. He has appeared on the History Channel as an expert on Roman politics and life. He divides his time between Berkeley, California and Austin, Texas.

Excerpt. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. I
Prelude in Rome:
THE DEAD MAN WHO WASNT

Now that youre dead, Antipater, what do you plan to do with yourself?
My father laughed at his own joke. He knew perfectly well what Antipater was planning to do, but he couldnt resist a paradoxical turn of phrase. Puzzles were my fathers passionand solving them his profession. He called himself Finder, because men hired him to find the truth.
Not surprisingly, old Antipater answered with a poem made up on the spot; for yes, the Antipater of whom I speak was the Antipater of Sidonone of the most celebrated poets in the world, famed not only for the elegance of his verses but for the almost magical way he could produce them impromptu, as if drawn from the aether. His poem was in Greek, of course:
I died on my birthday, so I must leave Rome.
Now your son has his birthdayis it time to leave home?
Antipaters question, like my fathers, was merely rhetorical. For days the old poet and I had been making preparations to leave Rome together on this day. He gave me a smile. It does seem unfair, my boy, that your birthday should be overshadowed by my funeral.
I resisted the urge to correct him. Despite his lingering habit of addressing me as a boy, I was in fact a man, and had been so for exactly a year, since I put on my manly toga when I turned seventeen. What better way to celebrate my birthday, Teacher, than to set out on a journey such as most people can only dream of?
Well put! Antipater squeezed my shoulder. Its not every young man who can look forward to seeing with his own eyes the greatest monuments ever built by mankind, and in the company of mankinds greatest poet. Antipater had never been modest. Now that he was dead, I suppose he had no reason to be.
And its not every man who has the privilege of gazing upon his own funeral stele, my father said, indicating with a wave of his hand the object of which he spoke.
The three of us stood in the garden of my fathers house on the Esquiline Hill. The sky was cloudless and the air was warm for the month of Martius. In front of usdelivered only moments before from the sculptors workshopstood a riddle in marble. It was a funeral stele for a man who was not dead. The rectangular tablet was elegantly carved and brightly painted, and only about a foot tall. Later it would be placed atop the sepulcher intended for the dead mans ashes, but for now it was propped atop the crate in which it had been delivered.
Antipater nodded thoughtfully. And not every man has the opportunity to design his own monument, as I have. You dont think its too irreverent, do you, Finder? I mean, we dont want anyone to look at this stele and realize its a hoax. If anyone should surmise that Ive faked my own death
Stop worrying, old friend. Everything is going as we planned. Five days ago I entered your death in the register at the Temple of Libitina. Thanks to the rich matrons who send a slave to check the lists several times a day, word of your demise spread across Rome in a matter of hours. People assumed that your old friend and patron Quintus Lutatius Catulus must be in possess”