Introduction

This article was originally part of the piece on Roman naming conventions, more or less a rant on the egregious liberties—especially from Hollywood—when dealing with history. Later, I began sketching two case studies on how I incorporate history into my alternate-history fiction, and that naturally suggested turning it into a series on my approach to historical fiction writing. Fair warning: I’m very opinionated in this area, but I’m not a professional historian, just a Romophile since my high school days. Though I am an amateur, I’m knowledgeable enough to know that the word comes from the Latin amare—to love—into amator—one who loves. So while I may not be an authority, I am one who loves and respects history.

I won’t stop there. In a docudrama series on the Roman Empire, the episode on Caligula—a reign known for sexual excess—overtly cast his sister Agrippina as the instigator of an incestuous relationship. For the record: ancient sources do allege that Caligula slept with all three of his sisters, but none records Agrippina as the instigator. Modern historians are dubious, since those allegations come from writers working well after Caligula’s reign. Agrippina—an ambitious woman in a heavily chauvinistic world—was especially targeted; later accusations even stretched to rumors of incest with her son, Nero. Bottom line: a series that billed itself as factual, complete with on-screen “experts,” was misrepresenting history with unsupported salacious detail.

That said, as historical fiction, it’s fair game to invent missing detail. Could she have instigated such a relationship? Nothing in the historical record contradicts it. Would she have? She was certainly ambitious enough. As historical fiction 👍; as history 👎.

To be honest, the deeper I’ve dug into Julia Agrippina, the more compelling I’ve found her. In my novel Restitutor Reipublicae, she’s been elevated from the mere hindrance I wrote as a teen to a significant player—ambitious and seductive. Even her brief mention in Gaius the Ripper casts her as more complex than a quick glance at history suggests.

Do Your Homework

If you are writing historical fiction, it goes without saying that you should become intimately acquainted with the time and culture about which you are writing—though not surprisingly and unfortunately, quite a lot of historical fiction does not. In my specific subgenre, ancient Rome, I’ve already touched upon the inaccuracies in the title character’s name in Gladiator. There was a much older film, The Fall of the Roman Empire, set around the same time period. In this film, the protagonist kills Emperor Commodus in the arena and lives happily ever after with Lucilla, Commodus’ sister. This is essentially the same high-level story as Gladiator, which makes me wonder whether the writers of Gladiator took their inaccuracies from this earlier film instead of doing their homework. In reality, Commodus was assassinated not in a gladiatorial arena but by a wrestler named Narcissus (not to be confused with Claudius’ freedman Narcissus). His assassination occurred after Commodus’ mistress and confidant Marcia discovered both their names on a proscription list—a death list. Furthermore, Commodus exiled and later executed Lucilla for plotting against him, meaning she did not survive him. There was no shortage of drama and intrigue in this episode of history, so it’s hard to see why such a major rewrite was needed for dramatic purposes.

Robert Graves: My Gold Standard

That is not to say one cannot—or should not—bend history. I personally hold Robert Graves up as a gold standard. He knew his stuff. But I’ve seen reviews that criticized his history. His book I, Claudius was never meant to be a history (though when I was younger, competing in certamina, it wasn’t a bad stand-in—that’s why I hold him as a gold standard). As immersive historical fiction, he’s top of the mountain in my view.

What he does is fill gaps—treating rumors as fact or using them as guides to fill those gaps. There’s a lot of freedom, and Robert Graves was a master of this kind of embellishment. For example, he depicted Agrippina (Agrippina the Younger—i.e., the aforementioned Julia Agrippina) and Livilla as being compelled to dive for a living while in exile—a detail not documented historically. He took the conspiracy against Emperor Tiberius led by a slave named Clemens, who claimed to be Postumus Agrippa, a legitimate heir to Augustus, and put his own spin on it. In his novel, Graves reimagined it as a plot where Postumus Agrippa swapped places with Clemens in a scheme conceived by Augustus. He also invented the character of Calpurnia, a prostitute and confidant of Emperor Claudius, with no basis in history. In essence, he used actual history as scaffolding for his tale.

I wanted to know how good he was, so I searched for places where he contradicted history. I couldn’t find anything. Using newer AI-based search tools, I found one commenter on a book review who alleged he conflated two men named Marcus Aemilius Lepidus—the husband of Caligula’s sister Drusilla—with his cousin. As I dug for references, I found no documented parentage. Even Wikipedia’s citations led to no verifiable sources. Digging deeper, I learned a bit about modern historical scholarship: most genealogical reconstructions rely on prosopography and onomastics (fancy words, but they boil down to names and patterns). It turns out there are two theories. In short, there are two reconstructions: one makes him the son of Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, consul in AD 6; the other makes him the son of Aemilia Lepida, a great-granddaughter of Augustus—Graves’ interpretation. If both men existed, they would be cousins. So the commenter may be partially correct, but Graves was justified as well. For the record, the reconstruction that makes Lepidus the son of the consul of AD 6 lists his cousin as Lucius Aemilius Paullus, not a same-named Marcus.

My Take

Here’s an anecdote from my own work, where I bent history. Historically, Poppaea Sabina was married at the age of 12 to Rufrius Crispinus, the praetorian prefect, and they had a son. However, this early marriage didn’t suit my story, Restitutor Reipublicae, so I offered my own alternative history. In my version, Poppaea was engaged to Crispinus, not married. Still, when Empress Messalina fell from power, the engagement was called off, as Crispinus was a close, intimate ally of the fallen Empress. I chose to depict their son as a fabrication of later historians who misinterpreted the engagement as a marriage.

The takeaway here—and perhaps this is just personal preference—is to make your fiction fit within written history. Not to say you should treat history as gospel. After all, recorded history is full of gaps, biases, and inaccuracies. What’s important is that your fiction remains consistent with history. Rather than see history as an obstacle, see it as an opportunity or a challenge. Often, you can find what you need within history itself. For example, in Restitutor Reipublicae, I needed a young “geeky” but sharp, scholarly character. I found Gaius Plinius Secundus (Pliny the Elder). At the time of my story, he would be a young (presumably ambitious) man, well before he became the famous naturalist and politician. It was exactly what I needed and lends some familiarity to the reader.