2024/122: Render Unto Caesar — Gillian Bradshaw

2024/122: Render Unto Caesar — Gillian Bradshaw

This has never been about the money, Roman. This has been about whether Roman officials can rob, cheat and murder with impunity.

The setting is Rome, 16BC. Cleopatra was defeated fairly recently: many Romans still look down on the Greeks. Hermogenes is a Greek businessman from Alexandria who travels to Rome to seek justice from the man who ruined his family by defaulting on a debt. He's accompanied by two slaves, and he stays with a friend of his father's, Titus Crispus. His initial meeting with Tarius Rufus, who owes him over half a million sestertii, doesn't go well: Rufus spits on Hermogenes, calls him 'Greekling', and generally seems disinclined to pay.( Read more... )