The Case of the Bogus Detective 21

I must have passed out because everything went black for a time.

When I came to, I found myself still falling through the night.

Yes! I was still falling. 

But I did not splat.

This confused me.

Then I had a notion of what was happening. 

I was suspended between Glory and the Fiery Place! 

I had tried to be a Good Methodist but now all my sins came rushing back into my memory, viz: I had killed a man & told lies & played poker & tried whiskey once & a Pousse Lamour cocktail another time & ignored every single one of my foster ma’s dying wishes. Also I had pranked the people of Virginia City for over nine months, making them believe I was a boy not a gal. 

That might have been the worst sin of all, for they were my friends.

I reckon I was in a place called Limbo. 

Methodists do not believe in that place, but Mr. Hazard O’Toole at the Shamrock Saloon across from my office is Catholic. He told me all about it. 

He told me that Limbo is where you go to wait while the angels plead your case and the imps of the Fiery Place accuse you. 

Gradually, as my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I perceived that I was not in Limbo. I was still in the high Sierras, surrounded by the looming black shapes of whispering pines. Why had I not splatted onto the ground? 

Was I dreaming? 

My arms were hanging limp. I moved my right hand over to pinch my left. 

I pinched hard. 

It hurt. 

That meant I was not dreaming. 

Then I realized that I was kind of tipped forward. I could feel something tugging my underarms & the seams of my coat sleeves straining tight. Someone was holding me up. 

Someone… or something!

I knew there were bears in these mountains. Was it a man-eating grizzly bear holding me aloft?

If a prey animal is in trouble, he does one of three things. 
No. 1 – He fights
No. 2 – He runs away
No. 3 – He freezes, so that he will not be seen or so that his enemy will think he is dead.

I could not fight. And I could not run away. So decided to use method No. 3 and ‘play possum’. Maybe the grizzly bear holding me up thought I was dead. Maybe he was not hungry enough to devour me in my velvet sacque & yellow-straw lighthouse bonnet with its silk flowers & ribbon & ruffles. 

I must have been dazed with terror to imagine such a foolish thing. By and by I realized it could not be a grizzly bear holding me so still. Or even a person.

It was one of them whispering pines.

Yes, I was caught by tree. 

My velvet and fur-trimmed sacque must have puffed out as I fell through the air and got caught on a branch. 

There was no sound except the wind in the pines and further off the jingling and snorting of horses. 

The horses! Had they survived? What about Ray, who had been up on the driver’s box with me?

If only I could see!

I reached my arms up over my head and after some groping I clasped on to the branch holding me. I could feel it through the satin-lined velvet fabric of the sacque which was straining under my weight.  

It felt brittle and prickly, like an old branch. A dead branch. 

Crack!

That was the sound I heard as I found myself tipped forward a little more. My efforts to free myself had caused the branch that was holding me to bounce up and down a little. It was going to break and send me hurtling to the rocky gorge three thousand feet below!
I considered yelling for help but then I reasoned that the only other people for miles around were two Road Agents and one Pinkerton detective, viz: Mr. Ray G. Tempest. The road agents might be nearby. And the Pinkerton detective was probably dead. 

So instead of yelling, I sent up an arrow prayer to the Lord. 

‘Dear Lord,’ I prayed, ‘please forgive me for pranking my friends and help me to be a good girly-girl, if that is your desire. Only save me in my moment of need! Amen.’

As if in answer to my prayer, some pearly white rays poked up through the inky black branches of a pine tree below me. Those rays were like the halo of a saint, all fanned out. A moment later a light shone in my face. It was the moon, rising in the east and shining up through the gulch. 

That blessed moonlight showed me that it was indeed the branch of a fir tree holding me. 

I looked down. 

Hallelujah! I was only about six feet off the ground. 

(But I still might have broke my neck if that branch had not caught me.) 

The next question was: how to get down? 

Crack!

I could use the weakness of the branch.

I flapped my arms to make the branch bob up and down. 

CRACK!

My plan worked. I fell the six feet but landed awkwardly on account of I was wearing those button-up boots and not my usual moccasins. The ground was padded with pine needles, which cushioned my fall, but it also sloped gently down so I rolled a few times. The prickly savior branch dug into my back but thankfully it did not pierce the daffodil-yellow frock nor break my skin. 

I got up on my hands & knees and straightened my wig & bonnet & pulled the branch out from under my sacque. 

Hallelujah! My little 4-shot Muff Deringer was still firmly in the hidden pocket. I took it out & cocked it & crept down towards the sound I had heard earlier, viz: the sound of horses snorting & voices in the pines. 

I am used to sneaking in the dark & when I put my mind to it I can go over crispy leaves & crunchy pine needles without making a sound. I crept forward, as silent as a cat on a velvet cushion. 

Presently I came to where I could see the flickering yellow light of a fire. 

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. 

Here is the picture the golden firelight & the silvery moonlight showed me: 

One papier maché torso wearing a pink shawl & a flower-bedecked sunhat on her watermelon head & balanced on the ground as if sitting before the fire with her back to me.

Two Reb Road Agents sitting at the fire facing the dummy & also me & reading letters. 

Three wheels scattered in various places around them. 

Some pieces of a busted up old Concord Stage & a tangle of reins & a whippletree & some other tackle lying between me and the Reb Road Agents. 

Seven letter-sacks sitting near them. 

Eight horses standing whole and unharmed, loosely tethered a pine. 

Seventy-eight gleaming bricks of silver piled up beside the fire. 

This is what that picture told me:

The stagecoach had crashed but the whippletree had broke loose from the singletree & all the horses had survived. I could see the drop was not as steep as I had feared, though it was still enough to cause the coach to roll over a couple of times and break up, probably on account of the heavy silver bars inside. The Reb Road Agents had obviously come upon the site of the wreck as they pursued us. They had seized all the silver bars and were now relaxing. 

I could see no sign of Ray. 

I reckoned he was dead. 

The decoy stage full of guards and also my pa riding behind were probably ten miles further along the road. Maybe more.

I was on my own. 

I focused all my attention on the Reb Road Agents. The one with the slouch hat was older. He was smoking a pipe & reading a letter. The one with the kepi was younger. He was swigging from a bottle of champagne & reading a letter. I noticed they had an open letter-sack beside them.

I wormed forward to the trunk of the tree closest to their fire. 

I was close enough to hear them talking. 

‘Hey, darlin,’ said Kepi to the dressmaker’s dummy. ‘Listen to this: Dear Ma, It is Bonanza here on the Comstock. They struck it rich in the front ledge in Gold Hill the other day. Tell little Pete and Edward they must come and join me. I have got a job working for the Yellow Jacket mine. It is hot and tiring but I get four dollars a day and I have feet. Give Betty my love and tell her she will not have to wait much longer.’ He took a swig of champagne & then he tossed the letter into the flames.

‘Hey!’ I got a good one, said Slouch. ‘It is a love letter from a gal to her betrothed: Oh Roderick I count the hours until I see you again.’ He was making his voice all high like a lady’s. ‘I have not heard from you in three weeks and I fear you have stopped caring for your sweet Elspeth. Are the girls prettier in Frisco? Please write to me, dear one!’ 

He also tossed his letter in the fire. 

I was outraged. They were burning letters from sons to their mothers & lonely gals to their sweethearts!

Silver could be replaced, but not letters. 

I had to stop them! 

But how?

Read on! 

Stagecoach #2

In the 1860's there were at least half a dozen stage coaches in and out of Virginia City every day.

In a book called Resources of the Pacific Slope, J. Ross Browne gives details of the routes of a dozen stages in the 1860's. For example, Route #1 went to Sacramento California via the Donner Pass and North Lake Tahoe. It cost $20 to Sacramento but $25 back because that was the most popular direction of travel in the 60's. Another stage went down to Dayton and from there to Como across the Carson Valley. Some stagecoaches went up to an area called Humboldt and from there to Salt Lake City and the east.

As our time in Virginia City is now over, we decide to follow Stagecoach Route #2 to California. J. Ross Brown tells us exactly which towns it passed through: Gold Hill, Silver City, Empire, Carson City, Genoa, Van Sickles Station, then up the Kingsway Grade to Dagget Pass at the summit and down into California via Strawberry, Placerville and Shingle Springs, all the way to Sacramento.


It's a beautiful September morning as we get in our convertible 'stagecoach' and set out from Virginia City to follow this route. We leave at 10.00am, and five minutes later we go over the hump called 'The Divide' which marks the boundary between Virginia City and Gold Hill. The Civil War re-enactors staged a mock battle here in a quarry beside the train tracks. Of course the Civil War never got this far west, and the V&T train wasn't here in 1862, when my first book will be set. However, the Gold Hill Hotel was. It's the oldest hotel in Nevada. Sam Clemens, Dan De Quille and Alf Doten all ate there.

Down the hot, winding road through a pair of dramatic rocks (above) called Devil's Gate. This was a popular place for bandits to lie in wait to rob the stage. An old illustration exaggerates the size of the rocks by putting tiny people between them. Exaggeration was rife in the 1860's... We breathe a sigh of relief as we pass through Devil's Gate into Silver City without incident.

As we pass an abandoned mine just out of Silver City we wave to our friend 'Irish'. He runs the Comstock Gold Mine and Stamp Mill and we met him when he demonstrated how the ore stamps worked and sounded. He is a colourful character who first came to Virginia City as a 16 year old in 1958. LIke many others, the popular TV show Bonanza was what brought this region to his attention. He went back to California to be a roadie for The Grateful Dead and Willie Nelson, but now he has ended up back here in a fabulous 'boys' fort' type of dwelling on the golden, sage-dotted hills.

After Silver City, the road flattens out into the wide flat Carson River Valley. We join Highway 50 here. If we were to go left we would reach Dayton, which might be Nevada's oldest town. My great-grandmother Corinne Prince grew up there. Her father was a teamster, one of those men who drove eight to twelve-mule carriages with loads of ore going out and timber coming back. Corinne probably went to school in the Dayton School house, which was built in 1863 and is now a museum.

But our 'stagecoach' doesn't go left to Dayton. It goes right, west, to Empire. We can't really see any signs of old Empire; New Empire is a suburb of Carson City. But in Carson City we see the old mint, where my great-grandmother worked for a while, and the governor's mansion. Stages might have changed teams here in Carson, as it's about 20 miles from Virginia City.

A road west takes you towards the Sierra Nevada mountains, which are barren and rounded and steep on this side. Then the flat road curves south to Genoa. Originally known as Mormon Station, Genoa is a pleasant surprise. It's green and shady with excellent information about the pioneers and local characters like Snowshoe Joe, who was a mail carrier. Genoa and Dayton have a little rivalry going on as to which of them is the oldest town. Let's just say they are both old, founded in 1851. Richard and I stop for an espresso on the rocks at the delightful Genoa Coffee & Candy Company. We go to see the famous hanging tree before setting out south with a 'fresh team of horses.'

There are hot springs south of Genoa and today David Walley's Hot Springs is a popular place to get married. Half a mile south, on the right of the road, is Van Sickles Station Ranch, now a private residence. Van Sickles was a commissioner and in the early 60's his hotel was the first port of call once you crossed the mountains. With hot water and good food, it must have been a joy for the weary traveller. In winter you could sledge down the eastern Sierras. Van Sickles was famous for shooting a desperado called Sam Brown who had killed half a dozen men. After Sam fired on Van Sickles, the hotel owner went after him with a shotbun. He was later tried and a jury passed a verdict of 'self-defense'.

The eastern side of the Sierra Nevada mountains come straight down and stop dramatically at the flat plain of the Carson Valley. One minute you're on the flat, the next you're climbing the Kingsbury Grade. This wagon road was built by two men named Kingsbury and MacDonald in 1860, it shortened the distance between Virginia City and Sacramento by 15 miles. The road cost $585,000 to build and the builders charged a toll to pay for the road. A wagon and four horses had to pay $17.50 for a round trip from Shingle Springs to Van Sickles Station. The Pony Express used this road, too, for the short period of its existence between 1860 and 1861.

The four-horse team strains as it pulls our stagecoach and up over sparsely wooded eastern slopes with dizzy views down to the flat Carson Valley. Once over Dagget Pass, tall pines and smooth grey granite boulders take over. The summit is over 7400 feet, then down to Lake Tahoe, blue and peaceful in the warm September sun. When we were in Virginia City, we took a ten minute stagecoach ride with Gary. What you don't realise until you try riding as a passenger in one is how claustrophobic it can be. You can't see what's coming and the scenery whizzes by. If you were sitting facing backwards it might have been quite disconcerting. Not good for people who are easily travel-sick. The idea of taking a bone-rattling stagecoach all this way is almost inconceivable. Especially knowing that they sometimes travelled at night around the precipitous bends. Eeek!


After the pass, Richard and I stop at South Lake Tahoe for lunch. In the 1860's people were often malnourished because fresh fruit and veg were almost impossible to find apart from the autumn. We know from J. Ross Browne and others that staple foods were corn-meal, lard, bacon, eggs, potatoes, cabbage, cheese, sugar and coffee, When Sam Clemens arrived in Virginia City in 1862, a man called Rollin M. Daggett remarked that he 'had been living on alkali water and whang leather...' This is an exaggeration, of course, but gives you an idea of the monotony of food back then.

Strawberry was one of the most famous stopping places on the western Sierra Nevada Mountains. There were no strawberries there, but according to some reports, a man called Berry owned the inn and he had straw for the horses. Another article by J. Ross Browne, first published in Harper's Monthly Magazine, December 1860 documents the first wave of prospectors coming over the Sierra Nevadas to mine gold and silver on the Comstock. Some of his most hilarious anecdotes take place at Strawberry.

The illustration above right shows 'Dinner at Strawberry', an illustration from 'A Peep at Washoe'. A light at length glimmered through the pines, first faint and flickering, then a full blaze, then half a dozen brilliant lights, which proved to be camp fires under the tree, and soon we stood in front of a large and substantial log-house. This was the famous Strawberry', known throughout the length and breadth of the land as the best stopping-place on the route to Washoe...

Soon the road shows glimpses of the American River on the left. Further down in Coloma gold was discovered for the first time in 1848 with the cry: 'Gold. Gold in the American River!' The road down the western Sierra Nevadas is a much gentler grade. It takes us into the hot valley and Placerville, which was once known as Hangtown. Placerville was named after 'placer' mining, the method where you pan for gold in an open stream or creek. Placerville's Main Street still has buildings dating back to the 1850's and you can see Stage Coach Alley. You can also get a hot dog at Hangville Hot Dogs. This was another staging place for horses. After Placerville it is on to Shingle Springs.

We tried to find the old train station at Shingle Springs but only founded traces of the old track in a cutting of earth red with iron. The train arrived here in 1865, but until then you would carry on in your stagecoach to Sacramento, another 30 miles on. At last you could emerge and take a different method of transport: boats plied daily from here to San Francisco. I'll bet plenty of travellers vowed never to sit in a stage coach again!

TIPS FOR STAGECOACH TRAVELERS

The best seat inside a stage is the one next to the driver. Even if you have a tendency to sea-sickness when riding backwards - you'll get over it and will get less jolts and jostling. Don't let "sly elph" trade you his mid-seat>

In cold weather, don't ride with tight-fitting boots, shoes or gloves. When the driver asks you to get off and walk, do so without grumbling, he won't request it unless absolutely necessary. If the team runs away - sit still and take your chances. If you jump, nine out of ten times you will get hurt.

In very cold weather abstain entirely from liquor when on the road, because you will freeze twice as quickly when under its influence.

Don't growl at the food received at the station - stage companies generally provide the best they can get.

Don't keep the stage waiting. Don't smoke a strong pipe inside the coach. Spit on the leeward side... Don't lean or lop over neighbours when sleeping. Take small change to pay expenses. Never shoot on the road as the noise might frighten the horses. Don't discuss politics or religion.

Don't point out where murders have been committed, especially if there are women passengers.

Don't lag at the wash basin. Don't grease your hair, because travel is dusty. Don't imagine for a moment that you are going on a picnic. Expect annoyances, discomfort and some hardships. (Omaha Herald 1877)

P.S. Listen to a fun audio account of a young Englishman's stage journey across America in 1859 on the Wells Fargo History site.

Slippery Gulch

In September 2009, I spent four days in Virginia City, Nevada, researching a new series of books.

Virginia City was a wealthy and rowdy mining town in the 1860's and 1870's. On the famous Comstock Lode, it produced billions of dollars of gold and especially silver ore. Mark Twain was a reporter there from Sept 1862 until May 1864. The town had gunmen, prostitutes, native Americans, miners, con-artists, saloon-keepers as well as bankers, lawyers, mine managers, journalists and speculators. There were even a few respectable women and children. Mark Twain once remarked that his days there 'were full to the brim of the wine of life.'

By the early 20th century, however, Virginia City was in danger of becoming a ghost town. Then in the late 1950's, something happened to revive interest in it. A hugely successful television show called Bonanza made Virginia City popular again. However, the show got several things wrong about Virginia City. Because it was filmed in Los Angeles, Virginia is shown as a flat town. But one of the most distinctive things about Virginia City is that it is built on a steep hillside. This is something you have to experience to believe.

No photo really shows you how radical the steep streets are. Imagine a city built on the slope of a pitched roof. Or a city built on stairs. The stairs are the north-south running streets, named after the letters of the alphabet. 'A' street is high up Mount Davidson, 'B' Street is further down, then the famous 'C' Street, with all the saloons and shops. In the olden days 'D' street was where the 'soiled doves' had their 'cribs' and 'F' Street was Chinatown, etc. But the east west running streets are ramps on almost a 45º angle! Now they are paved, but in the olden days they were just dirt. Imagine trying to walk on a muddy, icy street, or worse yet, trying to drive a carriage!

My great-grandmother grew up near Virginia City and remembers how a man and his wife were riding in a carriage when the horses lost their grip. Down they went, down and down and right over a cliff. The horses and the husband died. The wife was in a coma for several days and when she came out of it she discovered her broken and reset left arm was two inches shorter than her right. Apparently runaway carriages were almost daily occurrences in the 1860's. One of the many nicknames for Virginia City is 'Slippery Gulch'...

Another thing they never tell you about Virginia City is the physical effect it has on you. It is over 6000 feet high and the air is thin and dry. The first time I went I felt slightly sick and dizzy and had heart palpitations. This time I noticed the extreme dryness. My eyes felt scratchy and my nose prickled. You get used to it after a while but it really has an effect on you physically.

From the time of the late 1950's, Virginia City has attracted bikers. They love the scenic roads up to Virginia City and the saloons once they get there. Sometimes the streets throb with the sound of Harley Davidson motorcycles. In one bar you get leather-clad patrons and heavy metal music, in the saloon next door cowboys and Country Western music. Mostly everyone gets on with everyone else.

It was fun that Labor Day Weekend to see equal parts bikers and Civil War re-enactors. And sometimes both combined.

There really is nowhere in the world like Virginia City.

A Roman Christmas

[This is a version of a lecture I gave at the British Museum in December of 2009]

Q. What do Christmas crackers, mulled wine, Santa hats, office parties, mistletoe, greenery, presents and candles have to do with ancient Rome?
A. Everything!

English "Christmas crackers"

The Saturnalia was one of the most popular festivals in Roman times, possibly going back to Etruscan times. A sacrifice of piglets was made to the god Saturn along with other rites, and there followed several days of feasting and fun. It was the custom to greet one another with the phrase YO SATURNALIA! One of my books takes place in Ostia, Rome's port, during the festival of Saturnalia. It is called The Twelve Tasks of Flavia Gemina.

Here are 12 THINGS about the SATURNALIA which might seem familiar:

I. WINTER SOLSTICE - The Saturnalia began on December 17, a few days before the WINTER SOLSTICE. That’s when the days are shortest. It was essentially a pagan festival to bring back the sun. And some Romans celebrated the birth of a god at this time, a god of light called…

Mithras in the British Museum

II. BIRTH OF A GOD - Some scholars believe that the Persian god Mithras and/or the Roman god Sol Invictus had birthday celebrations on the winter solstice, which fell on 25 December in the Roman calendar. It wasn’t until about AD 400 that church leaders decided to celebrate the birth of Jesus on this day, possibly in an attempt to overlay and obliterate these ‘pagan’ holidays. We don’t really know when Jesus was born. It may have been in December. Or it may have been in the spring or autumn. That doesn’t mean we still can’t celebrate it.

III. GREENERY - Romans decorated their houses with greenery. One of my favourite TV shows is Big Bang Theory. Sheldon says ‘In the pre-Christian era, as the winter solstice approached and the plants died, pagans brought evergreen boughs into their homes as an act of sympathetic magic, intended to guard the life essences of the plants until spring. This custom was later appropriated by Northern Europeans and eventually it becomes the so-called Christmas tree.’ That’s certainly where the custom of Christmas wreaths and mistletoe come from.

Flavia & Nubia by lamplight

IV. HOUSE DECORATED WITH LIGHTS - Romans also decorated their houses with extra lights at this darkest time of the year. Again, this was a pagan attempt to bring back the sun. Torches, tapers, candleabra and oil-lamps flickered throughout the houses of the rich. Because of this Rome was a particular fire hazard in the winter. One historian estimates that a hundred fires broke out daily in the Eternal City, which had its own entire corps of firemen – they were called Vigiles and we get the word ‘vigilent’ from them. Ostia, the port of Rome, had its own vigiles.

V. FEASTING! In mid-winter instinct tells us to build up a nice layer of fat, to feast in preparation for lean times ahead. A bit like a bear before hibernation. But we must take a moment to pity the Romans. Sadly, they did not have chocolate.

Flavia Gemina with a wreath

VI. DRINKING! It has been medically proven that a small amount of wine added to water will kill off most known bacteria. For most of the year Romans drank diluted wine, but during the Saturnalia they often drank neat wine, heated and spiced. Go easy this year or you might need the VOMITORIUM! (NB a 'vomitorium' is an exit, NOT a room where you go to be sick!) When your mum has her Bailey’s Irish Cream after Christmas dinner, just think, that custom goes back to the Saturnalia.

VII. PARTYING AND HIJINKS - and Role Reversal, too. For the five days of the Saturnalia, slaves didn't have to work. They could eat, drink and be merry, and some even switched places with their masters, especially in more relaxed homes. In theory the masters could wait on reclining slaves and the slaves could tell the masters what they thought of them. Most masters probably just left the slaves to themselves, like Pliny the Younger, who retreated to an annex of his seaside Laurentum Villa.: ‘during the Saturnalia when the rest of the house is noisy with the licence of the holiday and festive cries. This way,’ he says, ‘I don't hamper the games of my people and they don't hinder my work or studies.’ (I don't think HE was the life of the party.) DID I MENTION THAT KIDS DIDN’T HAVE TO GO TO SCHOOL? During the Saturnalia, children were allowed into the amphitheatre. There was also lots of music and dancing. Today in the twenty first century, office employees find Christmas the time when they are tempted to take the most liberty. Be careful. Once the Saturnalia is over, you have to go back to being a slave again

a bone die

VIII. GAMBLING! In first century Rome, gambling was illegal... EXCEPT for the Saturnalia. For those few days in mid-winter, anyone could gamble: children and slaves included. Children usually gambled with nuts. In Italy and some other Mediterranean countries this practice lives on in the seasonal Tombola and Bingo games, only held at this time of year. When you get out the Monopoly board or the Wii, take a moment to consider that the Romans played games during the Saturnalia.

XI. KING OF THE SATURNALIA. On the first night of the festival in some families, the paterfamilias threw dice to determine who in the household would be the King of the Saturnalia. The 'King' could then command people to do things, eg prepare a banquet, sing a song, run an errand. During his reign, the depraved Emperor Nero used shaved dice to ensure that he would be chosen King of the Saturnalia, even though he was already the most powerful man in the known world. In The Twelve Tasks of Flavia Gemina, Flavia is grounded by her father, so she uses one of Lupus’s shaved dice to make sure she becomes King of the Saturnalia. I believe the paper crown in our Christmas cracker reminds us of this charming custom. Kids, why don’t you ask your parents if you can throw dice on one day to be King of the Saturnalia? But if you are chosen use your power wisely, next year someone else might be King!

pileus

X. SANTA HATS! During the festival the toga was discarded in favour of the more comfortable synthesis, the dinner suit, and on their heads men - and sometimes women - wore the felt cap, pileum (or pileus), the mark of freedom. These hats were traditionally worn by slaves who had been set free. This showed that they were "free" from the usual restrictions and laws. "Freedom has loosed the bonds for all..." said one Roman author about the Saturnalia. These "freedmen's hats" were conical in shape and made of colourful felt, perhaps fur-trimmed in the winter. In The Twelve Tasks of Flavia Gemina, Lupus wears a red felt pilleum, trimmed with white fur! Remind you of anything?

XI. GIFTS! Some people think the best part of Christmas are the presents. The Romans gave gifts on the Saturnalia: traditionally candles, silver objects, preserved fruit and especially sigilla, small clay or wooden figures, often with moveable joints. Action figures from Barbie to Spiderman are the modern equivalent. And all the other gifts we give. The Saturnalia was a time of great SHOPPING. The first century philosopher Seneca sounds very modern when he grumbled about the shopping season: "Decembris used to be a month; now it's a whole year."

Roman writing materials

XII. EPIGRAMS! In Roman times they didn’t stick a little elf tag on their presents. They often composed two-line poems called EPIGRAMS to accompany their Saturnalia gift. The epigrams didn’t have to rhyme; they were in meter. Sometimes they were funny, sometimes in the form of a riddle, sometimes just descriptive. In Holland, people still compose poems to go with their presents. That’s another SATURNALIA CUSTOM you might like to start in your house.

What are some of the gifts people gave and some of the epigrams Romans wrote?

Marcus Valerius Martialis, AKA Martial is one of my favourite Roman poets. He lived during Flavia’s time and he wrote hundreds of epigrams. From these we know what kinds of gifts people gave each other. For example, they gave each other

FOOD like pepper, beans, lentils, flour, barley, lettuces, asparagus, grapes, figs, pine cones, jar of figs, jar of plums, smoked cheese, onions, sausages, box of olives, eggs, sucking pig, pomegranates, sow’s udder, chickens, early peaches, mushrooms, truffles, a hoop of little birds, ducks, ham, goose liver, Rhodian hardbake and the famous dormice. Here is Martial's poem about the gift of dormice:

DORMICE - The winter is for sleeping so I feed on sleep and grow fat for you. XIII.59

silver memento mori cup

CONDIMENTS and CUTLERY People also gave each other condiments, wine, cutlery and cups: garum, (fish sauce), honey, mulsum (honeyed wine), raisin wine, retsina, Falernian wine, Surrentine wine, vinegar, antique cups, golden bowl, arretine ware, a basket, mushroom pots, a strainer for snow, a flagon for snow, jewelled cups, a drinking flask, crystal cups, murrhine cups (a semi precious stone that gives flavour to wine), small table jugs, an earthenware jug, glass cups, silver spoons, snail spoons, etc

STATIONERY and FURNITURE were also popular gifts. Martial mentions wax tablets, ivory tablets, three leaved wax tablets, parchment tablets, small Vitellian tablets for love letters, ivory cashbox, dice, dice box, nuts (for gambling), gaming board, gaming pieces, case for writing materials, stylus case, bookcase, bundle of reed pens, oil lamp for the bedroom, candle, multi wicked lamp, wax taper, candelabrum, horn lantern, lantern made of a bladder, incense, smokeless wood, peacock-feather fly whisk, ox-tail fly-swat, place-keeper for scroll (like a bookmark), palm leaf broom, peacock couch, semicircular couch, citrus wood table, maple table, tablecloth, feather stuffing for a mattress, marsh reed stuffing for a mattress & hay for a mattress if you are really strapped for sesterces.

Roman bathing accessories

OBJECTS FOR GROOMING and BEAUTY - Martial mentions such gifts as a toothpick, an ear scoop, a hair pin of gold, combs, hair, wigs, hair dye, a parasol, a hair-cutting kit, a bath-set, a strigil, dentifrice (dentifricium) for polishing teeth, bean meal for folds in your stomach, opobalsam (a balsam type perfume for men), a breast band, a sponge, wool lined slippers, a horn oil flask, a medicine chest of ivory, an ivory back scratcher in the shape of a hand, unguent, a garland of roses, an earthenware chamberpot, rings, a ring case, a toga, a wrapper for after a workout, a broad-brimmed hat, a hooded cloak, a leather overcoat, a pilleum (freedman's hat), a girdle, an apron, a bath wrap, white wool, purple wool, amethyst wool, etc. Here's a poem about the gift of a red cloak:

SCARLET CLOAK Careful if you support the Blues or Greens at the races, this cloak might make you a traitor! XIV.131

sigillum from the BM

THINGS FOR BOYS and GIRLS - a hunting knife, hunting spears, a belt and sword, a dagger, a small shield, a small hatchet, a feather-stuffed ball, a ball for trigon, dumbbells, a leather wrestling cap, a rattle, a parrot that says ‘Ave Caesar’, a ‘talking’ crow, a nightingale, an ivory cage, a lyre, a plectrum, a hoop, jewellery and of course SIGILLA or little clay or wood figures.

SIGILLUM of a HUNCHBACK – I think Prometheus was drunk when he made hunchbacks from the earth, he was fooling around with Saturnalian clay. XIV.182

LUXURY GOODS - If you were really rich, you could give opulent gifts of silver, gold, jewels, animals and - in an age of slavery - even people! Martial composes epigrams for a gold statue of Victory, various figures in Corinthian bronze, paintings of different mythological characters, a clay theatrical mask, Minerva in silver, Homer in parchment notebooks, Virgil, Livy or Cicero on parchment, works by poets such as Propertius, Ovid, Lucan and Catullus – (books were luxury items in those days) - a hawk, dwarf mules, a Gallic lapdog, a greyhound, a monkey, a wrestler, a dancing girl, a scribe, an idiot, a cook, a confectioner, and a dwarf!

Caroline in a Saturnalia cap

DWARF - If you only saw his head, you would think he was Hector; if you saw him standing up, you’d think he was Astyanax. XIV.212

(That epigram was the inspiration for the baddie in my tenth Roman Mystery, The Colossus of Rhodes)

The Twelve Tasks of Flavia Gemina

So as you celebrate Christmas this year, think about the ancient Romans and how many customs they passed down to us. And try this easy Saturnalia Quiz.

YO SATURNALIA!

The 17+ books in the Roman Mysteries series are perfect for children aged 9+, and book 6, The Twelve Tasks of Flavia Gemina, is even set during the Roman Saturnalia. That episode is also in the DVDs of the BBC TV series. Grown-ups might enjoy The Xenia and The Apophoreta, two commentaries on Martial's Saturnalia poems by T.J. Leary. A book for younger kids is The Thunder Omen, which features an ex-beggar-boy, a silly soothsayer and dancing Saturnalia chickens.