Review: Delicatus: from slave to empress in imperial Rome, by S.P. Somtow

Blurb:

The decadence of Imperial Rome comes to life in S.P. Somtow’s Literary Titan Award-winning novel about one of ancient history’s wildest characters.

The historian Suetonius tells us that the Emperor Nero emasculated and married his slave Sporus, the spitting image of murdered Empress Poppaea. But history has more tidbits about Sporus, who went from “puer delicatus” to Empress to one Emperor and concubine to another, and ended up being sentenced to play the Earth-Goddess in the arena.

World Fantasy Award winner S.P. Somtow weaves a vivid adventure about one of the most colorful personalities in ancient Rome. Delicatus, the first volume in a trilogy, speaks of Sporus, from his enslavement by pirates in a remote corner of the Empire to his meeting with the great satirist Petronius and the woman to whom he bears a striking resemblance, the beautiful Poppaea with her manipulative plans to seduce the Emperor Nero and become Divine Empress.

My Review

I have to admit, I gobbled up this novel! It was a surprise to me; this is not the kind of book I usually read. But I don’t know a lot about Nero, and I was certainly intrigued by the concept of him marrying a sex slave, not realizing it was based on a true story. Our protagonist, the young and beautiful Sporus, is singled out from the very beginning when taken as a slave from his burning village. At first he seems to be totally unaware of his attributes, but continually finds himself treated differently and occasionally brutalized as he comes to realize that his beauty has both saved him and cursed him:

Often, when I had been put on display by my master, I was not dressed at all, and I had been told so often that I was beautiful that it had no meaning for me.
So when a man or woman disrobed me with their eyes, I thought little of it. But Gaius Nymphidius Sabinus was not disrobing. He was disembowelling. His look made my skin crawl. I looked away.

Brrr. Sporus learns the sobering truth that, regardless of his beauty, he is still considered an object because he is a slave—like an animal, or a fine vase. This trilogy is written as his life’s story, told to another slave who is applying makeup for his execution/apotheosis as a goddess in the arena. It’s a bit baffling, but since this is only book one, I still have a way to go before sorting it out. He is bought by one Petronius, a senator who is also the author of Satyricon and beloved by Nero—at least for the moment. Petronius treats Sporus gently and admiringly, thus gaining his affection, but he also has no problem lending Sporus to his friends. One of these friends, the beautiful Poppaea—who wants to be empress—is Sporus’s “spitting image” and determines to use our slave to further her own ends. That’s when the trouble starts. I wonder whether Nero was actually as completely unhinged as he is portrayed here, but the corrupt and degenerate court was certainly fascinating to watch, and the sex scenes were tastefully depicted. I immediately moved on to book two!