Marcus Didius Falco


Marcus Didius Falco is the fictional central character and narrator in a series of historical mystery crime novels by Lindsey Davis. Using the concepts of modern detective stories, the novels portray the world of the Roman Empire under Vespasian. The tone is arch and satirical, but the historical setting is largely accurate.

Fictional character biography

Falco was born on 20 or 21 March 41 AD to Marcus Didius Favonius and Junilla Tacita. His father is a somewhat shady auctioneer, and his family is of Plebeian rank, but Falco himself eventually achieves Equestrian rank.
While Falco is still young, his father leaves his mother and the family home to live with another woman, changing his agnomen from Favonius to "Geminus". When Falco's elder brother Festus is killed, Falco becomes head of the family and in the position of responsibility his father has abdicated.
Falco joins the Roman Army and serves in the Second Augusta legion in Britain during the Boudiccan Revolt. He then became an army scout. Some time after that he manages to get himself "invalided out" with a relatively minor wound in AD 66. Festus had served in the legio XV Apollinaris and was posthumously awarded the mural crown after he was killed in 68 AD on active service during the First Jewish-Roman War in Judaea.
Falco and his father are forced to an uneasy accommodation in the course of Poseidon's Gold and see one another on occasions thereafter, but Falco's sympathies remain with his mother.
Falco met his wife, Helena Justina, the divorced and patrician daughter of a senator, while on an investigation in Britannia, but their very different circumstances made their relationship difficult. After a series of successful missions for the emperor, Falco rose to a certain level of respectability – he achieved equestrian rank – and he and Helena then lived together with their two daughters, in an arrangement acceptable to his in-laws. In Nemesis, it is revealed that Helena Justina has been pregnant once again. Tragically the baby, Marcus Didius Justinianus, dies shortly after birth on the day that Geminus, Falco's father, also dies. At his father's wake Falco discovers that he is to become a brother yet again when Thalia, an old friend he met in Venus in Copper, Last Act in Palmyra and Alexandria, reveals that she is expecting a child – she claims by Geminus.
Falco and Helena adopted Flavia Albia, a British child, whom they rescued in London in The Jupiter Myth. At the age of 28, in AD 89, she is a widowed informer and the central character of Davis's book The Ides of April, in the series Falco: The New Generation. In the sequel, Enemies at Home, Albia reveals the identity of her deceased husband, who is none other than Lentullus, an ex-legionary formerly under the leadership of her uncle Quintus when he was tribune.
Several novels suggest that Falco survived quite a few years after the cliffhanger ending of Nemesis, in 77 AD.
The first Flavia Albia novel, The Ides of April, is set in 89 AD. While Falco does not actually appear as a character, he is alluded to at several points.
Ode to a Banker suggests that Falco managed to survive as late as 94 AD.
In Last Act in Palmyra, set in 72 AD, Falco is talking to the Roman garrison commander in Palmyra and asks this question:
The reference is to the emperor Trajan, who ruled 98-117 AD. When Trajan took over Falco would have been 57, probably an 'old man' by contemporary standards.
In A Dying Light in Corduba, Falco narrates the following with reference to the city of Italica : Those who lived to be old men would know this dot in the provinces as the birthplace of an emperor. The allusion is to the Emperor Hadrian, probably born in Italica in 76 AD, who succeeded Trajan in 117 AD. The quote seems to indicate that Falco, at the time he is writing this particular memoir, knows that Hadrian became emperor—and so evidently Falco was still alive in August 117 AD, at the age of 76, now definitely one of those who lived to be old men.

Other employment, and business

Falco, besides being a private investigator, is an amateur poet. He has written satires, some odes, some epigrams, and the play The Spook Who Spoke, meant to be understood as a precursor of Hamlet.
Falco was awarded the post of "Procurator of the Sacred Geese" of the Temple of Juno Moneta, a sinecure given him by Vespasian in lieu of decent payment for his services. The post was later abolished.
In The Ides of April, Falco seems to have given up his work as informer. Although he likes to discuss Flavia Albia's cases with her, he clearly acts as an adviser, rather than actually being involved. Instead, he appears to have taken up his fathers business as an auctioneer. For example, he's auctioning the legacy of the late Julius Viator. Even the tax evading seems to be still going on, as Flavia Albia is once travelling in a cart with a secret compound, that belongs to her "father".

Acquaintances

Other characters include Falco's mother, his sisters, their husbands, and their never-ending crowd of offspring; his father Geminus ; his two children and their British nursemaid Albia, whom Marcus and Helena have adopted; Helena's mother; Falco's one-time landlord Smaractus; the laundry proprietor Lenia, Smaractus' wife and Falco's former neighbour; Falco's personal trainer Glaucus; and various murderers, criminals, exotic dancers, and mangy animals, all of whom spend a great deal of time making Falco's life a little harder than it would be otherwise.

Flavia Albia

Flavia Albia is Marcus Didius Falco's adopted daughter, who eventually becomes a delatrix like him. Albia first appears in The Jupiter Myth wherein she manages to save a pack of dogs from being burnt to death. This catches Helena's eye who then decides to adopt her, but Albia is almost turned away by Falco for vandalising the furniture of Helena's uncle, Hilarius. Eventually, however, Falco and Helena form a very close bond with their new protégée, and Albia makes an appearance in almost every successive book thereafter, helping Falco and Helena in their investigations. Her first notable case is recalled in the first Flavia Albia Mystery, The Ides of April.
Albia was thought to have been born to a Romano-British couple who lost her during Boudica's uprising, when the Roman city of Londinium was burnt down and its inhabitants massacred. By the time she was a teenager, she had been living mostly as a street vagrant, although she may have done menial jobs, possibly as a slave in a Londinium household as mentioned in Enemies at Home. She is depicted as having dark-coloured hair and blue eyes.
Falco describes Albia as a troubled and moody teenager fond of food, yet fairly level-headed and down to earth because of her impoverished past. Because Albia was expected early on to help Falco nurse his daughters Julia and Sosia, Albia is good at managing children. Following the events of Nemesis, Albia decides to leave Falco and Helena to prevent Anacrites or any other enemies of the Didii from using her to hurt her adopted parents, and she enters the investigative profession under the tutelage of Falco and other unnamed delators, living in Falco's former Aventine residence. By the time of The Ides of April her family was able to acquire the entire insulae block some way or the other from Smaractus, whose former employee Rodan now serves the Didii as the porter of Fountain Court.
Albia once had a relationship with Aulus Camillus Aelianus, one of Helena's brothers, which abruptly ended when Aulus married his tutor's daughter from Greece. Albia eventually married Lentullus, but by the beginning of The Ides of April, Lentullus had already died. Afterwards, Albia begins a relationship with an aedile, Tiberius Manlius Faustus, and by the start of The Third Nero they are married.

Books in the Falco Series

  1. The Silver Pigs, originally published as Silver Pigs in AD 70-71.
  2. Shadows in Bronze in AD 71.
  3. Venus in Copper in AD 71.
  4. The Iron Hand of Mars in AD 71.
  5. Poseidon's Gold in AD 72.
  6. Last Act in Palmyra in AD 72.
  7. Time to Depart in AD 72.
  8. A Dying Light in Corduba in AD 73.
  9. Three Hands in the Fountain in AD 73.
  10. Two for the Lions in AD 73.
  11. One Virgin Too Many in AD 74.
  12. Ode to a Banker in AD 74.
  13. A Body in the Bath House, aka A Body in the Bathhouse in AD 75.
  14. The Jupiter Myth in AD 75, follows on from the previous novel
  15. The Accusers in AD 75.
  16. Scandal Takes a Holiday in AD 76.
  17. See Delphi and Die in AD 76.
  18. Saturnalia at year-end AD 76.
  19. Alexandria in AD 77.
  20. Nemesis in summer AD 77.

    Books in the Flavia Albia series

  21. The Ides of April
  22. Enemies at Home
  23. Deadly Election
  24. The Graveyard of the Hesperides
  25. The Third Nero
  26. Pandora's Boy
  27. A Capitol Death
  28. The Grove of the Caesars

    Books featuring other Didii family members

  29. The Spook Who Spoke Again
  30. Vesuvius by Night
  31. Invitation to Die

    Portrayals

Falco featured as the central character in the movie Age of Treason, played by Australian actor Bryan Brown, and with Amanda Pays as Helena Justina. Lindsey Davis disowned the film because it bore no resemblance to the books on which it purported to be based.
The first five books were dramatised for radio by the BBC, one each year, between 2004 and 2009. Anton Lesser played Falco in all five, while Helena was played by Fritha Goodey in The Silver Pigs and, following Goodey's death, Anna Madeley from the second book adaptation onwards. The radio series is produced by Lindsey Davis' friend Mary Cutler.