Allusions To Real-life Persons, Places, or Events
- Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus will grow up to be the famous historian Suetonius, author of The Twelve Caesars, among other works.
- Publius Pollius Felix was a real person, the owner of a luxurious villa in the Bay of Naples, and the patron of the poet Publius Papinius Statius, who described the villa in his poems. However, it is conjecture that the site described in the novel was the villa of the real Felix.
- The fictional Polla claims to be the widow of Marcus Annaeus Lucanus, the famous poet. In her afterword, Caroline Lawrence writes that Polla Argentaria was indeed the name of Lucan's widow, though it is contraversial
that this Polla was the same Polla who was married to Felix.
- Polla tells Flavia about many past women who have committed suicide, either in despair over lost loves, or in loyalty to dead ones: Queen Dido of Carthage (as described in Virgil's Aeneid), the wife of Seneca the Younger, and Arria the wife of Caecina Paetus.
- During one dinner party the guests debate the relative philosophical merits of Stoicism versus Epicureanism.
Read more about this topic: The Sirens Of Surrentum
Famous quotes containing the word events:
“Individuality is founded in feeling; and the recesses of feeling, the darker, blinder strata of character, are the only places in the world in which we catch real fact in the making, and directly perceive how events happen, and how work is actually done.”
—William James (1842–1910)