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Marcus Didius Falco is the fictional central character and narrator in a series of historical mystery novels by Lindsey Davis. Using the concepts of modern detective stories (with Falco as the private investigator, roughly translated into the classical world as a ''delator'' or "private informer"), 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〔In ''The Silver Pigs'', p. 153 Falco celebrates his 30th birthday at Massilia in the spring of 71 AD. In ''Venus in Copper'', p. 60 Falco gives his birthday as in March, on the cusp of Pisces and Aries, i.e. 20 or 21 March.〕 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 (a form of nickname) from Favonius to "Geminus". When his brother is killed, Falco is effectively 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. Some time after that he manages to get himself "invalided out" with a relatively minor wound in AD60. His elder brother Festus 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 (''The Silver Pigs''), but their very different circumstances made their relationship difficult. After a series of successful missions for the emperor, Falco has risen to a certain level of respectability – he has achieved equestrian rank (''One Virgin Too Many'') – and he and Helena now live 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'', with the series title "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 his last novel, ''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 (narrating events in 74 AD but apparently recounted twenty years later). In ''Last Act in Palmyra'' (p. 367), set in 72 AD, Falco is talking to the Roman garrison commander in Palmyra and asks this question: :"Who's your governor in Syria?" :"Ulpius Traianus." :It meant nothing much then, though those of us who lived to be old men would see his son's craggy mush on the currency. The reference is to the emperor Trajan (Traianus), 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'' (p. 279, mass paperback edition), Falco narrates the following with reference to the city of Italica (in the Roman province of Baetica, Hispania): ''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''. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Marcus Didius Falco」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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