ROMAN BLOOD:

The Unpublished First Attempt

When Steven Saylor first began writing Roman Blood, there was no Gordianus the Finder. Instead, Steven intended to make Cicero a sort of Roman Sherlock Holmes, and Cicero’s secretary Tiro his Watson, narrating the story. “After 68 pages in that vein, I realized I wanted more distance from Cicero, and decided to invent my own sleuth, a worldly-wise young Roman skilled at digging up dirt. And so, Gordianus the Finder was born.”

But Steven saved that unpublished 68-page fragment, in which Tiro tells the story. Here is the brief first chapter, reproduced from scans of the original dot-matric print-outs.

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