keeping track of lovely posts

Genesius was another character who came along very early in the process, though for the longest time he had no name. I wanted an outsider perspective on Alexandros' cult, and I think he's very important as a narrative counter-point to Alexandros; Genesius is someone who's skeptical without being condescending, who has a lot of humor while still being thoughtful and full of common-sense, who's proven himself fiercely on the field of battle, but who actually retreats from personal confrontation.

I also wanted a character who was somewhat based on Lucian himself, my historical source for the cult that inspired this novel. Now, Genesius isn't a point-by-point stand-in for Lucian – Lucian was Syrian, not Carthaginian-Aithiopian, and Lucian was (possibly) a government official under Rome rather than a soldier in its army. But at times I toyed with making Genesius a traveling rhetorician, as Lucian was. Like Lucian, Genesius was born in a Roman colony, attempted to make a go of things as a sculptor, and was sufficiently educated to have a great deal of Greek and Roman literature, as well as Greek rhetoric, at his fingertips. And, most tellingly, he's a religious skeptic with a strong sense of the absurd, though an agnostic rather than an atheist and altogether humbler about it than Lucian was. Fans of Lucian will also note a few more key similarities to Lucian as the novel progresses.

Genesius is interesting to me because he exists halfway in a number of spaces. As a soldier, he carries some Roman privileges and authority, but isn't yet a citizen. He has no choice but to remain enlisted despite having a debilitating injury to his right arm. His life isn't at all his own, but he has the freedom to come and go throughout the city, having the trust of some influential people without much direct power of his own. He realizes Alexandros is a fraud, but doesn't overtly oppose him, which increasingly becomes a point of conflict in his own heart.

For some reason, naming him was really difficult. I never considered naming him Lucian or any variant of it. I thought about using Nekas (Greek, “a heap of slain”) as a professional nickname for him, an appellation speaking to his fighting ability, but which he personally dislikes, but I decided against it. I liked Celsus as a name; Celsus the Epicurean (not the more famous Celsus) was another skeptic and a correspondent of Lucian's. In English, I hear it with a soft c, which I like, but in Latin it would either be a k or ch sound, which I didn't like so much. One name that hung on for a while in the notes, if not definitely decided upon in my own mind, was Zopyron. Which is a really dorky name. But it means “spark”, combing zoe (“life”) and pyr (“fire”), and I thought that was really neat. But he escaped that clunker of a name.

One day in frustration, I told my mom I was having difficulty naming the third most important character in the book. She has some grounding in Greek and Latin names, and she lightly tossed off “Genesius!” And there it was, the shaft of celestial light, the singing of angels. It fit immediately. It's a good name. There's a lot of syllables, but they bounce rather than clunk. I pronounce it with a soft g, which probably isn't correct, but at this point I don't care. The only difficulty is making sure not to type Genesuis or Genesis.