Devising a book title is always tricky. I am not meaning fiction titles here – except to note in passing that, at the top end of the market, the Pride and Prejudice format has always had a lot going for it (Sense and Sensibility, War and Peace, Crime and Punishment, Oscar and Lucinda, Heat and Dust, Oryx and Crake, etc). I am talking non-fiction, with my new – as yet sadly untitled – book gnawing at the back of my mind. It’s a reflection on what Classics has got going for it in the twenty-first century, and nothing yet seems quite right: either too self-righteous (Why we need the Classics), or too self-help-y (Why has no one told me about Classics before?), or too cheap (Classics Now!), or even worse.
I tend to think that something straight, and not too fancy, is best – even if it verges on the dull. You know where you are with Ronald Syme’s The Roman Revolution, for example, or Fergus Millar’s The Emperor in the Roman World (it wouldn’t be the same if it were called Uneasy Lies the Head that Wears the Roman Crown, vel sim.). I don’t mind occasionally the rather more fictional “x and y” style. In my field, James Davidson’s Courtesans and Fishcakes was, after all, more or less about courtesans and fishcakes. The same goes for Keith Hopkins’s Conquerors and Slaves and Death and Renewal. And I admire some of the brave outliers. I give full marks to A. E. Stallings’s recent Frieze Frame: How poets, painters, and their friends framed the debate around Elgin and the Marbles of the Parthenon (a bid for the prize for longest subtitle of the year).
For me, the absolute bottom are all the (titular) “rip-offs” of Neil Macgregor’s A History of the World in 100 Objects. It was an inspired title in 2010, but I have become allergic to the imitators: A History of Cats in 25 Miaows; A History of the World in 50 Shops; A Guide to Rome in 12 Pastas (those are all invented, but you know what I mean). So, it is not going to be A Guide to Classics in 10 Controversies (even if it is partly that).
Looking over my back catalogue, I have usually opted for the straight: Rome in the Late Republic; Pompeii: The life of a Roman town; Women and Power: A manifesto. I worried a bit about SPQR: A history of ancient Rome. The title had been chosen by my wonderful editor, Peter Carson, before he died, and at the last minute I wondered if it was just too obscure. (What if you didn’t know the abbreviation of “Senatus PopulusQue Romanus”? Would it simply put you off?) But I stuck with it, on the grounds that Peter had far more experience with titles than I did, and in the end it didn’t put people off. (And another advantage is that most translations of the book have had exactly the same main title as the original.)
But foreign titles have their own story. Pompeii was published in the US by Harvard University Press, who wanted something a bit jazzier. So, we came up with The Fires of Vesuvius: Pompeii lost and found (“Fires of Vesuvius” is a quote from the Roman poet Statius). I don’t actually think it is an improvement, but I suspect that it catches the eye of different punters in Barnes and Noble. There are more UK/US changes like that than you might imagine. I just noticed that Emily Hauser’s new book, which puts the women back into the Homeric story, is called Mythica here and Penelope’s Bones in the US. I wonder what difference that will make to the sales.
Anyway, when I have fixed on my new baby’s name, I’ll let you know.
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