Current mood:	geeky
Entry tags:	ancient rome, caesar, cleopatra, cover art, jack mertes, jack oleck, james bama, jeanne duval, messalina, nero, noel gerson, poppaea, rome, sanjulian, stola-ripper, toga porn, toga pr0n, vintage paperbacks, virginia coffman

Toga Pr0n
I've been getting back into ancient Roman stuff lately, as a friend of mine (who used to write for La Femme Nikita- w00t!) has been encouraging me to write this novel about Cicero and Clodia, an idea I've been discussing for a while (more information here). It's been a bit hard, since I'm trying to avoid a Certain TV Show- One Which Shall Remain Unnamed- since I dislike it intensely, for various reasons I don't want to get into in this post. However, with much valiant effort I have been able to resuscitate my interest in Roman crap, which was the love of my life when I was in high school.

And so I'd like to share a few examples of a genre which I call "toga porn," which I read by the truckload when I was 15.






This is a fun, trashy bodice (or stola) ripper, with an awesome cover painting by James Bama- who, hilariously enough, is better known for his paintings of cowboys. Here, Messalina is not only into whips, but she's clearly having lunch in the middle of the Forum. Like you do...




Here's another "naughty empress" book, which in itself is a subgenre within the toga porn category. A better title of this particular epic would be "Poppaea does Rome." I don't know who did the cover- there's no credit anywhere in the book- but it's a nice painting, with lots of well done, if completely random details. (For example, note the parrot and the Mycenaean vase in the foreground on the front cover.)




And we've got Cleopatra! She doesn't look like Liz Taylor, but she looks almost exactly like Joan Collins from "Land of the Pharaohs." I'm not sure what actor Julius looks like. Lee Marvin?




And last but not least, we have "The Ravishers," with cover art by Manuel Sanjulian! This was not one of his more prestigious jobs (it doesn't figure anywhere in his galleries), but I know his style anywhere. Although "The Ravishers" (written by Virginia Coffman, under the name of Jeanne Duval) is a stereotypical 1970s stola-ripper about some luckless girl who bounces from the bed of one emperor to the next, and who is eventually reunited with her True Wuv just as Vesuvius blows its top, it's more amusing than most books of this type. It features some memorable scenes with an aging Nero as comic relief, and the Christians are portrayed as annoying simps. It's a sequel of sorts to an earlier book by Coffman aka J. Duval called "The Lady Serena," which is also is memorable in that Nero is portrayed positively.