Wrath of the Furies

As you can tell from the title of Steven Saylor's latest novel - Wrath of the Furies: A Novel of the Ancient World (#536), this is a dark tale, indeed.  Last year's book - Raiders of the Nile  - about young Gordianus, a Roman living temporarily in Alexandria, was a pretty straight-forward adventure story/mystery.  Wrath of the Furies is about pure evil based on accounts recorded by Roman writers of the time.  The gruesome acts are factual here.

Young Gordianus has been living comfortably in Alexandria since his rescue of his beloved slave Bethesda.  But he is concerned because he has not heard from his father in Rome for some time, nor has he any idea where his tutor, Antipater the poet, has vanished to after he abandoned Gordianus in Alexandria.  They did not part on the best of terms after he discovered his tutor was a spy for King Mithridates, but the day Gordianus receives an anonymous fragment apparently torn from Antipater's own journal hinting of unspeakable danger to himself and all the Romans living in lands conquered by Mithridates is the day that Gordianus determines to go in search of him.  Since it won't be safe for him to travel as a Roman, his friends come up with a scheme for him to travel as a mute seeking a miraculous cure from Artemis's temple in Ephesus, with Bethesda and her foreign accent to serve as his interpreter.  That decision will land Giordianus and all whom he cares about in mortal danger from King Mithridates and all who live in his domains. This time it seems unlikely that Gordianus will make it back to Alexandria alive...

Just who did try to lure Gordianus to Ephesus, and why?  That's the mystery being played out here to a surprising conclusion.