Sailing to Sarantium Literary Elements

Historical Fantasy.

Set in the 6th century in the Byzantine Empire.

Third-person narrative.

Intriguing and Passionate.

The protagonist is Crispin, while the antagonist is the political games.

Crispin is mourning the death of his family and has lost his purpose to continue living. Upon being summoned for his skills as a mosaicist, he is thrown into a world of political machinations. Through this intriguing journey, Crispin is caught between the politics of the powerful as he finds his purpose in art.

The climax is not apparent in the story, however, Gisel fleeing Sarantium can be regarded as one.

The death of Emperor Apius without possible successors foreshadows the political maneuvers that occur in the kingdoms.

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The novel alludes to Yeats’ poem “Sailing to Byzantium” and the late antiquity period when the Western and Eastern empires were fighting for power.

“The doors crashed open. The four guards fell backward. A crowd of citizens—some slaves among them—thrust raucously into the chamber. Then the vanguard stopped, overawed. Mosaics and gold and gems had their uses, Bonosus thought, amused irony still claiming him. The torch-bearing image of Heladikos, riding his chariot toward his father the Sun—an image of no little controversy in the Empire today—looked down from the dome.”

The narrative contains instances of moral paradoxes where the protagonist holds conflicting moral obligations in terms of allegiance.

“Time passing did complex things, to deepen a wound or to heal it. Even, sometimes, to overlay it with another that had felt as if it would kill.” The statement parallels the effects of time on grief.

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“Terror pushed him to his knees on the cobbles of the square.”