A Reflection on Rick Riordan’s “The Son of Neptune”
Many people know of Rick Riordan for his best-selling books entitled “Percy Jackson and the Olympians;” a five book series chronicling the adventures of the teenaged son of Poseidon as he and his fellow descendants of the Greek Olympians did their best to protect the modern world from monsters and Titans. But many don’t know if his sequel series called “The Heroes of Olympus” which saw the conflict and eventual unification of both Greek and Roman demigods.
The second book in the series, “The Son of Neptune,” saw the most focus on how the teen Roman demigods lived in the modern world. They trained and lived in a secret base called Camp Jupiter, located in the Bay Area. Camp Jupiter is organized in a way that (very) loosely reflects what we have learned of Ancient Rome’s government. Instead of two consuls there are two Praetors. Instead of a massive senate filled with hundreds of old men there are around ten teenage senators of all gender identities who are elected every year by their fellow campers. There are no consuls or tribunes, but instead there are two Praetors who are either elected or appointed by campers as a result of their prowess in battle. Campers are referred to legionnaires and they serve in the Twelfth Legion. According to Riordan, he draws from a bit of history here as the Twelfth Legion was really Legio XII Fulminata and was once led by Julius Caesar.
I’ve read the “Son of Neptune” quite a few times when I was younger, but this reread in the context of Roman Revolutions was an interesting experience. As Rick Riordan writes for children, obviously he has to “dumb down” some aspects of the material he draws from in order to make his work kid friendly. One thing he doesn’t dumb down on though, is the idea that Roman’s are so unlike anyone else, especially anything that is Greek. Many Roman campers throughout the book say “beware of Greeks bearing gifts” and there is constant suspicion about one of the newest campers who is an amnesiac Percy Jackson from the Greek camp for demigods in Long Island. Percy can’t remember his Ancient Greek heritage, but the campers and Roman ghosts that walk about have a sense that he is of Greek origin, and as a result he isn’t to be trusted. He is constantly likened to the Trojan horse and is talked down upon in a way that reminds me of Cato the Elder’s act of giving a speech in Athens using a translator instead of speaking the language the Athenians could understand. In fact, the tension between Roman and Greek demigods was so great that the Olympians caused both sides to forget one another. And not to mention that most of the Roman Olympians exist in the same body as their Greek counterparts as a sort of second personality. When Percy meets Roman versions of Greek deities he’s met before, he recalls them being more warlike which is certainly in line with Rome’s propensity for engaging in warfare. But Percy also mentions that they are more alike than they are different which reminds me of how we have learned that Romans thought themselves to be very different from other Ancient cultures despite the fact that they were not.
