Tros of Samothrace

Tros of Samothrace

By: Talbot Mundy  

Buy it now at Amazon.com!

Average Customer Rating: 5.0 out of 5

Publisher: Buccaneer Books

Customer Review: 5 out of 5
Tros of Samotrace - I first encountered the book as a boy. I loved it then and I love it know. It's one of the great adventure novels, and it empresses me to this day.

Customer Review: 5 out of 5
Still great after all these years, But.... - The Tros of Samothrace 'all inclusive' edition has all the great adventure and philosohy mix that made the stories wonderful the first time I read them many years ago. My only complaint is that the descriptions and reviews didn't make it clear (At least to me) that the 'Queen Cleopatra' book of the Tros series is NOT included in this volume. Still in all am glad all these stories are now in one volume.

Customer Review: 5 out of 5
One of Mundy's greatest and most influential novels, contrasting Roman vs Druid and Samothracian beliefs - Tros is the daring captain of his trireme, and the son of Perseus, an initiate of the mysteries of Samothrace who was murdered by Caesar. Tros fights back by helping to repulse Caesar's invasion of Britain. Bold and crafty, like a true adventurer Tros wants to avoid fighting, but circumstances draw him into it, forcing him to battle the injustice around him. A warrior philosopher and navigator, Tros represents the adventurers and explorers, who value chivalry, honor and freedom, and will outlast Rome. However, Tros is no reckless swashbuckler, mercenary or fortune hunter; his opposition to Caesar is more than revenge. Unlike many of his powerful contemporaries, Tros has a highly developed, almost modern moral sense, and he is labeled a pirate only by his Roman adversaries. Although he makes use of guile, Tros is a man of conscience who is monogamous and loyal, despising the treachery and treason he sees all around him.

Tros of Samothrace is full of delightful, vibrant supporting characters. There are numerous battles and murders, together with incidents of conspiracy and loyalty, as Tros struggles to build his advanced ship, the Liafail, and aid the Britons against Caesar.

The saga is a vast, sweeping, spectacular panorama, full of detail, with its principal setting in Britain, although the final part of the saga, takes Tros directly into Rome itself, from the Vestal Virgins to the Arena. It is told in an energetic, dynamic style, full of dash and gusto, that still conveys both the feeling of the time and the authenticity of the characters as history and fiction blend naturally. Mundy reverses the traditional reverential, historicized language, using narration and dialogue that partake equally of a modern idiom, by endowing his characters with contemporary motivations and moods.

Although a hero, Tros is aware of his limitations, wise enough to be influenced by the esoteric religious thought of Samothrace, but not wise enough to qualify for initiation, lacking his father's ability to follow his vision without diversion. Mundy dwells on a more occult form of religion, the mysteries. Mundy asserts that both the Samothracians and the Druids had their foundation in the same ancient wisdom from which theosophy arose, the same mother religion from which all others are derived. This concept provides moral grounding as well as facilitating the narrative.

Caesar and Tros are drawn as the antithesis of each other, spiritual opposites; Tros represents the waning influence of the ancient mysteries, which Mundy proclaimed "were based on the theory of universal brotherhood." Caesar represents militarism and treachery, and understands, according to Tros, "that where the wisdom dwells, freedom persists and grows again . . . ."

As I outline in my book, Talbot Mundy, Philosopher of Adventure, Mundy was living at the Point Loma theosophical community at the time of composing Tros of Samothrace. This helped to inspire the unconventional approach to history Mundy took with his heretical and unflattering portrait of Caesar in his novels.

Mundy believed that Caesar's materialism and lack of spiritual awareness had adversely affected all of the subsequent cultural institutions that had come to idolize him. The implications for the foundations of modern Western civilization was recognized by readers of Adventure. Mundy explained, "The purpose of the Roman empire was to make life comfortable for the Romans and to keep other people out of mischief [and it] was conducted on principles diametrically opposite to those taught by all the world's really great philosophers." He blames Rome for imperialism and its destructive impact. He notes that England similarly justified its rule of India by making the land apparently incapable of self-government, then trying to ease the resentment of conquest by offering defeated peoples a place within the empire. "Here, today, is the net result of Roman theories--war, mistrust, rancor, suspicion, hatred, misgovernment, and a world not half so civilized as China was two thousand years ago."

Although the Tros stories were very popular, they were the most controversial Mundy ever wrote, and many readers in the 1920s were shocked by his defiance of tradition and anti-classical views. There was a storm of protest during the serialization of the initial Tros stories, lasting almost a year, and a vast correspondence in Adventure debated the merits of Mundy's case until enough letters were printed to be considered for publication themselves in book form; it was the largest such confrontation ever in any pulp. Readers and contributors included not only subscribers but authors and professors, and the debate was widely followed by a literary community that respected Adventure as falling outside the purview of "mere pulps."

Eventually a consensus formed, cautiously siding with Mundy. The Tros series was able to be critically acclaimed because it combined adventure with the unusual twist of a distinctly revisionist spirit--permitting the tales to be respectable within the intellectual community as well as enjoyable diversion.

When Tros of Samothrace appeared in book form in 1934 it acquired another sort of timeliness not evident during its original serialization. Mundy's theme of liberty subverted by those who would increase their own power had a topical resonance beyond history in the 1930s. Contemporary readers saw in Tros's battle against Caesar's designs of conquering the world an analogy for the contemporary increase in militarism and the necessity to fight the steadily growing threat of fascism. Mundy was aware of this relevance; in his foreword to the British edition of Tros of Samothrace in 1934 he noted that both Lenin and Hitler were following in Caesar's footsteps by trying to destroy through propaganda the old belief in spiritual values.

Customer Review: 5 out of 5
Here's a little help on the various editions of Tros - Tros of Samothrace is one of the best books I have ever read. I recommend it with the highest of praise. If I can have a coffin with a book shelf in it, the Tros series and the Lord of the Ring series will be buried with me.

Being as there are already a lot of reviews, I thought I would help out concerning the various editions of Tros - many are mentioned in the other reviews and it's confusing. Are we talking about one book, 3 books, 6 books, etc!

Here's the scoop: (Information is based on my personal experience and Donald Grant's book "Talbot Mundy: Messenger of Destiny".

1. The first editions of "Tros of Samothrace" were single volumes. Appleton-Century produced the 1st American version (1934) and Hutchinson & Co (1934) produced the 1st English versions. Good copies are usually quite expensive and I have never seen one with a dust jacket even though both versions had one.

Tros was also printed in parts in magazines

2. Gnome Press (1958) produced a single volume version. This can be found and is cheaper than the 1st editions and can be found with a dust jacket. Cheaper but not inexpensive.

3. In 1967 Avon Books divided Tros into 6 paperbacks - Helene, Helma, Tros, liafell are 4 of the 6 titles. As single books these are easily found - both in used books stores and on ebay. With diligence you can come up with all 6 titles.

4. In 1976 Zebra paperbacks produced Tros in a series of 3 volumes (essentially combining Avon's 6 books into 3). Tros of Samothrace, Avenging Liafell and The Praetor's Dungeon are the three titles.

5. The picture shown by Amazon is most likely the Appleton-Century hardback 1st edition cover without dustjacket.

6 Finally, there are actually 2 seperate additonal books that are part of the Tros saga. These are "Queen Cleopatra" and "The Purple Pirate". Both were published in various hardback and paperback versions. The easiest and probably cheapest way to find them is as the Zebra paperbacks. Zebra paperbacks published and marketed all 5 paperbacks at the same time in 1976.

"Queen Cleopatra" was actually the first novel that Tros appeared in. "Queen Cleopatra was first published in 1929. Tros has a small but significant role in the book however it's mostly about Cleopatra and Julius Caesar. This book, while written first, can easily be considered to be the 4th Tros book in regards to chronology. The first Tros of Samothrace book has Tros interacting with Caesar during his first two attempts to invade Britain.

"The Purple Pirate" is the 5th book and final book in the Tros saga.

Recommendations: Being as the hardbacks are harder to come by and usually very expensive for a decent copy, I recommend trying to obtain the zebra paperbacks. These are easier to find. Amazon may be able to find them for you. Quite often you can find them on Ebay. Being as most people who have read Tros tend to do so more than once, these paperback copies will usually be reading copies at best. If you haven't read the Tros series yet, buy the Zebra books and see if you like it. Just don't blame me when you love it and have to possess more than just a reading copy.

Personally I possess the avon paperbacks, the zebra paperbacks and a Hutchinson 1st edition with no dust jacket.

I hope this helps.

Scotty

addendum 2009: Leonaur Press is publishing Tros of Samathrace in a new set of hardbacks. Based on the first two (buying them as I can afford them), this seems like a very nice set.

Customer Review: 5 out of 5
Ian Myles Slater on: A Book Worth Finding - "Tros of Samothrace" is a massive historical novel, which, together with two sequels, was awkwardly handled by their hardcover publishers, and treated even worse in certain paperback editions. Some care may be needed to get the complete story, in a coherent form; although the new trade paperback appears to solve the main problems for the first of the three.

The "mystifications" were unintentional, but perhaps ironically appropriate, given the author's dubious career in British India and Africa, and also his later occult interests. "Mr. Talbot Mundy" has been the subject of two biographies in recent decades, with more still being uncovered about his real past. A good overview is provided on-line in "Talbot Mundy: Master of Mystical Adventure," by R. T. Gault. (Duane Spurlock has reposted Gault's bibliographic information, and in several cases I have deferred to their dates, rather than sticking with what I had found in older reference works. "Materials Toward a Bibliography of the Works of Talbot Mundy" by Bradford M. Day is available from Project Gutenberg; very good, but not easy to use in its plain-text form.)

"Tros" and some of Mundy's other stories also have striking resemblances to later fantasy and science fiction adventure stories, not surprising given that Robert E. Howard was among Mundy's original readers, and that more recent fans included Marion Zimmer Bradley, who openly acknowledged his direct influence on one of her "Darkover" novels.

The rather mysterious Talbot Mundy (William Lancaster Gribbon 1879-1940), whose yarns about his own (often shady) past may have been the prototype for much of his adventure fiction, seems to have written "Tros of Samothrace" almost as a detour. He had been asked by the publisher Bobbs-Merrill to write a novel about Cleopatra. It seemed to them like a sure-fire bestseller, something to out-do the sales of his popular "King -- of the Khyber Rifles," which they had published in 1916. It would, after all, be on a more sensational topic than his Kipling-esque tales of British soldiers keeping stiff upper lips in India and Afghanistan. (Mundy, who had legally changed his name to his most popular pseudonym while becoming a U.S. citizen in 1916, seems to have either exaggerated the time he spent in India, or else returned there under other names when he was hiding from the law, unhappy wives, etc. But he wrote about it more frequently than Africa, where he had spent considerable time; of course, he had also *served* time there....)

Mundy eventually got around to a Cleopatra novel for Bobbs-Merrill, but not before spinning out the adventures, mostly during Julius Caesar's invasion of Britain, of a supposed minor character in the planned novel. The resulting story of "Tros of Samothrace" ran for a year (Feb. 1925-Feb. 1926) in the then highly-regarded fiction magazine "Adventure."

It was broken into seven separately titled stories, published in nine installments, which gave the magazine a chance to back out, and probably avoided protests from readers about a serial that never seemed to end, but Mundy seems to have had the greater commercial potential of a novel in mind. They consisted of: #1 "Tros of Samothrace" (Feb. 10, 1925); #2 "The Enemy of Rome" (April 10); #3 "Prisoners of War" (June 10); #4 "Hostages to Luck: (Aug. 20); #5 "Admiral of Caesar's Fleet" (Oct. 10); #6 "The Dancing Girl of Gades" (Dec. 10); and, as #7, #8, and #9 the three-part "Messenger of Destiny" (Feb. 10, 20, and 28, 1926)

To my mind, "Tros" is one of the great early twentieth century adventure novels; and the hints of occult powers and secret wisdom add flavor without getting in the way. (Mundy had just then become active in a splinter branch of the Theosophical Society; the same influences are evident in his "Om: The Secret of Ahbor Valley," written the previous year, and much of his later fiction hovers on the edge of fantasy.)

The editor of "Adventure" (Arthur Sullivan Hoffmann) seems to have realized that almost anyone who had struggled in school with Caesar's "Commentaries" ("The Gallic Wars") was sure to smile at the idea of the story as seen from the other side -- or, rather, from a third side. (One Caesar somehow forgot to mention in his dispatches home!) And in those days, having struggled with Caesar was a pretty common experience for middle-class readers, so the subject, if not quite as glamorous as the Serpent of the Nile, was hardly obscure.

Bobbs-Merrill didn't agree, or was put off by the ensuing controversy over Mundy's portrait of Caesar as a budding dictator cultivating his image at the expense of the "barbarians."

According to Mundy, Initiates from the Mysteries of Samothrace ran afoul of Caesar while on a mission to their fellow-mystics in Gaul from their Aegean island sanctuary, and were blackmailed into spying on the mysterious Land of Britain. (A good classical dictionary would confirm the existence of the island of Samothrace and its Mysteries; although hardly Mundy's Theosophical exposition of its beliefs, and wide-ranging connections to other "mystical orders.")

But was even the wily and ruthless Caesar a match for a man like Tros, who scrupulously honored his word? Honored it precisely and literally, that is, without regard for what Caesar, or anyone else, might have intended when he exacted the promise by threatening to kill his prisoners, including Tros' father, Perseus....

The story of Tros and his personal war with Julius Caesar was later extended in another two substantial, but shorter, novels. "Queen Cleopatra" had no magazine publication, but appeared (at last!) directly from Bobbs-Merrill in 1929 (426 pages). Instead of the Antony and Cleopatra story, it deals in part with her escape from Rome after the assassination of Julius Caesar, an obscure episode in which it turns out Tros (of course) had a role. Mundy and Bobbs-Merrill later permanently parted ways (after fifteen years), with the "Tros" stories and the delayed Cleopatra novel apparently among the simmering issues.

His new publisher, Century, soon merged with D. Appleton, further complicating the bibliographic record. "Tros of Samothrace" finally appeared in a revised form from by D. Appleton-Century, with a British edition from Hutchinson, in 1934. "The Purple Pirate," a sequel to "Tros" and "Queen Cleopatra" then appeared as four stories in "Adventure" and immediately thereafter as a book from Appleton-Century (367 pages), also with a British edition, all in 1935

The complete "Tros" alone ran to a whopping 949 pages (960 in the British printing), even without the sequels. It was a work of historical fiction more on the scale of "War and Peace" than anything Bobbs-Merrill had planned, or, with "Gone With the Wind" still in the future (1936), probably considered practical in the American market. "Tros," didn't become a blockbuster bestseller, but it seems to have sold well enough for Appleton-Century to take on one of the sequels.

And the book was fondly remembered by those who read it. Who could forget a character who combined mysticism and heroics, nobility and practicality, exactly as appropriate? So he wouldn't kill a man, but didn't feel it was his responsibility to find out if he could swim before tossing him overboard... And a more than slightly unlikely, but attractive, supporting cast of friendly Theosophical Druids, Victorian-style Ancient Britons ("By Lud of Lunden!"), and proto-Vikings? Or even the rather Hinduized Pythagoreanism that seems to underlie all the talk of Secret Wisdom? By this time, too, Mundy's mostly hostile portrait of Caesar could be seen as a foreshadowing of Fascism.

"Tros" was revived in complete hardcover editions by the science fiction and fantasy publisher Gnome Press in 1958 (along with "The Purple Pirate"), and, most recently by Buccaneer Books in 1995. The new trade paperback edition is welcome. There was another hardcover (I think) reprinting of "The Purple Pirate" from Amereon, in 1991.

Unfortunately, copies of these, especially of "Tros," have to be sorted out from among the fractionalized paperback reprints.

For the mass-market paperback editions present a much more complicated picture.

Perhaps vindicating Bobbs-Merrill's original proposal, "Queen Cleopatra" appeared from Ace in 1962, with a cover Gault describes as "obviously redrawn from a publicity still of Elizabeth Taylor." Beyond the desire to cash in on the publicity, there is no special connection between the book and the motion picture (ultimately released in 1963), let alone the associated scandals; just the use of some of the same historical personages. (Lud, and perhaps fear of lawsuits, be thanked, Burton wasn't added to the cover.)

In 1967, Avon Books put "Tros of Samothrace" into paperback in four volumes, as "Tros: The First Book of Tros of Samothrace" (= #1-2); "Helma: The Second Book..." (= #3-4); "Liafail: The Third Book..." (#5-6); and "Helene: The Fourth Book..." (#7-9). All of them had lovely covers by Douglas Rosa. ("Helma" and "Helene" are two of the women in Tros' life. "Liafail," the Irish "Stone of Destiny," is here the name of a ship. Not the most appropriate name, one would think, besides being from the wrong branch of the Celtic languages, but philology wasn't Mundy's strong point.)

For me the Avon volumes came at just the right time -- I was reading Caesar in Latin, and was amused when Tros gave him a concise, accurate, and completely misleading, report on his adventures in Britain, in exactly Caesar's own compressed style. And was praised for it.

The four volumes were followed by Avon in 1969 with "Queen Cleopatra" and in 1970 with "The Purple Pirate," identified as "Tros of Samothrace #5" and "...#6," respectively, on the uncredited covers (which look to me and others like the work of Jeff Jones, but seem to be attributed by some to Frank Frazetta.) Avon also issued some of Mundy's occult / espionage / adventure stories set in modern India and Tibet, including "Om," at about the same time.

The Avon "Tros" was followed in Britain by a Universal-Tandem four-volume paperback set in 1971, officially based on the 1934 British edition from Hutchinson, but basically a variant of the Avon editions, with the same titles, but new cover art. The two sequels apparently were not included.

"Tros" and its sequels have not fared so well in paperback since. There was another, differently arranged, multi-volume edition from Zebra Books (Kensington Publishing), in 1976-1977, generally regarded as examples of inept book production, badly arranged and riddled with misprints, although the Tom Barber wraparound covers were rather nice. (Gault calls the edition "abysmal.") It was divided into "Lud of Lunden" (stories 1, 2, and half of 3); "Avenging Liafail" (the rest of 3, with 4 and part of 5); and "The Praetor's Dungeon" (the rest of 5, 6, and 7). "The Purple Pirate," and "Queen Cleopatra" were added in 1978, but in reverse order! (And so numbered.) All very confusing, especially when used copies are being listed.

Unfortunately, this makes care in ordering used copies very important. A book listed as "Tros of Samothrace" may be the full edition, or it may be only the first volume of the Avon edition -- or any volume of the Avon, Tandem, or Zebra editions, if someone was a little careless. I have seen volumes of the Avon edition listed as "unabridged," as if they contained the whole text, and not just a quarter of the whole. "Paperback" is a good clue, but "binding unknown" is a problem; length is probably a secure guide, if it is given.

If you can find a full set of the Avon or the Tandem editions of "Tros," I recommend them; and a mixture should be acceptable, and may be necessary if you include "Purple Pirate" and "Queen Cleopatra." The Zebra editions, with their inferior texts, I would consider a fallback for the curious, but may be less expensive.

An affordable copy of any of the hardcover editions would be great!

Do take great care that you are not ordering just one volume of a set, in expectation of the whole. ("Unabridged" has been attached to descriptions of at least two volumes of the Avon paperback, which is certainly misleading, although not really untrue; just a misunderstanding, I think.)

Oh yes -- don't be confused about Mundy's novel "Caesar Dies." It is an unrelated story about the Emperor Commodus, not the Dictator Julius, and Tros isn't involved. (Unless I failed to notice his reincarnation, of course.)

And will someone get around to offering the whole series in uniform hardcovers, or at least trade paperbacks?

--> Find out more about "Tros of Samothrace" at Amazon.com or Order Now