The Venus Throw

The Venus Throw
	First edition
Author	Steven Saylor
Country	United States
Language	English
Series	Roma Sub Rosa
Genre	Historical novel
Publisher	St. Martin's Press
Publication date	1995
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages	308 pp
ISBN	978-0312119126
Preceded by	Catilina's Riddle
Followed by	A Murder on the Appian Way

The Venus Throw is a historical novel by American author Steven Saylor, first published by St. Martin's Press in 1995. It is the fourth book in his Roma Sub Rosa series of mystery novels set in the final decades of the Roman Republic. The main character is the Roman sleuth Gordianus the Finder.

Plot summary

The year is 56 BC, and Gordianus is visited by his old friend and teacher Dio, a diplomat who leads an embassy on behalf of the citizens of Egypt, who want to make a complaint about their king Ptolemy XII to the senate of Rome. Dio is afraid that he will be murdered by the king's agents, like other envoys before him. When he is poisoned shortly after, Gordianus attempts to find the murderer. His main suspect is the orator Marcus Caelius Rufus, and he also meets the sultry widow Clodia and her admirer, the poet Catullus.

gollark: Yes.

gollark: Thoughts? Is this *too* cheaty?

gollark: Given that our slag production makes *about* one per ten seconds (probably less), and 12.8 units of 5 coal would be needed for 1 diamond, we could get one diamond every two minutes or so.

gollark: I figured out a terrible, terrible (in the sense of being slightly cheaty) way to get diamonds:1. hook up slag production to thermal centrifuge (there's a 1 slag -> tiny gold dust + 5 coal dust recipe)2. feed coal to compactor (makes compressed coal balls; without this it would need flint, but that's easy too)3. compress the coal ball into a ... compressed coal ball4. compress the compressed coal balls into a coal chunk (usually this would require obsidian, iron or bricks, but the compactor skips that too - obsidian is automateable easily but with large power input, though)5. compress coal chunk into diamond

gollark: Oh, this is really cool, Random PSIDeas has a thing which allows me to move my camera position.

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