Sword and sorcery tales are characterized by sword-swinging action focused on personal battles rather than world-shaking events, with an element of magic or the supernatural and sometimes one of romance as well.  Tros of Samothrace has all those ingredients and was serialized a number of years before REH’s work; doesn’t that mean that it is Sword & Sorcery too?

Swords are a recurring feature of Talbot Mundy’s stories. The four swords that we will examine in this post are the gladius, the spatha, the falcata and the long sword used by the Celts.

Purple Pirate continues the adventures of Tros of Samothrace amid the war-torn chaos of a period where half a dozen factions fought for the control of Rome and the seas were stalked by pirate kings who harassed the Wolves of the Tiber when they could and plundered the rest of the world when they willed.

Cleopatra enlists Tros in her campaign to first ascend to the throne of Egypt and then to defend Egypt from Rome, the all-powerful and ever-hungry war machine that dominates the Mediterranean world. To do this, she will use every resource she can muster and all of her charms to beguile the one man who can master Rome and make it obey: Caesar himself. 

The only chance Tros has to draw Caesar away from Britain is to begin the process of turning his attention to Rome and the inevitable contest to become master of the known world.  He must walk a knife’s edge in a game of intrigue that, win or lose, will consume tens of thousands of lives. 

Of all the writers who made their reputations during the heyday of the pulps, Talbot Mundy is the one author we know was a lady’s man. Is this reflected in his writing?  Undoubtedly, but not in the way you might think. 

With the launch of Tros’s beloved ship, the stage is set for the adventures that will take him and his crew from Britain to Hispania to Rome itself and across the length of the Middle Sea to golden Egypt.  It is with these adventures that Tros comes into his own as a Master of the Sea and one of the great captains of literature.

Caesar has flooded Britain with his agents; their goal is not just to gather information for Rome’s next invasion but to sow discord among the Britons and if at all possible, sabotage Tros in any way they can. 

In the third installment in the serialized version of Tros of Samothrace, Tros has rescued his father from Roman captivity only to see the old man breathe his last after bequeathing his son a deathbed prophecy.