The Forgotten Daughter

Chloe is a teenage girl who lives with her guardian Melissa in a cottage on a country estate of the ancient Roman Republic. Her mother, also named Chloe, was a Greek from the island of Eresos. The older Chloe had been captured, along with her servant Melissa, by the Roman conquerer Laevinus, who

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married her and fathered Chloe. However, all her life the young Chloe has been told that her father abandoned her mother, causing her death. She and Melissa are treated as slaves whose work is to spin wool into thread and then weave it into cloth for Laevinus’s new wife Helvia and children Lavinia and Kaeso in the city of Rome. The villicus or overseer Davus regularly beats the girl and apparently is given to lying about her. Chloe has grown to hate the very name of her father.
The estate next door belongs to the Cornelius family, and Chloe occasionally sees the son Aulus riding his horse in the fields and imagines him as her perfect suitor. A few years later Aulus, who has been away at war, returns to Rome to help his friend, the tribune Tiberius Gracchus, make reforms, but when Tiberius is murdered by the Senate, Aulus is banished from Rome and hides out at his family’s country estate. While out walking one day, Aulus falls into a hunter’s pit and is saved by Chloe. The two fall in love and talk of marriage. However, Aulus’s father has the banishment reversed, and as Aulus prepares to return to Rome, they part on less than friendly terms. With the arrival of a new villicus even worse than Davus, Chloe and Melissa run away to find a relative in Poseidonia. They almost make it but are recognized by a coworker of Davus and returned as runaway slaves. What will happen to them? And will Chloe ever see Aulus again?
The Forgotten Daughter was a Newbery honor book in 1934. In it, as she did for ancient Greek culture in Theras and His Town and Lysis Goes to the Play, the author makes everyday life in ancient Roman society come to life. Much of the plot and most of the characters are fictitious, but Tiberius Gracchus was elected tribune in 133 B. C. and set out to pass laws that would help the plebeians or common people in Rome. Snedeker carefully weaves historical events regarding his work and death into the very intriguing and engaging story. There is little objectionable. A few references to drinking wine, historically correct, are found, and the “d” word is used once, not as a term of cursing but as a description of something very revolting. Not only does the book make a wonderful comparison of Greek and Roman world views in simple language, but it is also a heartwarming tale of loss and forgiveness. We did this as a family read aloud, and everyone liked it.

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