The Fugitive from Corinth

infobox Book |
name = The Fugitive from Corinth


image_caption = First edition cover
author = Caroline Lawrence
illustrator =
cover_artist = Peter Sutton,
Fred van Deelen
country = United Kingdom
language = English
series = The Roman Mysteries
genre = Historical novel
publisher = Orion Children's Books
release_date = 13 October 2005
media_type = Print (Paperback)
pages = 240pp (first edition, paperback)
isbn = ISBN 1842552546
preceded_by = The Colossus of Rhodes
followed_by = The Sirens of Surrentum

"The Fugitive from Corinth" is the 10th book in the popular Roman Mysteries series by Caroline Lawrence, published in 2005. It is set in Greece in AD 80, between Corinth and Athens. It focuses on the legends surrounding the Furies.

Plot summary

Flavia and her friends have been travelling the Greek islands with other pasengers aboard Lupus's ship, the "Delphina", captained by Flavia's father. They have rescued kidnapped children in "The Colossus of Rhodes" and now they relax for a while in her tutor Aristo's home city of Corinth.

But on the night before their departure, Flavia's father is stabbed in bed; feverish and suffering from amnesia, he falls into a deep coma. Aristo was at the scene of the crime but has run off. Believing him guilty, Flavia, along with her friends and the sailor Atticus, sets off to catch him.

They save a young beggar boy, Nikos, and he provides information and, when everyone they ask describes Aristo in two different ways, he says that Aristo's brother Dion could be trying to catch him too. They find out that Nikos is actually a girl who lives beside Aristo's house in Corinth. She loves Dion. Nubia finds Aristo, and she believes his innocence. They arrive in Athens and chase up the Acropolis in which they lose him. They meet a beggar boy called Socrates and Flavia discovers Nubia is trying to stop them from catching Aristo. Jonathan storms off, Atticus is nowhere to be seen, and the 'two Aristos' (Dion and Aristo) descend into the Cave of The Kindly Ones (Furies). Nubia and Flavia follow, and Flavia locks them in. As they are dying they forgive each other, then Jonathan, Lupus and a priest let them out. Flavia eventually forgives Dion and they go back to Corinth to find that her father is still in a coma. Flavia has already asked the Pythia how to wake him up but she does not understand and ends up crying over his body. He wakes up, cured of his amnesia and they realise that the Pythia's prophecy had come true.

Characters

We are introduced to Atticus properly in this book, and we get to like him. With Aristo, however, you come to dislike him for the pain he has caused his brother. Dion comes across as friendly enough, but in the book he is mostly mad.