A follow-up to my post earlier today:
Technically, the rendering shows the city as it was in 390AD, during the reign of Constantine. The main characters in my book–Hannibal, Fabius and Scipio–lived 600 years earlier. But who cares. Just wallow in your imagination and picture Fabius and Scipio arguing here, Scipio Triumphing [...]
This qualifies as breaking news, if you’re writing my kind of book. Watch:
It arose out of this great project.
This where Fabius and Scipio walked. This is where the Romans bewailed their dead after Hannibal’s victories at the Trebia, at Trasimene and at Cannae. This is where Scipio celebrated his Triumph after [...]
Let’s get back to the bibliography for my book.
Right now–while we’re still dealing with the ancient sources–I’m going through the texts in chronological order. And after Polybius and Livy, that brings me to Plutarch.
You recall that Herodotus was the father of history. Well, Plutarch must be the father of biography. Like Herodotus, Thucydides and Polybius, [...]
I’m trying to figure out how I feel about Maureen Dowd’s column in the New York Times today, half of which she writes … in mock Latin!!! That’s right. The language of Cicero and Caesar–and, of course, of my guys, Fabius and Scipio–to analyze Ioannes McCainus and Sara Palina.
You loyal readers will know that I [...]
I popped into the Frida Kahlo exhibition currently at the San Francisco MOMA. Mainly, to see her piercing paintings–and boy, do they pierce–but also, at least in part, as research for my book.
A friend of ours, Erika Lessey Chen, had suggested Kahlo to me a year ago as a possible life-story to look into. I [...]
Join me for a moment in having fun with this map below.
It comes to us, via the Wikimedia Commons, from Frank Martini, a cartographer in the Department of History at the United States Military Academy.
There are two ways of looking at this map–one obvious and one surprising and cheeky–and I will avail myself of both. [...]
I’ve always noticed that, although Hannibal is ever so slightly less of a household name than, say, Alexander or Caesar (or should that be because, rather than although?), he seems to have the more passionate, sophisticated and thoughtful following.
Read, for instance, 100falcons on the subjects of Hannibal’s most ingenious trick, his famous boyhood vow to [...]
