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 [...]
And back again to the bibliography for my book.
We’re still in the “history” section, as opposed to the “biography” section, but we’ve mostly dealth with the ancient sources (Polybius, Livy and Plutarch). So now I’ll move into the modern writers.
If I had to choose just one book to give you a fun but thorough overview [...]
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 left off my series on the bibliography for my book with a long post on Polybius. Polybius, as I said, was one of the greatest historians ever, but most of his books were lost. This means that for the history of Hannibal’s war against Rome we have to rely heavily on another ancient source. [...]
In my previous post on Polybius, I promised to tell you why he is so important to us Americans in particular. Here is why:
His ultimate explanation for Rome’s greatness was that Rome had a constitution that was uniquely and perfectly balanced between the three types of government: monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy.
An excess of any of [...]
First off in this series of posts about the bibliography for my book–in the category of ancient sources–is, of course, Polybius. His life is one of the most fascinating ever lived, and his importance to us–especially to us Americans, as I will explain in the follow-up post–is enormous.
Let me lead up to Polybius in three [...]
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 [...]
You’ve heard of Pyrrhic Victories, which are defeats disguised as triumphs–in other words, Kipling-esque impostors of the sort that I will be describing in my book. But do you know why they are called that?
It’s thanks to Pyrrhus, who is well worth five minutes of your time.
Pyrrhus was the ancient world’s equivalent of a dumb [...]
Well-made YouTube video (meaning: hewing closely to Polybius and Livy) about Hannibal’s life, by Wolfshead:
Interesting moment of interpretation: why Hannibal, in this version, chose not to take Rome itself, which was the single biggest decision of his life. “We are not animals,” he says here.
(Also: did I detect stirrups on the [...]
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. [...]
