indianasmith

I gave up on the History Channel several years back, to be honest.

Awesome! I actually just finished a historical novel that embraces most of Nero's reign. I'll admit I took the more traditional route and painted him as a villain, albeit one who initially showed great promise and eventually descends into madness and tyranny. I'd love to read yours as well. PM me if you'd like to do a review swap sometime.

I am from Texas, a formerly sovereign Republic, now part of the USA by mutual consent.

You mean the "used-to-be-history" Channel?

A friend of mine told me about this clown over the weekend, so I looked him up today. Just reading his claims makes my brain hurt . . . basically he says everything we think we know about the ancient world is a lie, concocted by European writers in the 1500's. Among other things, the Roman Empire never existed and the current city of Rome was built in the 1200's, Jesus was actually Russian and was crucified on a hill overlooking Constantinople, and the Trojan War and the Crusades are actually garbled accounts of the same event . . . HOW DO YOU FIT THAT MUCH STUPID INTO ONE HEAD???? Anyway, here is a link to his alternative take on history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Chronology_(Fomenko)

That is a fascinating dissertation, and I find some aspects of it to be rational and well-founded. Other aspects of it smack far too much of the "she was asking for it" defense that has been used in so many rape cases. It may be that, at his age, having devoted his entire life to preserving his country's heritage, that he voluntarily chose to die in the ancient city which he loved because he would not want to live in a world where it had been destroyed. Or he may have thought that the government's forces would prevail, or he just may have been a slow runner. I don't know and I'm not sure anyone outside Syria does. But I am not going to dismiss him as a fool, as you seem so eager to do. There is an old story that when the Visigoths were sacking and burning Rome, they came to the villa of a wealthy Roman senator. They found him still seated in his curule chair, watching as his screaming servants were dragged outside to be raped and his household treasures were plundered or destroyed. Staring straight ahead, he sat there, unmoving, until finally one of the Visigoths reached out and touched his beard to see if he was, in fact, alive. The Senator struck the invader with the flat of his hand, as hard as he could, and the barbarians immediately descended upon him and cut him to pieces. Was his conduct foolish or brave? It depends on what his goal was. If self-preservation was his motive, it was an epic fail. If making a statement of Roman dignity and courage was his motive, he gave a magnificent demonstration.

Given the conflicting testimony from the only three sources on Nero's life, none of whom were really his contemporaries, we may never know the exact truth of this.

Can we all agree that if every single member of ISIS were to undergo spontaneous cranial detonation, the world would be a better place?

This sounds completely awesome. I hope it is true!

Thanks! I am lucky enough to have found a publisher who likes my works, so at least that battle is already fought. It's promoting and plugging that get tiresome.

Yes, he's a pretty major character as advisor/mentor to Nero. Burrus and Poppaea Sabina also feature in the story, as does Vologases, the High King of Parthia.

Cool story. Tiberius was a bit of a curmudgeon.

Last October, I sat down and wrote a prologue - Nero, addressing the Senate in the wake of the Great Fire of Rome, blames the Christian community for lighting the fires and asks for a Senate decree proscribing all Christians. He asks if there is anyone there that will speak up for them before the house divides on the issue. One Senator speaks up. That was all I had to go on at first - a dramatic moment, but how to get there? Who was this Senator and why did he become an advocate for the disciples of Jesus? Twenty-seven chapters and 300 plus pages later, I finished the story Monday night. It is, in many ways, a sequel to THE REDEMPTION OF PONTIUS PILATE, picking up some 10 years after Pilate's death in 37 AD. Set in the reigns of Claudius and Nero, LOVER OF GOD is the story of one Roman Senator, Marcus Quintus Publius, and his involvement with the disciples of Jesus and the rulers of Rome. I'm very proud of how this one turned out; I'm going to let it sit for a bit now, then later this fall I will edit it and send it on to my publisher. Hopefully it will pass muster and be published sometime in 2016 or 2017.

Interesting!

I imagine that Christians were a convenient scapegoat when things weren't going well because they were members of a small, unpopular, and misunderstood cult. So persecution was probably sporadic and neither as intense as Catholic martyrologists made it out to be, nor as rare and isolated as some of Rome's apologists have made out. Nero's persecution of the church is probably the best documented, and I am sure it was conducted to deflect blame for the Great Fire, which many Roman gossips accused Nero of starting.

Cool! I didn't even know I had a UK edition! LOL

Thanks to Thomas for this great review!

Those two cultures certainly did collide in the Middle East. All I know for sure is that it came from a large Roman site in Jordan, many years ago.

I have collected Indian artifacts for decades, because I enjoy finding them and because it's a cheap, legal hobby in my area. But occasionally I do like to pick up Old World artifacts if I have the chance. I added this piece to my collection this summer. It's a Roman brooch in the shape of a legionary - or perhaps a gladiator - that was excavated in Jordan. I bought it from a retired archeologist at a relic show I attended in June.

That is too cool!!!

I'm doing a giveaway to promote my new book at Goodreads.com. It costs nothing to enter; all that is asked of the winners is that they post a review of the book they win on the site when they are finished reading it. The giveaway runs for one more week, you can enter HERE: https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/140776-the-redemption-of-pontius-pilate

I've been invited to do an hourlong interview on Parker J Cole​'s radio program tomorrow evening about my new book and its main character, the enigmatic Roman Prefect, Pontius Pilate. Be sure to give us a listen live online! https://www.facebook.com/events/980225545343144/ (Most of it will be old hat to all you Romanophiles, but I'd still appreciate your tuning in.)

I wonder how many lost works of antiquity might be in that library, or yet unexcavated at Herculaneum and Pompeii!

I had a friend who was excavating a Middle Archaic Indian camp in Central Texas years ago (about 5000 years old). He found the burial of a human skull - no other remains present - with a flint knife between its teeth. Creepy.

The thing with Syria is that . . .. there are no good guys. Not among the combatants, anyway. I feel sorry for the women and children caught up in that hellish mess.