Archives for June 2012

The Death of Verginia

                                                                                              The Death of Verginia   This is the fourth in a series of stories about notable women of the Romen Republic. Verginia is more of a tragic victim in this story than a heroine, but her story sharply illustrates the conflicts between the classes in the early days of the Roman Republic, and the […]

Notable Women of the Roman Republic: Veturia the Mother of Coriolanus

    This is the third in a series of blogs about notable women of the Roman republic. Veturia, sometimes also known as Volumnia, was the mother of Gaius Marcius Coriolanus. She single-handedly saved Rome from imminent destruction. Quotations are from Plutarch’s Life of Gaius Marcius Coriolanus.   Veturia, a patrician woman, was widowed soon […]

Women of the Roman Republic: Cloelia

This is the second in a series of blogs that will tell the stories of women who were notable in the history of the Roman Republic. In our first blog we saw that the expulsion of the last king of Rome, Tarquinius Supurbus, or Tarquin the Proud, was precipitated by the violation of the virtuous […]

Book Review: In Vain by Barbara Geisler

Barbara Geisler’s book In Vain just won the BAIPA (Bay Area Independent Publisher’s Association) award for best Historical Fiction. This is Barbara’s third book in her Averillian series about Sister Averilla at the Shaftsbury monastery 12th Century England. The other two books are Other Gods and Graven Images. In Vain is a prequel to the […]

Book Review: The Sword of Carthage by Vaughn Heppner

                                       The Sword of Carthage     The Sword of Carthage, by Vaughn Heppner, tells a tale of the first Punic war through the eyes of Hamilcar Barca, the father of Hannibal. In writing The Death of Carthage, my novel of the second and third Punic wars, I naturally tried to learn all I could […]

Famous Women of the Roman Republic: Lucretia

                                                      Women of Ancient Rome   This is the first in a series of blogs about women of ancient Rome. All of the societies of the ancient world were male dominated. In no society was a woman routinely allowed to vote, hold public office, plead law cases or lead military forces. (A rare exception […]

The Sack of Carthage by Geoffrey Lehman

The Sack of Carthage by Geoffrey Lehmann From book: A Voyage of Lions and Other Poems Used by permission of the poet.   Screams, laughter, smoke, rapine at noon Nightmare by day, figures from night we roamed Bloody and light-headed through spectral sunlight, Burning the corpse of Carthage.   But then we saw them. Sacking […]