Tag: Daughter of Eagles
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Six More Weeks of Something: Prognostication and the Art of the Future in the Ancient World
“You want a prediction about the weather you’re asking the wrong Phil. I’ll give you a winter prediction: It’s gonna be cold, it’s gonna be grey, and it’s gonna last you the rest of your life.” — Groundhog Day I wasn’t sure what this week’s entry was going to be about, but then I woke…
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The Art of Living with Caesars: The Calpurnii, the Villa of the Papyri, and Roman Home Architecture
“If a painter should wish to unite a horse’s neck to a human head, and spread a variety of plumage over limbs taken from every part, so that what is a beautiful woman in the upper part terminates unsightly in an ugly fish below; could you, my friends, refrain from laughter, were you admitted to…
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Spin Dramatists & Dilettantes: Poetics and Statecraft in Augustan Rome
Study I not o’ermuch to please thee, Caesar and court thee, / Nor do I care e’en to know if thou be white or black. – Gaius Valerius Catallus Last week we saw how state sponsorship of the arts is older than PBS’ annual pledge drives, and how the right political patron can produce a…
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Super Troopers: Ground Warfare in the World of The God’s Wife
I am the very model of a modern Major-Gineral / I’ve information vegetable, animal, and mineral – The Pirates of Penzance We shipped off into the navy last week, so this week we’ll come back ashore and talk a little about the land militaries of the late Ptolemaic/ early Roman imperial age. Personally (though I…
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Obligatory Black Friday Sales Post
Because some of us are stuck with Imperator Caesar Divi filius Augustus as a muse and not a financial patron. I promise next week I’ll get back into informative entries (I’m thinking Roman-Ptolemaic naval warfare, then good, old-fashioned land warfare). But I would be remiss going into the biggest shopping weekend of the year if…
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The Ending That Became a Beginning
So, as a start this week, I want to address the handful of Word Press readers who’ve stumbled on this blog from the greater internet. Hi, folks, I do see you, and I’m humbled that anyone would be interested in listening to me blather on about ancient history by choice, unlike, say, my husband, who…
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The Rule of Threes Redux: A Crash Course in the Roman Civil Wars, Part 2
All right, last week we looked at the start of the Roman Civil War, in the 40s BC. The conclusion of this first phase of the war you’re already somewhat familiar with if you’ve read The God’s Wife, or have a passing knowledge of its setting. But as a brief recap: Pompey loses his head…
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Breath of the Gods: Demons in the World of The God’s Wife
He’s got demons? Cool! – The Great Gonzo, Muppet Treasure Island We’ve talked a little about the gods here, so this week I figured we’d take a look at another supernatural group that exists in The God’s Wife: demons. Specifically, two different cultural approaches to these semi-divine entities – through the eyes of the Egyptians,…
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The Lion Queen: The Creation of Sekhmet (and Hathor)
As I try to wade through my final (no seriously, this one is the last one, I swear) edit of Daughter of Eagles, some of you might be wondering why this part of the writing process seems to take so much longer than, you know, the actual writing. Some of it is simply the battle…
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India’s Iliad and Rome’s Odyssey: The Mahabharata and the Aeneid
We sing of arms and the men… This week we’re going to get a little less historical and a little more literary with a dive into two primordial works of world poetry (I know, I can hear you all groaning from here), the Hindu epic the Mahabharata and Virgil’s Aeneid. Partly because they’re interesting, but…
Sarah Holz 