Analysis: Karen Haegemans on Elissa of Carthage
Elissa of Carthage (commonly known as Dido, the wanderer) is one of the more fascinating examples of history becoming myth. History is rife with examples of strong women dismissed as mythology...
Tagged: rome
Beyond Rome: Infrastructure in Ancient Civilizations
There’s an idea floating around that roads, aqueducts, and other large-scale civil engineering projects required Roman-era engineering. This is a false narrative. A fantasy world doesn’t need iron-age technology to...
Removing Monuments to White Supremacists & Racists
Henry Olsen wrote an Op-Ed in the Washington Post about removing monuments in which he claimed: Knocking down or defacing statues of national founders or heroes not only displays ignorance...
Ancient Priests: Practical Impacts of Early Experts
Recently, I’ve been thinking about the role of ancient priests and how temples helped early civilizations thrive. As a culture, we do a pretty poor job of looking beyond the...
Maritime Empires: the Phoenician Gap
We in the West seem to spend a lot of time tracing our cultures back to the maritime empires — thalassocracies — like the Greeks and the Vikings, but we spend very little time talking about the civilization that inspired Greece to consolidate its military power.
Giants in War: Frost Giants & Firbolgs
When I attended Balticon 50 over Memorial Day Weekend, I had the pleasure of seeing an amazing panel that looked at created religions in science fiction and fantasy. I arrived...
Exaggeration: History Becomes Myth
It was the Black Company series by Glen Cook that made me realize how often history becomes myth, exaggerated beyond meaningful belief. The Books of Glittering Stone detail a religion...
Myth Cycles: the Prevalence of War in Religious Texts
As I research background for my novel, I’ve noticed that many of the stories from which we’ve gained our understanding of ancient cultures have fundamental similarities. It’s common to find...
Fictional History: An Exercise in Loglines
I believe that the history of a fictional world should be compelling in its own right. Our history is frequently made into stories, be they wildly exaggerated ancient epics like...
