Dear Readers,

A note on my sources.

It all began in the Spring of two thousand and seventeen, at a pop-up book store in the Adelaide Central Markets where I found and purchased Herodotus' Histories and Plutarch's Fall of The Roman Republic. I had never heard of either author. I started reading Herodotus and it was like wading into a river of mud, the text and context were so thick I felt swallowed up instantaneously, and so with my head submerged and with no sense of direction, I kept swimming.

Then I found Dan Carlin's podcast, Hardcore History, and beginning by chance with the Kings of Kings series, I quickly discovered that Carlin was talking about the very book I was already reading. Dan Carlin is an amateur historian, storyteller and orator of the highest caliber, and there is no amount of praise that I could heap upon him that would over-reach the value of his work. In listening to his podcasts, I quickly felt that I was a student attending lectures on the book that I had found myself studying. Sometimes it felt more like having a good friend in a distant country call me up every day to talk about the book we were both really into.

Then came Plutarch. Oh Plutarch, I didn't know that I would fall so completely in love with this author, that my own writing style would end up being strongly influenced by him and his translators. His biographies of the great men of Rome are so beautiful, inspiring, thought provoking and philosophical, that when reading them, I imagine myself seated in the open air forum listening to the great man himself speak to me of the virtues and stories of the ancient world.

I have only just begun.

Plutarch wrote (among other things), a collection of biographies of Greek and Roman men, which he called 'Lives', of which there are fifty or so still in existence.. I have read about fifteen of these biographies and I have yet to tire of Plutarch's sense of narrative style, or of his philosophical perspectives. On the contrary, I am more and more drawn into the unique ideology of the author himself, and find great delight in sifting carefully through page after page, seeking the little gems of individual opinion he slides into the history, giving me a lens through which to understand the events, and the qualities of the people involved.

Xenophon. I admit I figured him wrong at first, taking him for an old soldier reliving his glory days, but then I had only read Anabasis. I've just read The Education of Cyrus and learned in the process that Xenophon was a student of Soctrates. I really like Xenophon's style, he's a much more passionate and creative a writer than Caesar, whose commentaries from the Gaulic Wars are quite dry by comparison . In The Education of Cyrus there are many moments where I felt myself transported to the battlefield, or hunting party or palace banquet hall. There is a consistent soldiers' humour present in his writing, enriched warmly with steady philosophical attitude and a well tempered love of humanity.

I thought Xenophon was an old soldier parading his triumphs in literature.

He is all that and more.

Cicero.

It was just one book.

What harm could one book do?

It was with Cicero that I became a regular with my local book dealer. The Book Keeper She is kind and clever and bright and thoughtful and an excellent writer who has for years documented the tales of everyday humanity walking through her doorway. I think she has the patience of a saint.

Cicero. What harm could one book do? I'd heard of Cicero, but I didn't know anything of his reputation past his involvement in the Cataline conspiracy. I paid only four dollars for the book, a 'greatest hits' sort of compilation, a few essays, two speeches and a handful of letters.

I hadn't expected it, but when I came to his letters, a powerful sensation was born in me which has not lessened over the months, but which has increased until today I finally found a way to describe it.

The dead do not die while we speak of them.

If to be alive means to have influence over the world in some way, then the dead whose works I am studying are more alive now than in the time of their investiture in the flesh. There are six towns in America called Cicero. He is said by many to be the very bedrock foundation of all western literature and political thought, as well as the greatest orator who ever lived (and whose writings have come down to us intact). Historians have preserved over a thousand of his letters, and dozens of books, essays, speeches and fragments. Cicero is alive. He has been alive for two thousand years, teaching us, guiding us, cajoling at our failures and mourning with our losses and with a lightning rod in his hand he points to us and says...

Well, I guess he says something different to everyone he meets. To me he said that I can strive and live and die and know that there is a time stretching out forever after we are gone, and it influences us like the past influences us.

We call to you from the future Cicero.

There is a future also calling to us.

The Actual Book List

(so far...)

Primary Sources

Cicero (Marcus Tullius Cicero)

1. The Life of Cicero – Antony Trollope. Published 1875. Audio Book recording from Librivox.org
2. Cicero: selected works. Translated by Michael Grant. Penguin Classics.
   First published 1965. Includes: Against Verres, Twenty three letters, The Second Philippic against Antony, On Dutes III, On Old Age.
3. On the ends of good an evil. Audio book from Librivox.org
4. The four Philippics against Antony. Audio book from Librivox.org
5. How to Win an Argument. An ancient guide to the art of persuasion. Selected, Edited and Translated by James M. May. Audio Book from Librivox.org
6. On Duties (1, 2 & 3). Audio Book from Librivox.org

Plutarch (Lucius Mestreius Plutarchus)

1. Fall of the Roman Republic. Translated by Rex Warner. Penguin Classics.
   First published 1958
2. Makers of Rome. Translated by Ian Scott-Kilvert. Penguin Classis.
   First published 1965.
3. The Rise and Fall of Athens: Nine Greek Lives. Translated by Ian Scott-Kilvert
   Penguin Classics. First Published 1960.

Xenophon

1. The Persian Expedition. Translated by Rex Warner. Penguin Classics.
   First published 1949.
2. Cyropedia: The Education of Cyrus. Audio Book from Librivox.org
   First Published 1897

Herodotus

1. The Histories. Translated by Aubrey De Sélincourt. Penguin Classics.
   First Published 1954.

Lucretius

1. On the nature of the Universe. Translated by Sir Ronald Melville. First published 1997 Oxford World's Classics.

Plato

1. Symposium Phaedrus: The Republic and other dialogues. Translated by Benjamin Jowett, First Published 1892

Thucidides

1. History of the Peloponnesian War. Translated by Rex Warner. Penguin Classics.
   First Published 1954

Caesar

1. Commentaries on the Gaulic Wars. Audio Book from Librivox.org

Secondary and Other Resources

A History of Orgies, by Hugo Partridge. Spring Books. First Published 1958.

The Rise of Music in the Ancient World: east and west. Curt Sachs. First Published 1943

Asterix Comics. Goscinny and Uderzo. Translated by Anthea Bell & Derek Hockridge. 1972

(The best and most reliable source of information about what the Romans were really like! ;)

Assasins Creed: Origins (Playstation game set in 60BCE Egypt)

Oxford Latin Mini Dictionary 2008

Roget's Thesaurus 1966 (first published 1852)

Chambers Etymological English Dictionary. 1964

The explanatory pronouncing dictionary of Latin Quotations (no publication date in this old book)

Audio Books

Librivox.org

Hardcore History Podcast

Dancarlin.com