"scipio" Ross Leckie

[longbow]

Hi all, has any one read anything by Ross Leckie?i got Scipio today and it looks pretty good, heres the "Praelectio"

This is the fictional memoir of Scipio Africanus (236-182BC),born Publius Cornelius Scipio.The "Africanus" was an honorific,awarded him for conquering Africa in general,though he didnt,and the Carthaginian general Hannibal (247-182BC)which,at the African battle of Zama in 202BC,he did.

 

It was under Scipios leadership,actual or assumed,that Rome mastered the world.A world long ago,and a smaller one,but one which has for better or for worse,formed ours.It was in Scipios time,after the sack of Syracuse in 211BC,that the Romans began to absorb the culture of ancient Greece.To that synthesis we owe our laws,our art,our science,our architecture and out literature,much of our language and system of government and the best-and some of the worst-of what we are.

 

As was in fact becoming customary at the time,i give fiction a secretary to Scipio,an amanuensis.His name is Boster,and if he ever lived,he had served Hannibal before Scipio.Scipio is something of a mirror to Hannibal,because his life and that of Scipio are remarkable the same,and both men died in the same year.

 

 

[Guest spartacus]

I have read it a while ago, not a bad book on the whole if I remember correctly it was marred by an a detailed rape bit that was out of context with the story