How did it come to this? I should have known that the gift of an ugly god would become your beauty’s curse. I regret the moment I let you convince me to don my armor. But there was a fire in your eyes I could not refuse. A passion made your words flutter like restless birds. I was never one to argue with that passion. And now, here you are. Lying in my arms as you always used to on...

Solon, as a Greek, had always held reason in the highest esteem. He considered it to be man’s innate lantern, able to disperse the darkness of ignorance; a light that could put barbaric superstition to flight. In that moment, however, his reason had shrunk to an awe-struck child with liquid eyes and the only light that shone in the vast expanse of the darkness surrounding him was an...

For almost a year the Eastern host of the Great King Xerxes had marched from victory to victory. Granted, Xerxes’ loses had been embarrassing at times. Yet he was pretty sure that unfortunate incidents like the skirmish at Thermopylae or the gross incompetence of his naval officers in Artemisium would soon be forgotten and history would hardly bother to record them; and if all else failed...

 It was the hundredth and fourteenth Olympiad, in the month of Gamelion, when we returned to the conquered city of Susa. It was high noon when the gates were opened before us and Hyperion’s eye, high in the sky, was enflaming the world below. A great crowd had gathered in the streets to greet our coming, Greeks and barbarians alike. Our countrymen cheered king Alexander and our noble...