Mark Paren
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The photo is of Jim, the most attractive boy in the school and the photo doesn’t do him justice. In retrospect, I realize I was probably in the top 5% too, but of course, most of us don’t recognize our own attractiveness at the time. Adolescents insecurity.
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You can depend on it.
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The priest isn’t evil, just blinded by his beliefs. There’s hope for all of us. 😉
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I understand what you’re saying. This is a young adult story so it doesn’t get explicitly spicy. You might enjoy chapter 18. With a little imagination …
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I’m happy that you appreciate the pacing. I intentionally incorporated chapters with varying speeds to maintain reader engagement.
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The morning of departure arrived grey and busy, the atrium filled with a disorder Marcus had never once seen it hold, baggage stacked in leather-strapped bundles along the walls, servants moving at a brisker pace than the household's usual measured rhythm, his mother's voice carrying from somewhere near the kitchens issuing instructions to a cook who did not appear to be listening. It did not feel, Marcus thought, like the departure for an evening's banquet, however grand. It felt like the house
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The business of empire. Thanks for commenting.
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Good point. It’s amazing that so many events we see today have parallels in the histories of the Western and Eastern Roman Empires. I guess it’s true what they say about history…
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Marcus is in for new experiences. Teutoburg has its own laws, ancient, silent, and entirely indifferent to the Empire. Thanks for commenting.
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Thanks for keeping me honest. I have only one of my high school textbooks and unfortunately it isn’t Latin.
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Thank you, I appreciate your encouragement.
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Et tu, Brute? You are correct, and I will change it.
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Word came from his father, and arrived at breakfast with the same brisk finality his father brought to most decisions concerning his son. Ingomar would dine with them tonight, three days before Marcus was to leave for the frontier. Marcus said little in response beyond a nod, though he spent rather more of that morning than he meant to thinking about it. "Arminius will not attend," his father said, going over the evening's shape at the tablinum table the way he might have reviewed accounts,
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Thank you. I’m delighted to know that you’re enjoying the story so far.
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I’d love to see Rome at different points in its history. But as Ingomar said (in the next chapter) when asked how he found Rome “I had built a city in my mind from what men said of it on the frontier, and no city built from rumor survives its own gates for long.”
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Don’t read too much into it. It’s mostly to get the teens alone with Titus as a comedic tag-along.
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The way to the temple climbed the Palatine’s western face, a broad paved road that grew steadily quieter as it rose, the noise of the lower city falling behind them by degrees until only the wind and the distant complaint of gulls wheeling over the Tiber remained. Titus trailed a respectful few paces back now, subdued by the climb or by Ingomar’s earlier attention, Marcus could not tell which, though he suspected the boy was simply saving his questions for later, turning them over rather th
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Speaking of which, I need to do some writing. Thanks, it’s been fun.
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Verum erit, sed Marcus adhuc puer est ante tantum virum!
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Fortasse non de Germanis est de quibus Marcus sollicitari debet. Your comment brought a smile to my face. My high school latin is a faded memory. I’m not sure if Google translate did an adequate job, but here it is.
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A complicated guy.
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It’s a valid point. It’s challenging to judge individuals who lived two thousand years ago based on today’s standards.
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Varus has his own character arc, that I I think you might find interesting. He was a complicated man. Thanks for commenting.
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Thank you for the comment. A prescient comment.
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Varus may be historically sketchy, but l like to view him as not inherently evil. Thanks for commenting.
