HF Ancient Rome > Likes and Comments

What draws you to historical fiction set in the ancient world, particularly ancient Rome?

As an author - all the grey areas you can play in at a time that is stranger than fiction and fills the imagination. As a reader, that feeling that you get when you are reading as if it's fantasy but know that it could very well be real!

For me it's the sources themselves. Polybius describes the corvus in loving engineering detail, then the fleet that carried it is wrecked by storms and the device is never mentioned again. Did no one notice what all that weight did to a ship's stability? At Cannae he gives you the numbers, the formation, the encirclement, but almost never a name below the consuls. Tens of thousands of men in a single sentence. That gap between the precise and the silent is what pulls me in: the story is so close to being told, and it's left to us to imagine who was standing in the line.

Curious whether anyone has a favourite novel that handles Cannae or the Punic Wars well? I'm always looking for writers who stay faithful to Polybius while filling in the people.