The Shards of Heaven

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One world’s history is another’s fantasy. Today we might look upon Zeus and Apollo as wondrous figments of the Greek imagination, but I’m confident Homer felt differently. Indeed, he may well have believed in his history—filled with heroes and gods and goddesses both malevolent and benign—as surely as I believe in the history of George Washington, whom I wager I’ve met about as often as Homer met Athena.

A story, such as the one that follows, that takes as equal facts the existence of the Trident of Poseidon, the Ark of the Covenant, and the rise to power of Augustus Caesar, therefore, might be entirely history or entirely fantasy—depending on the reader’s pleasure and perspective. Know at least that these events and the characters involved in them fit as seamlessly as possible into the timeline of what we think we know of these events. Juba is real. Didymus is real. So, too, are Pullo and Vorenus, Caesarion and Selene, and many of the rest. Actium was real. Alexandria was real.

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