What image comes to mind when I say “book”? If you’re like most people, you think of separate pages bound together, with a cover. Known as the “codex,” this has been the most common form of a book for the past two millennia. The codex is a book constructed of a number of sheets of paper, vellum, papyrus, or similar …
What do Thyatira, Tyre, and Tiberius have in common?
A certain woman named Lydia, a seller of purple, of the city of Thyatira, one who worshiped God, heard us; whose heart the Lord opened to listen to the things which were spoken by Paul. When she and her household were baptized, she begged us, saying, “If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come into my house, and …
“If you must break the law, do it to seize power.”
The above words were uttered by Julius Caesar, dictator of Rome for just one year before being assassinated. His very name has become a synonym for “ruler” or “king.” Rome had many levels and types of rulers, depending on location and purpose. The duoviri, Latin for “two men” and known in English as the duumvirs were the highest joint magistrates of the cities and …
Hail, Britannia!
Our heroine, Tia, comes from a tribe known as the Dumnonii, in Britannia. Britannia is a Latinization of the native Brittonic word for the island, Pritanni. (In Freedom, I use Britannia for both the Latin and Brittonic name for simplicity’s sake.) For the Romans, Britannia was a hugely attractive target. This was a land rich in metals (especially iron, tin, …
Meet Paulos
If you’ve read my books, you know that my heroes and heroines are characters that are only mentioned a few times in the Bible. Major personages, like Moses and Joshua, are there, but they are not the focus of the story. For my next series, Paul will be a little more involved than Moses and Joshua were. Each story will take place in …
Meet Quin and Tia
Elantia is Sold into Freedom’s heroine. She’s from southwest Britannia, the area that is now Devon and Kent. Her father is the chief of their small village, which is part of the Dumnonii tribe. Britannia was inhabited by the people we now call Celtics, though they weren’t known by that name until the 17th century. They were actually many disparate …
Join Me in Philippi
I’ve been AWOL for about six weeks now. It’s been an incredibly busy 6 weeks, bookwise, on top of two birthdays and Christmas in the same week. I think I’m almost recovered. On the 15th I submitted my manuscript for Guideposts’ upcoming series “Ordinary Women of the Bible.” My book is about Jochebed, Moses’s birth mother. It was one of the …
The Ancient Father
Yesterday was Father’s Day. I was thinking about fathers, and my next books which are set in ancient Rome. So then I thought about dads in Rome. Then I thought about how different God our Heavenly Father is from father in ancient Rome. Yeah, weird, I know. But that’s how my mind works when I’m in the middle of a …
No, Not the Star Wars Kind: 11 Fast Facts About the Praetorian Guard
Whenever a movie or book has an army, there’s almost always some kind of elite group that serve as the guardians of the leader, whether good or bad. And they’re usually called the Praetorian Guard. The real Praetorian Guard (cohortes praetorianae) was an elite unit of the Imperial Roman army. They were part bodyguard, part secret police, part soldier. Originally, the Praetorians were elite guards …
10 Interesting Facts About Roman Housing
The ancient Romans created magnificent buildings, both public and private. Here are 11 facts you might not have known. Architecture up to this point had yielded buildings that were beautiful, but necessarily on a smaller scale due to the weight of the materials. Roman concrete, the innovation of the arch, and vaulting allowed the Romans to build truly beautiful, massive buildings. As far as …