I have added some more thousand words to the The Lybian draft. At the moment, the Delian League fleet is departing Cyprus towards Egypt. Very interesting part, from a character developing point of view, as well as from a hoplological one! Great fun I am having on my daily commuting train trips back and forth (basically about 90% of my writing time!), yeah!
Considering most of the rest of the book, the POV of the Egyptians and the Greeks will be closely related (Amyrtaeus and Argiros), I'll need to set up very clear and strong personalities from them all, so they interact well enough.
I'll have to do the same with the Persians and Megabyzos, the Persian main character. That'll be fun... :-P
And I'll take the chance to give a quick kick on the back to the Spanish National Mail Service, that yesterday gave me a boucher informing me that my Caiman Amerique (via Amazon.fr) postal packet has already arrived and that I could pass and retrieve from to-day and for the next forthnight.
What a surprise for me! Less than one week from Miami to Spain!
What dissilution when they told me that, somehow, the postman had failed to return the books to the postal office of my district.
Argh!!!
So I'll have to return tomorrow... Grrr...
Why am I so disappointed?
Because I ordered a book about the Persians I am very willing to read (need lots of documentation!) and because I also ordered Scott Oden's Men of Bronze, which I've been recommended, I was willing to read, it will be very useful for The Lybian, and, well, I cyber-know the author, and he's always been helpful and overall very nive with me... He managed to finish the damn thing, and to publish it! I have to learn from him!
BTW, you can get to Scott's blogger following the links on the sidebar of this very same blog... :-P
OK, enough ranting, I feel better... :)
I'll take the chance to send my blessings to cyber-friends who are going through hard times... Hugs...
Kallisti!
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tempvs fvgit et verba volant sed scripta manent... abovt history, writing, classics, and historical fiction
4 comments:
Great going with the writing, Excalibor! Keep it up and you'll finish The Lybian before I finish Memnon ;) Hope you enjoy Men of Bronze!
Hah! LOL! xD
Thanks, but it's rough, low, low, draft stuff at the moment (e.g. I wrote Argiros talking a Cyrenaic mercenary about the Long Walls at Pireos when he was a child; the truth is that they were started more or less in the middle of this Egyptian affair! Of course I wrote this dialog this morning, and read Thukidydes tonight... :-P
Ah, research! Don't you love it? hehe)
Anyway--and nevertheless--, it's fun... :-)
As for the "metallic men", I'll let you know (I love to able to do that! :-)
Fnord!
I'm wondering did you have anything about the following:
a) What was the Athenian Fleet doing in Cyprus when the Inaros asked for help? (I assume in order to isolate / besiege Memphis).
b) What Inaros plea consisted of? Not the nonsense about sharing Egypt with the Athenins, I suspect more about sure access to egyptian grain.
c) The debate in the Assembly concerning diverting the ships, and who supported it (Pericles, Ephaties?). How or what brought the Rest of the Delian League around. Was there for example a meeting of the Delian League Synod?
just some thoughts.
Pierre
Pierre, good questions...
OK, I set the Delian League fleet beaching in Cyprus when the Egyptians arrived in a merchant ship, after a lot of trouble (because in Spring and Summer winds are dominantly from northwest-by-north-ly, northwesternly)... This is temporary, once I manage to get a reliable Kypros map, I'll probably have the greeks engaging the Persians there before the Egyptian emmbassy arrives)
(they knew where the greeks were bound to be because my Barca and Kyrene mercenaries are very well related to spionage networks, and the huge Delian League fleet is a broadcast secret :-)
Inaros's ambassador, an egyptian priest of Isis (although maybe Amun or any other divinity may be more adecuate, but I think I recall reading somewhere there was a strong Isis cult at Papremis) named Khenemetamen arrives with a crew and one of the mercenaries as translator and aidé, (he's called Leucon).
(note: at one point in the future I'll normalize greek, persian and egyptian, and the rest, names to a coherent graphical representation...)
My offer, which is not really explicitly stated, but more or less suggested, is that of trade lines and advantages in all of Egypt/Kemet products, specially grain and papyrus, and the control of Kyrenaica, which was very important, from a strategically POV, and would have allowed the Delian League to easily control Peloponnesian League members, and be closer to Kart-Hadash and the Magna Hellas (BTW, Magna Graecia is latin, how was that said in greek? did they refer to Italy in some one or simply talk about the colonies? sigh, sometimes this is frustrating)
As for the rest, I jumped over the orders... Kharitimides and the Generals of the fleet get together and with the Ambassador and discuss which option to recommend to the Synod, then a ship is sent, and three days later (unrealistic, I know, it will probably be 1 week or even two, to give time for the members of the Synod to gather and discuss the issue...) it returns with the orders to go and assist Inaros...
As I am writing from three points of view, I am leaving some things behind, it would be impossible for the MCs to know what happened... On the second revision, however, I may change the whole thing to third omniscient, to be able to cover this, and other important parts of the story more properly... Actually, rearranging the scenes just a little bit, I could write in three first persons (Argiros, Aomahorte and Bagabuxsha) and third omniscient...
but that'll have to wait, I'm afraid, until I have the first draft finished (1st round, go!)
I suspect that Ephialtes was the man behind the decision... He was the strong man in Athens at the moment, Perikles just a young supporter, and with Kimon out of the scene--his supporters very weakened in the Assembly or the Areopagus or the Ekklesia--, and with his (Ephialtes's) strong anti-Spartan feelings, it would have been relatively easy for him to push for this measure... Perikles would naturally follow, I think (gotta read Rex Wagner's Perikles's bio novel again) but I may be wrong... As for the rest of the League, I think many of the islands would have huge gains with Egypt's liberation: their ships would be ready to move grain back to Hellas and Athens, and most of the ships returning would have to stop by in their habors (or face the possibility of an attack from Kypros, still a Persian satrapy); in both cases, they would have huge gains, and selling the goods to Ionian towns in Asia would only make it better... As for non-economical reasons, I'd like to touch a couple of issues, which are the huge power of Athens and her silver mines and politicians, and hybris, which I think permeated the whole of the politicians, in a way or another, at the time...
I have pushed for a League Synod in Delos, but of course 3 days won't do... No author mentions it, though, and I am starting to think that it could have been the case that it was a decission taken in situ, and the League was just informed when they already were in Egypt... It sounds irresponsible, but news travelled really slowly those times, and my likely 2 weeks for a reply could easily turn into months, when the rebellion would not be able to assault Memphis because of the impending Nile growth, which naturally put a stop to big military operations for at least a couple of months (one for the water to retire, and another for the soil to "fix"... I would not conduct war just after that, becasue it was the time when the fertile soil would be prepared, seeds would be planted, etc... survuval demanded that war was left for the winter and spring... summer was for the Nile, and autumn for the food)
but I dunno, still lots of things to figure out... second round will see a lot of changes to the draft, indeed!
thanks for your help!
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