Rebecca :
Both Webmaster & I were enthralled by your story. Are there really accounts of the battles & people's lives that you wrote about, in the ancient writings?
Michael :
Absolutely. The best & fullest account of the March of the Ten Thousand is a first-person memoir, the Anabasis, written by the leader of the march, Xenophon. He provided marvelous detail of the battles & struggles the Greeks faced, the exotic tribes they encountered & the personal rivalries & strains within their own camp. Xenophon also wrote many other works that I relied upon, to flesh out the life & words of Socrates, depict the Spartan & Persian military lifestyles, & describe simple daily life in Athens during Greece's Golden Age.
Other ancient authors also provided first- or second-hand information on the events & characters in this book: Plato, Herodotus & Plutarch, for example, were valuable sources. Others ideas I took from fictional events depicted by Homer in the Iliad & Odyssey. Much of my knowledge of the Delphic oracle & ancient occult practices I derived from archeological & scholarly studies. And of course, since I am a novelist, some of the book had to come from my own imagination. Here, though, I took great care to ensure that everything was grounded on fact, or at least educated conjecture. The female protagonist Asteria, for example, is not explicitly described in any ancient works -- yet traces of her presence appear here & there in the Anabasis, like faint footsteps visible when the light is just right. My job as a novelist is to bring those hints of life into the open, & construct with them a life that will resonate with a modern reader.
Rebecca :
How long did it take you to write this long & engrossing tale? Are you a computer writer?
Michael :
I'd like to say that it took me a lifetime, because that's how long I had thought about writing a novel, reading up on materials that interested me, & storing ideas in my head. For practical purposes, though, the initial research & writing took me about seven months. That's when I felt the manuscript was good enough for submission. St. Martin's Press bought it, but it took another year of re-writing before it was really ready for publication. I had a lot to learn about editing, drafts & the whole process.
I've heard that some people write on legal pads & then transfer their work to the computer for editing. I do just the opposite. I'm a very fast typist, so I do all my initial drafts on the computer. This also helps me to organize my notes & sources, & with the amount of research I do, these can be quite extensive. After I have a reasonable first draft, I print out the whole manuscript & then do all my editing with an old-fashioned pencil, transferring the corrections to the computer later. Things become visible on the printed page that just do not come out on a computer screen. I then repeat this cycle five or six times before it's all done.
Incidentally, all my writing is done between midnight & 3 a.m. -- the “vampire's hour,” as the Italian phrase goes. No distractions, no appointments. I usually like to sit by the fire in the living room with my computer or manuscript on my lap when I write.
Rebecca :
How did your interest in The Ten Thousand arise & is history your favorite subject to teach?
Michael :
I came across the subject of The Ten Thousand quite by accident, simply stumbling upon it in a book on eBay. You know, in the 19th century, when Greek & Latin were routinely taught in high schools & colleges, the story of the March of the Ten Thousand was quite well known. When you studied Latin, you read Caesar's Gallic Wars. When you studied Greek, you read Xenophon's Anabasis, both of which were well-regarded for their clear, uncluttered style & purity of language. Greek was dropped in most schools in the early 1900s, & Latin in the middle of this century, so both stories are almost completely unknown to current generations (older students, however, will almost certainly be able to still recite memorized passages from Caesar!). So in a way, I'm lucky to be living in these times, when the story of the Ten Thousand is able to astonish readers again, almost as much as the original Greeks who first heard the story. A hundred years ago, as familiar as it was, it would not have seemed so amazing.
As to the second part of your question -- I guess if I were a teacher, history would be my favorite subject. I once taught a semester of high-school Latin, & my wife & I currently home-school our children, but other than that I don't teach. Before taking up novel-writing, I was a foreign language translator (Spanish, French & Portuguese), & before that, in what now seems another life & another dimension, I was an investment banker.
Rebecca :
Yes, I studied Caesar's Gallic Wars as a school girl. More for the learning of Latin than for the military information. In what ways do you think the armies of the past have influenced today's military?
Michael :
You know, many of the great battles of antiquity were true classics of strategy & tactics that continue to be studied today in the greatest military schools. Hannibal's march across the Alps & his slaughter of the Romans at Cannae, Julius Caesar's campaigns against the Gauls -- these were brilliant examples of military genius, & the lessons of those times should not be lost, particularly when the battles we now face are less likely to resemble the great set pieces of World War II, & more like the ambushes & guerrilla warfare that many of the ancient generals faced when subduing their foes.
I'm truly not an expert in modern warfare so I hesitate to press farther, but since you raised the question, I might refer interested readers to two books by Victor Davis Hanson which explore precisely this issue: The Soul of Battle & Carnage and Culture. His studies of ancient Greek warfare were also of great use to me while researching my own book.
Rebecca :
How, would you say, have today's individual warriors changed from the heroes in your book?
Michael :
Probably the most obvious & important way they have changed is in their manner of fighting & killing. And I don't simply mean guns today vs. swords back then. It's a fundamental psychological & physical shift in warfare. During Greek times, the only way you could actually kill your foe was to step right up to him, look him in the face, & use your own sword, generally after several minutes of brawling, feinting & slamming your shield against him. Even arrows from a distance were not reliably lethal. A soldier really had to get in close & do the work for himself. It must have been a terrifying prospect for men in the front line of a charging Greek phalanx -- & yet soldiers competed fiercely for the honor of being in that front line.
When you think about it, warfare of that kind must have been truly terrible. It involved a belief system, a set of morals, & a pure willingness to die painfully for a cause, that may be quite different from what today's warriors require. This is not in the least to denigrate the bravery or skill of soldiers today. The fact is, it takes a completely different kind of bravery & skill today, to face death from unseen enemies, firing from a distance, & with much more deadly weapons than in ancient times. I can't necessarily say that one is more extreme than the other. It's just that we are so accustomed to the notion of modern warfare that it's difficult for us to comprehend the horror of ancient battle techniques, & the pride & glory that a victor felt in accomplishing his feat solely on the strength of his own muscles & his own physical skill.
Rebecca :
Thank you, Michael, for taking time out of your busy life to answer our questions. What are you doing these days -- is there a new book in the works?
Michael :
You bet! I have a three-book contract, so I can't relax for a while. Gods and Legions is the next book, & will be published this November. It takes place in the waning days of the Roman Empire, & is a fictionalized account of the Emperor Julian, a man who is relatively unknown in our times, but who had arguably the greatest impact on our culture of any emperor of antiquity. I'm currently working on my third book, which is tentatively titled The Last King of Greece. It takes us back to the 1st century B.C. & recounts the life of Mithridates, again a man little known in our times, but who was a brilliant barbarian king & general whom Rome considered its most fearsome enemy ever -- even greater than Hannibal.
As you can tell, I delight in finding obscure but important historical personages & trying to bring them back to life, in a way that truly raises people's excitement for the classics & for ancient history. And I have a great time myself, in the process!
Thanks for interviewing me, Rebecca. I always look forward to receiving your eZine, & it's an honor to be featured in it.
Rebecca :
Do catch my review of Michael Curtis Fords' The Ten Thousand
Rebecca Brown
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