Table Of ContentPraise for the Books of Nicholas Nicastro
On Circumference: Eratosthenes and the Ancient Quest to Measure the
Globe:
“Forget the myth of Columbus' daring in imagining a round earth. Nicastro not
only traces the conception of a spherical world back more than a millennium
before the seafarer set sail but also recounts in fascinating detail how the ancient
Greek geometer Eratosthenes measured that sphere with astonishing accuracy.
Though it would be thousands of years before his feat received appropriate
recognition, Eratosthenes conducted his revolutionary science with nothing more
complex than a sundial and a compass. With reader-friendly clarity, Nicastro
explains the surprisingly simple calculations behind the earth measurement. But
readers learn about much more than geodesy: Nicastro delivers the deeply
human story of a multitalented genius whose tenure as the head of Alexandria's
famed library occasioned remarkable achievements in literature, history,
linguistics, and philosophy despite the political turmoil that periodically rocked
the Ptolemaic world. Indeed, this polymath plays out his long career against a
colorful backdrop peopled with a rich variety of conquerors and cosmologists,
murderers and mathematicians. A distant yesterday still furnishes fascinating
drama for readers today.”
--Bryce Christensen, Booklist
“Propelled by the story of Eratosthenes's solution of an ancient puzzle -- how
big is the earth? -- Circumference offers many unexpected pleasures along the
way. With an amiable voice and a flowing style, Nicholas Nicastro brings
historical places and people to vivid new life, from the shining city of
Alexandria to the great conqueror for whom it was named. A real treat for lovers
of history and science.
--Steven Strogatz, author of Sync: How Order Emerges from Chaos in the
Universe, Nature, and Daily Life, and Schurman Professor of Applied
Mathematics, Cornell University
“Given the paucity of material in English on Eratosthenes, anything is a
welcome addition, but this book is much better than nothing. In its pages,
historians of science will learn much about the ancient world, and historians of
the ancient world will learn much about science.”
--Bryn Mawr Classical Review
On Antigone’s Wake: A Novel of Imperial Athens:
“Nicastro is an author who clearly relishes his subject. Each sentence bursts
with juicy, nurturing historical detail and considered thought about the hopes,
aspirations, ideals and troubles of those who lived in the distant past. We follow
the triumphs and travails of Sophocles as he struggles to create his art and also
be what Athens wants him to be—a brilliant general. Athens as a great
civilisation is constructed in front of our eyes. Nicastro brings to life both the
back-streets of the city and the sea-battle-lanes of its Empire. The towering
giants of Western history, Sophocles, Euripides, Pericles—and his consort
Aspasia—are, through his vivid imagination, given a voice. This book allows the
reader to inhabit the Golden Age of Athens, and to taste its grit as well as its
glory.”
--Bettany Hughes, broadcaster and author of Helen of Troy: Goddess,
Princess, Whore
On The Isle of Stone: A Novel of Ancient Sparta:
“With The Isle of Stone, Nicholas Nicastro joins the illustrious pedigree of
Mary Renault, Valerio Massimo Manfredi and Steven Pressfield with great style
and enormous panache. His hero's checkered life story is used to frame a dark
and darkening history of Sparta between a hugely destructive natural disaster, a
great earthquake in 464 BC, and a self-inflicted, man-made debacle during the
prolonged and even more destructive Peloponnesian War. Nicastro knows his
ancient sources intimately, but also has the born novelist's instinct to flesh out
their bare bones all too plausibly. Nicastro's antiheroes of the isle of Sphacteria
are the dark side of Pressfield's heroes in Gates of Fire: both demand and repay
the attention of all lovers of expert historical fiction.”
--Paul Cartledge, Professor of Greek History, University of Cambridge, and
author of Alexander the Great: The Hunt for a New Past
“From its explosive first pages, The Isle of Stone draws you into the gritty
reality of Sparta during the Peloponnesian War. Nicastro writes powerful prose,
but this is no exercise in debunking. With drama, passion, and a sure touch for
the facts, Nicastro reveals the heroism behind the humiliation of the shocking
day when some of Sparta's unconquerable soldiers surrendered. His images of
life and death under the Mediterranean sun hit you like the glare of a polished
shield.”
--Barry Strauss, author of The Battle of Salamis: The Naval Encounter that
Saved Greece - and Western Civilization and Professor of History and Classics,
Cornell University
“Reading one of Nicastro's books has the same fascination as staring at a
terrible car crash. The scenes he constructs force us to grapple with the
disturbing roots of our own cultural assumptions. Each of these characters spins
into a series of bloody events far beyond individual control. Nicastro lays naked
the complex web of collective motivations that shape the events of history. The
Isle of Stone shows Nicastro's intimate understanding of this distant time and
deeply foreign culture. By giving human faces to the dry bones of ancient
battles, he goes a long way towards making ancient motivations somehow
explicable. Once again, Nicastro proves his talent for capturing the attitude of
historical times while spinning a passionate drama.”
--Pamela Goddard, Ithaca Times
On The Eighteenth Captain: The John Paul Jones Trilogy v. 1:
"Nicastro takes you by the scruff of your neck and yanks you into the action of
history. From the moment the spine is creased, you are there, on board the ship,
like Jim Hawkins in the apple barrel listening to Long John Silver's most secret
plan. . . . Kudos to Nicholas Nicastro and even more kudos to McBooks Press
for adding this finely wrought novel to their armada of Maritime literature!"
—Eric Machan Howd, Ithaca Times
"This maritime historical novel fairly shimmers with furtive lustiness and wry
humor. Embellishing John Paul Jones' early naval intrigues and sexual liasons,
Nicholas Nicastro preserves the true spirit of a mercurial and moody hero."
—Jill B. Gidmark University of Minnesota Professor of English
“In The Eighteenth Captain, Nicholas Nicastro gives us a nuanced, insightful
and thoroughly believable portrait of an American hero that few know beyond
his saying "I have not yet begun to fight" which, in fact, he probably did not say.
Nicastro does what the artist can do and the historian cannot; probe the inner
mind of the historical John Paul Jones, guess who he really was from the
empirical evidence, and then present that portrait in words and deeds that are on
the one hand often fiction, but on the other true to the spirit of Jones. And he
does it very well, showing us our American Tragic Hero, great but flawed, a
conqueror brought down by his own faults. The Eighteenth Captain is
beautifully framed by the fall-out of the French Revolution which represented
the end of much that Jones loved but was a consequence in part of Jones' own
actions, a lovely metaphor for the man's life and deeds. Carefully researched,
accurate in tone and detail, The Eighteenth Captain is an insightful portrait of a
man, a hero and his times, and what each of those things, in their essence, truly
mean."
—James L. Nelson, author of the Revolution at Sea Saga
Other Books by Nicholas Nicastro
Novels
The Eighteenth Captain
Between Two Fires
The Isle of Stone
Antigone’s Wake
The Passion of the Ripper
Non-Fiction
Circumference: Eratosthenes and the Ancient Quest to Measure the
Globe
Cover image © Jovan – Fotolia.com
•
Empire of Ashes
A novel of Alexander the Great
by
Nicholas Nicastro
•
Kinder Shore Books
Dedicated with love to my wife, Maryanne
Sine qua non
Foreword to the 2009 Edition
Just a few weeks after Empire of Ashes was first published in 2005, I
experienced what the people at National Public Radio call a “driveway story.”
That is, I heard something on the air that was so compelling that I pulled into my
driveway and sat in the car listening to it until it was finished.
The item was a commentary by writer and philosopher Alain de Botton, who
had produced a year-end series of commentaries on Big Ideas. The title was
“Having an idealized view of the world can be appealing and helpful.” The most
relevant part is the following: “We’re obsessed with puncturing ideals. We’re
obsessed by biographies which show us the man behind the statue and reveal
that the great figure was, in fact, a weakling with a bad temper. We can’t quite
get out of our minds how often the reality departs from the ideal…” To de
Botton’s mind, this was unfortunate, because idealization has its uses, especially
in helping us aspire to improve our world.
Now it must be admitted that, beyond simple judgments of thumbs-up or
thumbs-down, it’s pretty rare to hear discussions of aesthetics on the radio, even
on NPR. Still, having just published a decidedly mixed portrait of Alexander the
Great, I couldn’t help but wonder if I was one of those people who is “obsessed”
with puncturing ideals, who “can’t get it out his mind” that reality departs from
the ideal. Was Monsieur de Botton talking to me as I sat there in my driveway,
contemplating the chore of opening my manually-powered garage door in the
middle of another sub-ideal late December in upstate New York?
By way of explanation, Empire of Ashes tells the story of Alexander the Great
through the eyes of Machon, an Athenian soldier with historiographic
pretensions. Alexander respects Machon as a representative of that sophisticated
class of big-city Greeks who ordinarily look down their noses at the provincial
Macedonians. Machon starts off admiring Alexander, but as he witnesses his
patron’s gradual descent into paranoia and brutality, he comes to believe the man
would be better off dead than let loose among civilized folk. After Alexander
dies in Babylon, Machon is called to account by the pro-Macedonian faction in
Athens for his suspected role in the king’s demise.
In response, my character paints a decidedly human portrait of the would-
be god. What is important to remember, of course, is that narrator for most of the
book is Machon, and he is not necessarily a disinterested observer. He’s on trial
for his life. Nor should we believe everything said by Aeschines the prosecutor,
who is in the pay of the pro-appeasement faction. In his statement, Aeschines
praises Alexander to the skies, going out of his way to affirm every obsequious
myth about the man. In this sense the novel is not really about Alexander, but
about the fight over Alexander’s image in history.
Now even before the book’s formal publication I had some hints that this
approach might lead to some trouble. My agent had been busy selling translation
rights to the novel—and one of the first takers was a major publishing house in
Athens. In fact, my wife and I met representatives of this company (which will
remain nameless but is one of the leading Greek publishers) at Athens airport to
cement our deal. You may well imagine my surprise, however, when I returned
from my research trip to hear that the Greeks had withdrawn their offer to
publish. Apparently, they had finally gotten around to actually reading the book
they had purchased the rights to, and what they found troubled them. After
inquiring further, I found that their concerns included the following (and this is
their words):
-- “He [Nicastro] mentions Homer in a scene to state that scenes of brutalities
have happened in the past, when Achilles has punished Hector.”
-- “There is a jeu de mot with the world bottom. Ifestionas was the top and
Alexander the bottom to explain the homosexual relation between the two
friends.”
According to both the translator and the second reader the most important
thing is that “the author underestimates the strategical and the political genius of
Alexandros and emphasizes the bad aspects of his personality: homosexual,
capricious, brutal, drunk. There are many biographers of Alexandros who
mentioned all these problems but none of them ever implied that his brother was
the real hero. We know that this is fiction and that the author writes a historical
novel and not a non-fiction history book, but we also know that there is a
respectable part of the public who won't appreciate Empire of Ashes. That's why
we decided to withdraw our offer.”
“We don't have anything personal with you or the agent (it was a real pleasure
to meet you and your lovely wife) but we would like you to understand that the
subject of the book is very important for the Greek public. We wish you good
luck with the publication of the book in the States and we are looking forward to
collaborate with you in the future.”
Well, considering that the so-called “bad” aspects of Alexander’s personality,
