Reading Order

I had an email from a wonderful reader named Sandra, who very sensibly asked what's the right order to read the books of the series?

That was when I realized that silly Gary has never written it down, so here for the record is the book sequence:

The Pericles Commission

The Ionia Sanction

Sacred Games

The next book in line has working title The Marathon Conspiracy.  Working titles don't always stick, so stay tuned on that.

Each book is written to stand on its own, so technically it doesn't really matter in what order you pick them up.  I know for sure some readers have come to the series starting with book 2 or 3, and then gone to Pericles Commission.

Of course if a character appears in a later book, then you know they survived any earlier books!  Beyond that unavoidable information, I'm careful to omit spoilers on who did it from earlier adventures.

Sacred Games: Gary has books!

A box of these arrived the other day:

Which means we're all printed and ready to go!  Official release date is May 21.

Meanwhile, the fourth book is with my brilliant editor, and I'm 20,000 words into the fifth.

A Cherry History

Cherries have been around since forever.  Cherry stones regularly appear at neolithic sites across Europe and the Middle East.  Back in those days of course they were all wild cherries.

The earliest mention of cultivating cherries comes from classical Greece.  It's in a book called Enquiry Into Plants by a chap named Theophrastus.  Theophrastus was a student of Aristotle (who was in turn taught by Plato, whose teacher was Socrates, who was taught by Diotima.)  This puts him about a hundred years after the time of Nico and Diotima.

It's clear from his text that cherry orchards have been around for some time.  The dating on the first cherry orchard can be bookended because cherries don't get a mention in Hesiod's book Works and Days.  Hesiod is more or less the same date as Homer, and Works and Days is like the archaic Greek version of The Dummy's Guide to Farming.  Cultivated cherries probably are a late archaic or a classical creation.

Sabazios

Sabazios sounds like a name that should belong to a composer of classical music, but he is in fact an ancient Phrygian god. The cult of Sabazios made it into Athens some time in the mid-400s BC.    Which we know for sure because by the end of the 400s Aristophanes had written a play (now lost) in which Sabazios is ejected from the city.

The odd thing is that although the Athenians were extremely tolerant of other religions, they disliked this particular cult.   The orator Demosthenes once attacked a political enemy by claiming he partook in rites to Sabazios.  The clear implication was that anyone who worshiped Sabazios was a disreputable crackpot.

Demosthenes also says the rites involved frenzied dancing while holding snakes and chanting, "Euoi saboi!  Euoi saboi!"

The -zios part of Sabazios is cognate with the Greek Zeus and the Latin Deus. Despite which, the Greeks associated Sabazios with Dionysos.  Herodotus refers to the Phrygians worshipping Dionysos in contexts where he clearly means Sabazios.

The most viable explanation is that in Phrygia, Sabazios was a god of the harvest and of barley in particular, thus probably with beer making.   Aristophanes in one of his comedies refers to "the sleep of Sabazios" to mean guardsmen who've drifted off after drinking.  While in Athens, Dionysos was the god of the harvest and of wine. 

There are problems with this though. Archaic images of what's believed to be Sabazios show him on horseback and carrying a staff, which isn't particularly agricultural.  Even well into Roman times, the rites of Sabazios continued to involve orgiastic dancing while holding live snakes. While this sounds like fun, the snakes are not even remotely agricultural.

Finally, every shrine to Sabazios had its own Hand. The Hand was always a sculpture, shown upright, in a pose of benediction that might look familiar to modern church goers. Here are some hands of Sabazios:

       

These are from the British Museum, Harvard, and the Walters Museum.  The Hand of Sabazios usually holds something, an acorn or a snake or sometimes even a small figure.

The teenager's guide to WW1

My teenage daughter's current assignment in her history class is to write a war correspondent report from the trenches of Gallipoli during WW1.  While I wouldn't normally stick into this blog anything that was both family and school, I can't resist her first draft;  I herewith give you a teenager's take on WW1:

HEY STEFFO!!!

We’re here in this stupid &#^#%@ bay and all about to die L except everyone’s trying to be all honourable and we’re just like meh. 

The Turks aren’t very good at aiming coz we’re all still alive.

I miss my teddy bear, and my nice warm bed.  Trenches are like SO unfashionable.

Day to day fighting includes the same routine as everywhere else: Aim, fire, shoot, duck.  Repeat.

If this telegram is sent you in error please do NOT (repeat NOT) serve it with broccoli.  It should instead be lightly stewed for best results add sugar.  Thankyou.

Love from

Falshywalshy Official War Idiot Correspondent who volunteered for this (that was dumb o.o)

PS.  Someone just died next to me.  I suspect oxygen suffocation from laughter.