Recently, I've gone somewhere, done something, or seen something amazing I've shared in these pages. Here, you'll find my most recent posts, covering a wide range of topics that pique my interest. Whether you're passionate about travel, captivated by photography, enchanted by music, or intrigued by computer programming, there's likely to be something here for everyone!

Dive in and explore the latest insights, stories, and adventures that I have to share. Enjoy your stay!

Pirates of the Mediterranean

By: Paul S. Cilwa	Posted: 6/4/2026		Page Views: 133
Hashtags: #History #Pirates #Isaurians #Cilicia #SlaveTrade #Antioch #SeleuciaPieria #Atargatis #LucianofSamosata
Lucian's ship is boarded by pirates!
Estimated reading time: 23 minute(s) (5271 words)

Lucian and Demetrios (with Veritas the monkey) left Alexandria on a hot morning in July, the white limestone of the Pharos shining above the harbor in the new sun and the gulls performing the small acrobatic loops they performed every day at sailing time. The ship was a Syrian merchantman called the Tyche, a fat-bellied grain hauler making the run home empty after delivering her cargo to the imperial granaries. Empty hulls ride high and roll badly, but they take passengers cheaply; and her captain, a Sidonian named Eshmunazar who declared (as often as he could work it into the conversation) that he had been making this crossing since he was eleven, kept the kind of disciplined ship that hopefully would not lose its horses overboard in a summer chop.

Death and Taxes

By: Paul S. Cilwa	Posted: 6/3/2026		Page Views: 119
Hashtags: #History #Alexandria #Nile #Mystery #Grain
Grain theft, investigation, and a crocodile's judgment.
Estimated reading time: 22 minute(s) (5100 words)

Three days after Lucian's performance at the Library, Celer found him watching merchants negotiate at the harbor. His expression carried the weight of a man who'd discovered something that shouldn't have been possible.

Marian The Librarian

By: Paul S. Cilwa	Posted: 6/2/2026		Page Views: 126
Hashtags: #History #Alexandria #Library #Galen #Manuscripts #Rhetoric #LucianofSamosata
Lucian speaks in the greatest Library in the world.
Estimated reading time: 8 minute(s) (1804 words)

The first order of business in Alexandria was practical: finding decent quarters and a stable for the horses. The second was asking for directions to the Library. This proved more complicated than expected.

The High Seas

By: Paul S. Cilwa	Posted: 6/1/2026		Page Views: 121
Hashtags: #History #Voyage #Alexandria #Thrace #Hemp #Writing #LucianofSamosata
Lucian and Demetrios discover cannabis.
Estimated reading time: 10 minute(s) (2216 words)

The merchant vessel that carried them from Carthage was functional and unremarkable. It smelled of rope and salt and the practical business of moving cargo from one place to another. The crew was mixed—Syrians, Egyptians, Greeks, a few Romans overseeing imperial interests.

The Curse of the Monkey's Tomb

By: Paul S. Cilwa	Posted: 5/31/2026		Page Views: 174
Hashtags: #History #Carthage #Mummy #Demetrios #Syria #Home
A beautiful corpse forces a choice.
Estimated reading time: 10 minute(s) (2371 words)

Carthage announced itself long before they saw it: the smell of it, the noise of it, the particular quality of light that comes off a harbor where a thousand ships have convinced themselves they own the sea. The harbor was packed. Merchant vessels and grain ships and the occasional sleek Roman military corvette, all of them crammed into a space that seemed designed for half the number. Sailors shouted in a dozen languages. Dock workers moved cargo. Seagulls circled overhead. Street vendors hawked their wares.

Bad Water

By: Paul S. Cilwa	Posted: 5/30/2026		Page Views: 105
Hashtags: #History #Mauretania #Berbers #Baquates #Celer #Tala #Eclipse #Curse #LucianofSamosata
Only Lucian can stop a tribe from dying.
Estimated reading time: 20 minute(s) (4678 words)

Lucian had rehearsed, in the long second between the woman's words and whatever came next, a number of deaths. He had read Herodotus. He knew what was done to captives in the wild places: the throats opened over altars, the slow markets, the things the Nasamones were said to do that he had quoted at Demetrios not three hours before. He stood with his wrists bound and his heart going like a trapped bird and waited to discover which of his many readings was about to come true.

Strangers On A Boat

By: Paul S. Cilwa	Posted: 5/29/2026		Page Views: 186
Hashtags: #History #Tingis #Tangier #Mauretania #Berbers #Baquates #MilitaryCourier #Celer #Antaeus #Abila #LucianofSamosata
Lucian and Demetrios meet the mystery man.
Estimated reading time: 18 minute(s) (4252 words)

For a moment nobody said anything. The wind filled the silence, and the deck rose and fell, and the man with the pale gray eyes stood waiting for an answer to a question that Lucian could not begin to make sense of.

Calpe Diem

By: Paul S. Cilwa	Posted: 5/28/2026		Page Views: 182
Hashtags: #History #Calpe #Gibraltar #PillarsOfHeracles #Abila #Mauretania #Tingis #Demetrios #Hispania #Spain #LucianofSamosata
Lucian and Demetrios hike to the top of the Pillar of Heracles.
Estimated reading time: 19 minute(s) (4344 words)

The coaster left Gades at first light. Demetrios and Lucian stood with their two horses, patient and steaming in the cold air of the deck. By midday Mons Calpe filled the southeastern sky—closer than Lucian had imagined, bigger, more sheer; a great wedge of pale limestone rising straight out of the sea, as if the gods, having decided to mark the edge of the inner world, had wanted no one to mistake their mark for anything else.

Rivers of Wine

By: Paul S. Cilwa	Posted: 5/27/2026		Page Views: 193
Hashtags: #History #Gades #Gadir #Baetis #Phoenicians #Melqart #Hercules #TrueHistory #Tavern #Hispania #Spain #LucianofSamosata
Lucian trades tall tales with a tavern full of sailors.
Estimated reading time: 17 minute(s) (3880 words)

They left Corduba a week after Saturnalia, on a wide-bottomed river barge that smelled of olive oil and tar and the wet wool of the bargeman's cloak. The Baetis ran slow at that season, brown and patient, and the barge ran with it. Lucian sat in the bow with his cloak wrapped tight and watched the bank slide past—mile after mile of winter orchard, of harvested vineyard, of villas shuttered against the cold, the smoke of farmhouse chimneys rising in thin columns into a sky that had lost its blue. He said very little.

I'll Be Home for Saturnalia

By: Paul S. Cilwa	Posted: 5/26/2026		Page Views: 182
Hashtags: #History #Corduba #Castulo #Saturnalia #AntoninePlague #Demetrios #Athens #Hispania #Spain #LucianofSamosata
Lucian and Demetrios prepare for Saturnalia; Lucian is devastated by news from home.
Estimated reading time: 19 minute(s) (4447 words)

Castulo had been good to them. They had ridden into the silver city in the first week of November with the cinnabar of Mariana still under their fingernails, intending to stay perhaps four days and to push on for Corduba; they had stayed a fortnight, and then another, and would have stayed longer if the calendar had not begun to whisper at them that the Saturnalia was coming and that they were two hundred miles from anywhere they wished to spend it. They had bathed every day. They had drunk wine that did not taste of dust. Lucian had given three performances in the town's small theater and had been paid generously and had not, for once, picked any fights with the local schools. Demetrios had slept until the fourth hour every morning, which for Demetrios was practically dissipation. By the time they rode out of the western gate at the beginning of December, with their saddlebags heavier than they had been when they came in, both of them looked at each other and laughed at how little they resembled the men who had ridden south from the cinnabar.