Ranks of Bronze
RANKS OF BRONZE arose from two bits of knowledge I ran into while I was an undergraduate. I don’t know which came first, but I wouldn’t have written the story–and the later novel–without both occurring.
I read all of Horace then for the first time. In an Ode he bewails the disgrace of Roman soldiers captured in Parthia taking foreign wives and being lost forever to their fatherland. At about the same time I read that, I learned in my Chinese history course that when China expanded westward during the Former Han Dynasty, Chinese troops in the neighborhood of modern Nepal met and defeated mercenaries equipped in what appears to be Roman fashion. It’s possible that the troops were prisoners whom the Parthians captured at Carrhae in 56 BC and sold eastward as military slaves (like the Mamelukes of a later day). continue reading…