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BOOK UPDATES

It wouldn't make any sense, and certainly wouldn't respect the readers, if characters or events or plots were changed after a book has been bought and downloaded.

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However, there is a historical aspect.  History may be stretched, but it's not broken.  Events and people are researched against the material available, but if something is reported as fact and it's later discovered not to be true, that casts this whole enterprise under a shadow.  If new material is discovered that either corrects or enhances facts stated in the books, the appropriate book will be updated and the information will also be posted here ... so previous readers aren't deprived.

CLEOPATRA 53-52 BC

WHAT'S TRUE

The paragraph about Crassus' missing 10,000 legionaries has been rewritten as follows ---

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When everything was said and done, 10,000 Roman legionaries were captured.  What do you do with 10,000 captives?  The Parthian practice was to use captives as border guards at the furthest points from their original homes.  There’s some media coverage attempting to place these soldiers, finally, in the Tibetan town of Liquian.  50% of the villagers have Caucasian DNA by analysis (although, the actual lab that did the work isn’t mentioned) … blue eyes, Roman noses, local legend aligns themselves with Romans, etc.  There’s a circumstantial/speculative sequence of events from the battle in Zhizhi in Kazakhstan to Tibet, and some very minor archaeologic artifacts … and it’s all really nothing more than a historian’s urban legend.  It comes from a basic misunderstanding of how cultures and ethnicities of the time dispersed across the trade routes, but makes an interesting basis for magazine articles and lecture tours.

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--- This is the most credible explanation, IMHO:

https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/no-romans-needed-to-explain-chinese-blondes

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CLEOPATRA 53-52 BC

WHAT'S TRUE

The text about Cleopatra has been enhanced as follows --

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Cleopatra VII Thea Philopator

Did she get a windfall of gold in 52 BC?  The empire was dead broke and in debt in 54 BC.  By 49 BC, after taking the reins of the country her ancestors had been running into the ground, she was able to pay off the Roman debt.  Maybe?

 

As far as engaging in state sponsored tomb robbing:

For if there were but any hopes of getting money, she would violate both temples and sepulchres. Nor was there any holy place, that was esteemed the most inviolable, from which she would not fetch the ornaments it had in it: nor any place so profane, but was to suffer the most flagitious treatment possible from her, if it could but contribute somewhat to the covetous humour of this wicked creature …” – Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, Book XV, 4:1

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Full disclosure: of all the ancient historians (including Romans), Josephus hated Cleopatra with an unrivaled passion.  This is because she subtlely and unsubtly tried to annex Judaea, turning Herod the Great into a petty administrator, for most of her reign.  Judaea was just “in the way” to the rest of the East.

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