A fictional recovered manuscript from 400 AD details several years in the lives of two aristocratic Roman pagans in their late twenties, the siblings Aeneas and Honoria, as they defend their traditional values against a hostile, militant Christianity bent on obliterating every trace of paganism. The brother and sister both find lovers, but face overwhelming difficulties as the empire is drawn into a maelstrom of intrigues, religious and political rivalries, warfare, mayhem, and murder. Aeneas, an amateur boxer who loves the philosophy of Aristotle, is a soldier, adventurer, scholar, and...

Herman Melville was a genius endowed with a remarkable capacity to detect fraud and humbug. From the composition of Moby-Dick in 1851 until his death in 1891, his writings are slyly disguised and damning exposes of the flawed assumptions and ideologies that prevailed in his day. Similarly flawed assumptions and ideologies are just as prominent today. With the powerful perception and reasoning of innate genius, Melville's writings clarify the causes behind, for example, the ideological polarization and gridlock in today's politics, the growing hostilities between religions, and the flawed...