Book description
A consuming story of love, loss and redemption set in the classical
world of Rome and Greece, Of Merchants & Heroes is the story of a
young man's pursuit of his father's murderer and and of the values and
qualities he develops that will make him a man... a man capable of a
deep, noble and enduring love. At the end of the third century BC, as
Republican Rome's long war with Carthage was at last drawing to a close,
it was already threatened by a new enemy, Philip, the tyrant king of
Macedon in the east... Into this turbulent world emerges our Roman hero,
Marcus, whose father is brutally murdered by pirates on a journey from
Italy to Corfu on a visit to his uncle. Fate takes him to some of the
great cities of the Greco-Roman world at a time of major turbulence,
where he learns much and finds love unexpectedly. This is a remarkable,
beautifully written debut that explores political and philosophical
questions that are timeless - democracy and tyranny, war and
self-defence, right and duty - as well as questions of love, loyalty and
betrayal.
Paul Waters is a well-travelled classicist, and though educated in
Britain, he has lived much of his life abroad - in Africa, America,
Greece among other places. He now writes full time. This is his first
novel.
