Sword & Sandal

The reference staff take turns putting together book displays in two locations on the second floor of our library. It is an opportunity to be creative and to showcase the many facets of our adult collection.

As a boy in the '60's, I watched many "sword and sandal" movies on Saturday afternoon TV. These included the "Sons of Hercules" films, Italian B-movies featuring muscular actors like Steve Reeves, here pictured. You could extend the genre to include many more Hollywood films, such as Ben Hur and Cleopatra.

In the last decade, the genre has come around again, with new films about gladiators, the siege of Troy, the battle of Marathon, and an HBO series about ancient Rome. I began to notice that popular fiction mirrored the on-screen revival, with new fiction titles and series with settings from the Bronze Age to Byzantium. Once I began to look, I easily found more than enough books for a two week display back in September.

After some positive feedback from a patron by way of one of our branch managers, followed by her request for my list, to put the display up at her branch, I thought that I might as well post my list here. It took a bit of work to assemble, and it will be out of date in a year or two. Maybe someone here can use it. It's mostly recent popular fiction, but you will see Massie's older Roman titles and Vidal's Julian. I did not include Graves's Claudius novels or Yourcenar's Hadrian. The list here was a little truncated to fit on a large bookmark to accompany the display.

Sword & Sandal: Antiquity in Popular Fiction
Barone, Sam / Mystic Empire, Dawn of Empire, Empire Rising
Bradshaw, Gillian / various
Cockrell, Amanda / The Legions of the Mist
Davis, Lindsay / Falco series
Dietrich, William / The Scourge of God
Doherty, P. C. / The Gates of Hell: A Mystery of Alexander
the Great
Downie, Ruth / Medicus, Terra Incognita
Dufaux / Swords of Rome
Duffy, James / Sand of the Arena
Durham, David Anthony / Hannibal's Children, Pride of
Carthage
Ford, Michael Curtis / The Ten Thousand, Gods and Legions,
The Last King, The Fall of Rome
Geagley, Brad / Day of the False King
Gemmell, David / Shield of Thunder, Troy: The Fall of Kings
George, Margaret / Cleopatra, Helen of Troy
Iggulden, Conn / Emperor series
McCullough, Colleen / Masters of Rome series
Manfredi, Valerio / Spartan
Massie, Allan / Caesar
Nicastro, Nicholas / The Isle of Stone
Oden, Scott / Men of Bronze, Memnon
Pressfield, Steven / Gates of Fire, Tides of War, Last of the
Amazons, The Virtues of War, The Afghan Campaign
Rivers, Francine / Mark of the Lion series
Roberts, John Maddox / SPQR series
Saylor, Steven / Gordianus the Finder series
Tarr, Judith / Bring Down the Sun
Vidal, Gore / Julian
Wishart, David / Parthian Shot
Wolfe, Gene / Soldier of the Mist, Soldier of Arete, Soldier of Sidon