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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;dougsmit, post: 1824476, member: 19463&quot;]For me, the question remains where the line is drawn between history and historical fiction.&nbsp;&nbsp; In recent years, we have seen a particularly great example in the Dan Brown books (DaVinci Code and sequels) that were presented as fiction and mistaken by many people as an expose of hidden history.&nbsp; If we are writing about a subject on which concrete information is scanty it would be easy to confuse the matter by presenting thoughts as facts.&nbsp; The Roman historians were bad enough with their biased reportage but I am unclear how I am to know where research stopped and holes in the text were fantasied.&nbsp; Are Mr. Hughes&#039; biographies non-fiction or in that gray area we call historical fiction? </p><p><br /></p><p>It is an unfortunate fact of ancient history that there are subjects of interest about which we know next to nothing.&nbsp; In some cases what we know is that there is a coin (or a thousand coins) naming someone (Domitian II, Marius) about whom there are fewer lines of history than there are coins.&nbsp; In some cases these people are dated by the style of their coins.&nbsp; For example: If your coins look like Philip&#039;s, have the metal quality and weight of Philip&#039;s, perhaps you were a usurper in the time of Philip.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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