History Alive

I love history and now I get to learn it all over or mostly, for the first time, with the boys. We're doing Roman history and reading the excellent Augustus Ceasar's World by Genevieve Foster as well as the Story of the Word - History for the Classical Child by Susan Wise Bauer. We read aloud Shakespeare's Julius Ceasar and it's true I enjoy it more than the boys.

Besides that, we have the historical fiction readers which make history come to life by transporting you back to long ago far away times and places, populated with real people like ourselves, young and old: books like Mara, Daughter of the Nile and The Golden Goblet by Eloise Jarvis McGraw, Hittite Warrior and God King by Joanne Williamson, etc...

I just read about Cicero, Rome's foremost orator, writer and senator, who was killed by the Triumvirate who took over after the assassination of Julius Ceasar. He had once said about death, "When the time comes, I shall withdraw from life, not as one leaves home, but as from a temporary lodging place. On that brightest of all days, when I depart from the confusion of this world, I shall set out, I believe, for a far-off divine gathering of spirits...
But, if I am mistaken, in that I believe men's souls to be immortal, I am glad to be mistaken...
And all my life I shall continue to believe it..."

This was said before December 7, 43 B.C., the day of Cicero's death. B.C. - before Christ, before the Word became flesh and revealed God in full.