Artistic License History / Africanus Trilogy

Culture

• The author treats "Barca" as a preexistent family which Hamilcar belonged to, as he introduces him as "Hamilcar from the Barca family" back when his sons are unknown to the Romans. Actually, the term originated with Hamilcar himself, being a nickname gained in battle (it means "lightning"). It's not even know if his sons were supposed to inherit it as a surname, so it might have not even served as a family name by including them.
• Pomponia constantly making Gnaeus a Henpecked Brother-in-law is a humorous but grossly idealized view of women in ancient Rome. Even whenever they were of noble origin, Roman women's domestic power was limited to their children, slaves and servants, certainly not towards husbands and male relatives, and were expected to be modest and dignified. This might be considered a deliberate license in order to present a more familiar home environment to modern readers, but it doesn't make it any less jarring: trying to loudly tear Gnaeus a new one when he gets the young Publius drunk would have got Pomponia in serious trouble.
• It is mentioned Publius Sr.'s library has a few volumes written by Socrates of all people, which is exceptionally odd given that Socrates was against writing as a medium of recording knowledge and thus left no writings of his own (this is the "Socratic problem": that all we know about him comes from external and very variable sources). This might be charitably considered an inside joke for philosophy aficionados, but if it is so, it is never elaborated upon.
• Senators are constantly described as wearing sandals along with their toga. This is such a pervasive image in portrayals of ancient Rome that it may look like a perfectly accurate image, when it is actually very wrong: a senator's toga was only worn with moccasins of red-dyed leather named calcei senatorii. In Rome, sandals were associated to workers, lower classes and foreigners, and as such, high citizens only used them as indoor slippers and in very informal occasions. It is worth to note that Scipio Africanus himself had the penchant to wear them with his toga due to his love for everything Greek, but this didn't extend to his role in the Senate, where he had to observe the proper etiquette.
• The trilogy mentions guards and slaves casually carrying weapons through the streets of Rome, and also portrays the tresviri nocturni as legionaries that serve as a full-fledged armed police. In real life, by this point of history, openly carrying weapons within the outline of Rome (the terrain named pomerium) was not only a crime, but also sacrilegous, and was allowed only when military presence demanded it. The tresviri did function as a police department, but they weren't a force of soldiers, but a trio of magistrates, solely three of them, who formed street patrols with the help of burly slaves. The kind of regular armed police described in the books would not be known until the times of Augustus, when the cohortes urbanae were instated in parallel to the tresiviri (who ultimately lost their functions and were phased out). It's ironic that the novel's version of Plautus is wary to speak ill of the army when tresviri pass along, as in real life they had nothing to do with it in any capacity.
• In the book, when the Hispanics in Hannibal's camp complain about their payment, he laments not to have brought his wife Imilce with him, claiming that her royal status among them would have quelled the troubles. In real life, Hispania was not an unified nation, but a mixed bag of independent and very different tribes, and Hannibal's expeditionary army alone contained Iberians, Celtiberians, Lusitanians, Balearics and possibly a few more, many of them being mercenaries. The presence of Imilce, an Iberian Oretani noblewoman, would have accomplished nothing among all the non-Oretani soldiers aside from making Hannibal look like a snob, and he should have known this himself after so many years conquering Hispania.
• The first book introduces a character named Tiberius Gracchus (already weird that he doesn't seem to have a surname before his nickname) who is despised by the Scipio family because he is a slave merchant, a job that doesn't help his case when he commits a verbal impertinence in Publius Sr.'s funeral. This detail strikes as odd, not only because the Scipios from the book own slaves and employ them all the time without any special consideration (quite on the opposite, the books imply Publius Sr. was downright cruel to them out of mistrust), but also because slavery was perfectly normal and acceptable on the setting.
• Syphax and many of the Numidians are described as being black, not merely dark-skinned. Portraying Numidians as black is a very common error in works set in this period and place, but this is particularly weird given that the Africanus trilogy doesn't commit it when describing all Numidians (and a regular dark-skinned Numidian kingdom led by a black king would be certainly outlandish). Even weirder is Sophonisba being also described as "ebon-skinned", given that she was not even African, but of Phoenician ethnicity, meaning she should have been olive-skinned at the best.
• The Tarpeian Rock was not used to execute foreign POWs. Only Italian traitors and criminals could be executed there.
• The third book features Cato's fleet arriving to Hispania in February. In real life, it did in June, and with good reasons: for ancient Romans, the period between November and March was deemed mare clausum ("closed sea"), a time in which navigation was restricted due to the winter climate making it too difficult and dangerous.
• The Iberian messengers from the third book are described as fantasy barbarians wearing the appropriate pelts. In real life, no Hispanic tribe at this age was in such state of primitiveness, except maybe at the wildest north, and Iberians in particular had very advanced textile arts; they have left a lot of artwork featuring clothes of a richness that has little to envy their Roman, Greek or Phoenician homologues.

Military

• In the first book, Titus Maccius joins the army's alae (legions of non-Roman Italic allies, like Titus himself, who is an Umbrian) in order to escape poverty, and he does so as full-fledged soldier instead of a velite or an attendant. In reality, regardless of whether you were a Roman citizen or an Italian ally, enlisting as a soldier at the time required a lot of money, as you had to pay yourself for the relatively expensive weapons and armor (the cheapest option being, as mentioned, velite equipment, which still required some economic freedom). The right to enlist as a legionary straight from the streets and let the state bear the costs of everything, while certainly romantic and apt for stories of self-made men, wasn't possible as a rule in the Italian peninsula until Gaius Marius reformed the Roman army in 107 BC.
• The novel also shows Titus being recruited as an ally in Rome and thrown to a camp with at least one Campanian soldier, but this was not the way Italic allies were recruited and managed except in dire emergencies, when all the available manpower in the city was required. The rest of the time, allies were recruited in their homelands by their own local leaders, who brought them to Rome divided in units by their respective nationalities.
• The teenaged Publius can barely lift a real sword due to being accustomed to his lighter wooden training sword. The rudus, the Roman wooden training sword, was actually heavier than a regular one, as it was meant to make much easier to use the latter.
• In the novels, the Romans are armed with gladii hispaniensis before the start of the war, despite this kind of sword was adopted precisely in the middle stages of the Second Punic War, after the Romans saw it in action in Cannae. In fact, it is believed it was Scipio Africanus himself who started promoting the gladius in Hispania as the new sword of the Roman armies (and confusingly, the second book actually makes a reference to this, causing the strange situation of Scipio's army being newly equipped with a sword that according to the text they already had). Another theory is that the Romans adopted it from the First Punic War, which would be in accord with the version given in the book, but the point referred between brackets still clashes against it.
• A plot point of the first two novels is that the Romans are scared shitless of war elephants, supposedly unstoppable on the battlefield, which Scipio has to dedicate a lot of brainpower to find a way to beat in Zama. In reality, while the Romans did have a handful of painful defeats against war elephants in their history, those beasts were already considered relatively figured out in Rome by the time of the Second Punic War. Romans had designed effective countermeasures against them as soon as the Pyrrhic War, and aside from the battles of the Bagradas and Trebia rivers, Carthage never really achieved superiority on the battlefield via elephant; the problem of Hannibal was not so much that he brought elephants to Italy, but rather that he was Hannibal f'n' Barca and was bringing them along with an impressive army of infantry and cavalry. At the end of the day, Carthage's elephants were trumped several times during the war, even by Scipio himself before Zama, and his tactics to do so there were all but innovative (they were in fact similar to those used by Alexander the Great against the Persian war chariots in Gaugamela).
• The falarica was a handheld javelin, not a ballista as described in the series (though this might be a reference to Silius's Punica poem, which used the same word to name a ballista-like catapult). Similarly, the Roman scorpio catapult is described as an enormous, heavy siege engine, when in real life it was very small and light, designed to be easily carried around.
• The trilogy mentions bows and arrows being used virtually everywhere, despite they weren't extensively used by any side of the war by then. Roman basically lacked them, as none of their allied peoples enjoyed an archery culture, and non-auxiliar Roman armies didn't adopt bows until centuries later. Carthaginians did have bowmen, but only in their own citizen forces, which were a diminutive part of their armies, and their Gaul allies, among which bows might have been present but still rare.
• Numidian cavalry is portrayed as a powerful cavalry capable to do fearsome front charges, while in real life they were just very sharp skirmishers. Maharbal's exasperation at Hannibal ordering them to perform hit-and-runs instead of pitched battle is particularly funny, because in real life, hit-and-runs were pretty much the only thing Numidian cavalry could perform. They are also described as heavier and more powerful than the Hispanic and Gallic cavalry, which is another inversion, given that in real life Numidians didn't even wore armor, while Hispanics and Gauls did.
• The capture of Cannae in the first book shows the Gaul fighters as stealthy, almost Predator-like infiltrators. Historically, the Gauls were the loudest, least disciplined, most unskilled and worst equipped of all the Carthaginian army, and they were mostly used as shock troops because they loved to charge all out and had enough numbers to absorb the predictable losses. In contrast, the trilogy presents Hannibal's Hispanic soldiers as mere support, when in real life they were precisely the nearest to special forces Hannibal had (see for example the Battle of the Rhone Crossing, when he sent them under the command of Hanno to quietly cross the river, floating on inflated animal skins a la Navy SEAL, to stealthily outflank the enemy).
• Again in The Accursed Legions, Indibilis and Mandonius demand a booty of 300 horses "like the Romans'" for their services before Baecula, implying those horses were superior to their own. This turns on his head another vital fact of the ancient wars, as Spanish horses were known for being excellent mounts that surpassed their Italian homologues in every stat. Moreover, the horses given to Indibilis in real life were actually a gift by Scipio after the battle, when he told him to choose 300 among all the beasts captured from the Carthaginians (which were probably all African, Gaul, or Iberian like theirs).
• Antiochus III's phalangites are described as dismantling his sarissas during the battle of Panium and throwing their pointed sections as javelins. This would not have been viable in real life: sarissas were too big and cumbersome to try to disassemble them in midst of a phalanx (they had to be assembled before every battle, in fact) and their tips would have been too heavy to be comfortably used as a throwing weapon.

Characters

• In the first book, a chapter set in 228 BC includes mentions to famous tragedians like Nevius, Ennius and Pacuvius. There are some big problems with this: Ennius didn't start his career as a tragedian until 204, while Pacuvius was not even born until 220.
• It strikes out as odd that the trilogy never mention Gnaeus' cognomen, Calvus. However, it's much odder that he is pictured as a perennial bachelor who even admits not to know much about love, when in real life Gnaeus was married and had two sons, Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio Hispalus and Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica. The latter even appears as a member of the household in the third book, but no relation is given to Gnaeus.
• Scipio Africanus' most eccentric traits are either toned down or excised from the books. His historical version, among other things, was larger-than-life figure and a a bit of a religious loon, who sometimes pretended to be the son of Jupiter and acted like a mystic in order to motivate his soldiers. His portrayal in the novels, as a humble, formal Ideal Hero, is almost the antithesis of this.
• Scipio is explicitly described as a faithful husband in contrast to most other Roman noblemen, and only in the third book he has an affair with the slave Arete, which is presented as due to troubled circumstances. This particular incident is only mentioned by Valerius Maximus, possibly as anti-Scipionic propaganda, but even then, the novel doesn't adhere fully to this text, which presents Scipio as a massive womanizer from the start.
• This version of Gaius Laelius is much older than Scipio, and meets him for the first time as a thirty-something veteran soldier when Publius is a teenager. In real life, Laelius' birth year remains unknown, but we do know from Polybius, who knew Laelius personally, that he and Scipio were childhood friends, which also makes it very unlikely that they had any significant age difference. Moreover, judging for the key dates of Laelius' political career and the age requirements for the titles he held (not comparing with Scipio, who was explicitly allowed to skip those due to his massive success as a general), chances are that Laelius was Scipio's own age or maybe even a couple years younger.
• Perhaps the most jarring change of the trilogy is turning Quintus Fabius Maximus from Rome's most ardent, beloved defender (who could be a Combat Pragmatist at times, but just that) to an amoral bastard who provokes the Second Punic War and sacrifices thousands of lives out of a petty hunger for glory (a flimsy motivation at the best, given that, as he lampshades himself in the book, Fabius was already at the peak of the Roman society by then and was also too old to engage in prolonged glory-seeking warfare). His enmity with the Cornelia and Aemilia families is certainly exaggerated: while he was really a bitter political opponent to Scipio Africanus, part if not most of it was because he considered his insistence to send forces to Africa too risky as long as Hannibal remained in Italy (that and their difference of opinion about Greek culture), which in the books is just an excuse for him to go against a rival. In fact, to show how close their factions were in reality, Emilia's own nephew would be later adopted in the Fabia family and renamed as Quintus Fabius Maximus Aemilianus.
• In real life, Quintus Fabius Maximus didn't die "alone and without and heir" as it is claimed, presumably out of Rule of Drama, in the second book. Aside from the Fabius junior featured in the books, he also had a second son (or a son of his or his brother) was who adopted Quintus Fabius Maximus Aemilianus as mentioned above.
• The character of Marcus Porcius Cato is also turned on his head. His real version was famous for his sobriety, frugality and sense of justice, to the point that "being a Cato" came to mean roughly to be a goody two-shoes in Roman language. He reportedly dressed just like his slaves, hated luxury and shared the food and pains of every campaign with his soldiers. His book version, in contrast, is a squeamish, greedy bourgeois, greatly unathletic and delicate on the battlefield, and seemingly very unpopular.
• In the books, Cato is Quintus Fabius Maximus's political lackey, and it's shown that Fabius considers Cato his true heir after the death of Fabius Maximus Jr to Hannibal's forces. In real life, while Cato and Fabius were friends and political allies, Cato's mentor would rather be Lucius Valerius Flaccus, from the same conservative faction. Over time, Cato did become somewhat of Fabius' succesor, but never to the degree shown in the novel.
• Lucius Aemillius Paulus is portrayed as wise and humble man, and he is shown to oppose the Roman strategy in Cannae from start to end, knowing it will be a massive trap for their army. In real life, while he was certainly smarter than Varro and initially called for caution as Fabius Maximus wanted, it seems he got caught in the heat of the first engagements and ultimately supported Varro's reckless full frontal approach, which he came to repent in his last moments (other sources even paint him as a bit of a fickle politician, who openly told Maximus he feared the votes in Rome more than Hannibal's army). Still, the portrayal is roughly correct on the extent that many Romans believed him to be the only man in Cannae who knew what a mistake they were committing.
• The books give Plautus' birth name as "Titus Maccius", to which he later adds his nickname. There is some historical suggestion for this, as sources do give his full name as Titus Maccius Plautus, but accepting the first two words as his true name is Dated History. He might have been named Titus, but in ancient Italy only noblemen had surnames and nicknames, and for his own admission Plautus wasn't of noble origin, not to mention Maccius is not even a real Italic surname. "Titus Maccius Plautus", if he ever answered to it, was likely a joking pseudonym based on the pattern of Roman noble names, as maccus was a kind of comical character used in the Atellan Farce, while plautus derived from a slang name for a pantomime performer that acted barefoot.
• Plautus' biography remains mostly unknown, but there's no evidence that he ever fought in the Second Punic War like his literary version. Plautus himself claimed to have been a pauper before succeeding as a writer, which should rule out any possibility of having been a soldier, given that, as mentioned above, enlisting back then required to have at least some wealth to buy weapons, either as a Roman or an Italic ally. Modern historians believe Plautus might have exaggerated the extent of his economic struggles in order to make for a more interesting biography, which would have allowed him to serve in the army (it has been suggested that he did serve as an Umbrian soldier before arriving to Rome, fighting the 225 BC Gallic invasion of his homeland), but if it was so, it would not have been so in order to escape poverty as portrayed in the novel.
• Tiberius Fonteius (Titus Fonteius in other sources), the legate to Scipio Sr. who managed to salvage the remants of the Roman army and himself after the massacre of the Scipio brothers, is notably Adapted Out.
• The real Marcus Junius Silanus was a senator and magistrate, serving as a praetor, who came to Hispania at the same time as Scipio and actually shared command with him for a time. In the novel, he only arrives after the Battle of Baecula, and his rank is that of a mere lieutenant, even inferior to centurion Lucius Marcius.
• Oddly, Posteguillo changes the sex of a historical character in Masinissa's father, the Numidian king Gaia, who is treated as if he was a woman and a queen every time he is mentioned.
• The name of Hannibal's left cavalry commander in Cannae was Hasdrubal, not Himilco, who was an unrelated Carthaginian general that served in Sicily. For once, the author admitted in the first book's notes that this change was deliberate in order not to have three Hasdrubals in the story (aside from Barca and Gisgo).
• By being in Lucius Aemilius Paulus' last moments in Cannae, Scipio is effectively conflated with the historical character Gnaeus Lentulus, the tribune who played that role in real life.
• Indibilis is described in the first book as a chieftain of the Suessetans. In real life, he was an Ilergete, a tribe located much more to the East; the Suessetans were just circumstantial allies of the Ilergetes during some revolts.
• In the novel, Syphax is executed by the Romans in the Tarpeian Rock (an impossibility because, as explained earlier, only traitors and criminals could be killed there). In real life, he died in prison in the nearby city of Tibur.
• In the third book, Hasdrubal Gisgo is still alive by the time Hannibal departs from Carthage in 195 BC. The real Gisgo was long dead by this point, as he had committed suicide by the end of the Second Punic War in order not to be caught alive by an angry mob.
• One of the corrupt commanders in the second book is named Sergius Marcus. In real life, Sergius was a Roman surname (that of the Sergia family) and Marcus a given name - the character's name, therefore, should have been Marcus Sergius, not the reverse. In fact, there was a famous Marcus Sergius in the Second Punic War, a Roman soldier that escaped Carthaginian imprisonment twice and later fought with a prostethic hand to replace one he had lost.
• The Betrayal of Rome has Cato being solely in charge of Hispania during the Iberian Revolt, with Marcus Helvius Blasio being implied to be his predecessor on the job. In reality, command in Hispania at the time was not held directly by Cato, but by praetors Publius Manlius and Appius Claudius Nero, who get Adapted Out of the novel (even although Manlius actually served as Cato's close lieutenant during his campaign, quite an important role). While it is true that Helvius met with Cato there, the former had been years out of command at this point, as he was actually a previous praetor who had been forced to remain stationed in Hispania due to illness and whose job had been passed over to Quintus Fabius Buteo and then to Nero.
• The third book has a scene set on April 183 BC in which Cato proclaims his famous quote "ceterum autem censeo Carthaginem esse delendam!" ("furthermore I consider Carthage must be destroyed"), which makes absolutely no sense by this point. In real life, Cato only started using the quote in 157 BC (153 according to another version), because it was then when he had the opportunity to visit personally Carthage and realize the city was slowly rebuilding its power. Back in 183, he had no reason to believe a defeated, pseudo-client state (which had not even ended paying its tribute to Rome!) could pose enough of a threat to make an extra point about destroying it.
• Several characters and factions are Adapted Out of the Battle of Magnesia. The Seleucid side here lacks their Arab camel cavalry, and its general Zeuxis seems to be conflated with its other general Philip. For his part, the Roman side is shown to be exclusively formed by Romans and Pergamenes, when in real life they were assisted by Thracians, Cretans, Macedonians and Achaeans. Eumenes' brother Attalus is absent, and the role of tribune Marcus Aemilius Lepidus (not the Roman consul mentioned later in the trilogy, but his son) in the battle is played instead by Tiberius Sempronious Gracchus, who in real life might have not even been present there.
• The third book shows a young Polybius meeting Gaius Lelius in 183 BC in Alexandria. In real life, they first encountered each other in 160 in Rome, where Polybius was working as the educator of Aemilius Paulus' sons. This change was presumably done to be in accord with Lelius' Age Lift mentioned above.

Events

• Tindar and Fabius claim in separate occasions that Alexander the Great was repulsed from India, "some say", by the resistance of Chandragupta Maurya. In reality, as reflected in the ancient sources Tindar and Fabius should be citing, what actually drove Alexander back was the threat of other powerful rulers such as the Nanda Empire, of which Chandragupta was just a young commander at the time, and it seems the two sides never actually warred. Chandragupta apparently did meet Alexander in person, but he went to rebel against and depose the Nanda dynasty immediately afterwards, and according to sources, he claimed he would have helped Alexander had the latter tried to conquer the Nanda Empire himself (apparently the Nandas were very unpopular in India and a lot of chieftains would have sided against them in an invasion).
• Most historical sources agree Hamilcar died during the siege of the city of Helike, when an apparently allied Oretani army revealed itself as a trap and attacked him. In the book, he dies during a random Iberian attack in a valley. The tactic used by the Oretani, sending burning ox carts, remains the same, although it has been suggested it was used to make the Carthaginian elephants panic, whereas in the book it isn't directed against them and those are used successfully in the counterattack.
• In the novel, Hasdrubal the Fair is murdered by the slave of a random Gallic mercenary whom Hasdrubal killed out of spite during a hunting trip. In real life, sources vary wildly about the exact circumstances of the event, but it's more or less established that the murderer was a former slave of a Spanish Celtic chieftain, possibly named Tagus, who had been tortured to death by the Punics in their conquest of Hispania. Had Hasdrubal been as petty as to do the thing described in the book, chroniclers would have likely not let us hear the end of it.
• The Battle of Ilorca is given a much more sudden, shocking character in the novel, as the Celtiberian mercenaries bribed by Hasdrubal abandon the Romans in midst of the battle after having been deployed on the wings. In reality, the Celtiberians abandoned the Roman camp much earlier, being even polite enough to put up an excuse and say goodbye (they claimed a war had exploded back in Celtiberia).
• In the first book, Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio dies heroically in open combat while trying to buy time for his lieutenants to flee, while in real life he was either killed in an early attack to the Roman camp or burned alive by Carthaginian troops while trapped in a nearby tower, depending on the version.
• Lucius Aemilius Paulus's death in the novel is much cleaner and gentler than in ancient chronicles, as he dies peacefully by the lasting effects of a sling shot in a Take Up My Sword moment. In real life, while most sources state Paullus was certainly hit by a sling stone at the beginning of the battle, they describe his death as much bloodier and caused by many other wounds. Plutarch says outright Paullus was turned into such a bloody pulp that not even his own friends and retainers were able to recognize his corpse at first.
• The Battle of Ilipa is substantially simplified. The role of the Roman cavalry and velites, who ambushed the Numidian cavalry before the battle, distracted the Carthaginians while the main army entered formation, and later disposed of the Punic elephants, gets heavily reduced; in this version, Scipio makes his army march forward without any screening, and the elephants are instead thrown into panic by their own support troops, who happened to be unfamiliar with them.
• The episode of Scipio visiting Syphax while Gisgo was there did happen, but it was even more surprising than the book. In the latter, Gisgo remains hidden and only appears after Scipio is gone, but according to chroniclers, Scipio and Gisgo really met there and even had dinner together with Syphax, during which Scipio impressed Gisgo with his oratory and culture.
• The Accursed Legions's portrayal of the Battle of Zama misunderstands Hannibal's strategy and turns it into a pointless large-scale Bad Boss moment. In real life, Hannibal did order every one of his lines to fight off the next if the latter tried to retreat, but this was not meant to put every vanquished line out of their misery or scare them off the battlefield as in the novel, but to force them to reposition in the wings, therefore gradually enveloping the enemy during its own advance in a characteristic Xanatos Gambit. (The book also makes the assumption that the mercenaries and militiamen in Carthage's payroll were undisciplined enough to just get the heck out of the battlefield, which is a gross exaggeration, even if they were green enough that Hannibal resorted to this strategy in order to ensure they obeyed him.) The Carthaginian third line didn't have enough numbers to try to envelope completely the Romans by itself as in the book, and attempting to do so would have got the line critically weakened and turned into an easy prey for an enemy that was already familiar with a Cannae-like situation.
• In the book, Cato arrives with his ships to Emporion and finds no opposition in the surrounding lands before initiating his campaign. In real life, he first arrived to Rhode, the first main city on his way, and an entire battle happened then (the aptly Battle of Rhode) because the city was under Iberian control and Cato had to conquer it in order to have an allied port to begin with. Even after this, he had to basically fight his way towards Emporion and relieve it from an Iberian siege before reaching the place. The novel also excises the siege of Segontia, where Cato conquered a last Celtiberian city before stopping at Numantia.
• The literary version of Hannibal meets with Antiochus on Apamea, while his real version did it on Ephesus.
• The Battle of Magnesia as portrayed in the book is significantly different from its real version. For instance, in real life Eumenes opened the battle by attacking the war chariots at the Seleucid left, while in the book the Seleucids attack first, so Eumenes' move is instead a defensive action against their charge. Similarly, Antiochus' attack from the right was stopped in real life by Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, who rallied reinforcements from the Roman camp, while in the book the attack is instead trounced by Gracchus using the river's mud as Geo Effects.
• The book version of Antiochus dies in Ecbatana, while the real deal did in Elymais.

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