Alexis said:

“I do hope somebody notices the subtle linguistic joke I made about “New Cartagena”.”

Too subtle for me but I am enjoying your reference to Elagabalus. On that topic, there’s a couple new history books that I just read and can recommend:

“Chronicle of the Roman Emperors, The Reign-by-Reign Record of the rulers of Imperial Rome” by Chris Scarre. It’s the sequel by the same publisher (Thames & Hudson) to “Chronicle of the Roman Republic, The Rulers of Ancient Rome from Romulus to Augustus” by Philip Matyszak. I found Matyszak’s book more enjoyable than Scarre’s. Both books provide a nice broad brush treatment of Roman history without getting bogged down with detail.