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Words: 5, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English
acoup_feedThis is the first part of a series looking at the structure of the Carthaginian army. Although Carthage has an (unfair!) reputation for being a country of “peaceful merchants who tended to avoid wars,”1 Carthage was, I will argue, without question the second greatest military power the Mediterranean produced – eclipsed only by Rome. If we do not realize this, it is merely because Carthage had the misfortune to fight Rome ‘in the first round,’ as it were.
Carthage is, in particular, the only military power that ever manages to seriously challenge Rome on an even footing, blow for blow, after the Romans completed the conquest of Italy. The Carthaginian military system pushes Rome to the very brink of defeat twice, in contrast to the Hellenistic great powers, the heirs of Alexander, none of which ever force the Romans to ‘dig deep’ into their forces. Put another way: the Romans put Alexander’s heirs to bed mobilizing against them less than a third of the military force it took for Rome to match Carthage. The Carthaginians inflicted more casualties on the Romans in a single day than all of the successor states (a label which does not include Epirus, so no Pyrrhus here; worth noting the Carthaginians beat him too) managed in pitched battle combined. And they did this more than once; I’d hazard they managed it about seven times.2
So in this series, we are going to lay out the structure of Carthage’s armies (alas, we have very little information as to the structure of their navy), because as we’ll see, the Carthaginian military system was quite complex, drawing soldiers from all over the western Mediterranean.
Now there is an a bit of organizational trickiness here: Carthage drew forces from many different places at many different times. In practice, the Carthaginian military becomes visible to us as early as 480 (with the Battle of Himera) and seems to change significantly between this period and the army visible to us in the first book of Polybius, which fights the First Punic War (254-241) and the Mercenary War (241-237). Then the Carthaginian army undergoes another substantial shift visible to us, in terms of its composition, during the Barcid Conquest of Spain (237-218) such that the Carthaginian army that fights in the Second Punic War (218-201) looks very different again. And then Carthage loses its army and so its military forces from 201 to the end of the Carthaginian state in 146 look different again.
My solution here is to structure this treatment around the largest Carthaginian mobilizations, which were those during the Second Punic War: Carthaginian numbers peaked in 215 with something on the order of 165,000 men under arms.3 We’ll work through the components of that force (operating, as it did, in multiple theaters) and for each component of it, we can then note how – as best we can tell – that specific component changed over time.
I should also note what I am not doing here: this is not a full rundown of Carthage’s military history or the Punic Wars; rather it is an outline of the components of Carthage’s land forces. I think a treatment of the Punic Wars on a similar level to our “Phalanx’s Twilight, Legion’s Triumph” series is probably worth doing, but would be a much larger and more involved series than this, because the Punic Wars are quite long conflicts with many twists and turns and often multiple simultaneous theaters. One day!
But first, as always, raising large armies of mercenaries, subject conscripts, vassal warlords and allies is expensive! If you too want to help me invade Italy with a multi-ethnic army of diverse origins in a doomed effort to stop the Roman Republic, you can help by supporting this project over at Patreon. If you want updates whenever a new post appears or want to hear my more bite-sized musings on history, security affairs and current events, you can follow me on Bluesky (@bretdevereaux.bsky.social). I am also active on Threads (bretdevereaux) and maintain a de minimis presence on Twitter (@bretdevereaux).
(Bibliography Note: Any bibliography for the lay reader looking to get to grips with Carthage likely has to begin with D. Hoyos, The Carthaginians (2010) which provides a solid foundation on understanding the Carthaginian state and society. A solid overview of Carthaginian military history is provided by J.R. Hall, Carthage at War: Punic Armies c. 814-146 (2023). For specific periods in Carthaginian military history, note J.F. Lazenby, The First Punic War: A Military History (1996), then D. Hoyos, Truceless War (2007) on the Mercenary War and D. Hoyos, Hannibal’s Dynasty (2003) on the Carthaginian conquest of Spain, before going back to J.F. Lazenby for Hannibal’s War (1978) on the Second Punic War. G. Daly, Cannae: The experience of battle in the Second Punic War (2002) has, among other things, one of the better run-downs of the composition of Hannibal’s army. On the Gauls in Carthaginian armies, note L. Baray, Les Celtes d’Hannibal (2019), alas not translated. On the Numidians, a key component of Carthage’s army, see W. Horsted, The Numidians, 300 BC – AD 300 (2021), while on the Spanish warriors who fought for Carthage, see Quesada Sanz, F. Armas de la Antigua Iberia: De Tartesos a Numancia (2010) now available in translation as F. Quesada Sanz, Weapons, Warriors & Battles of Ancient Iberia (2023), trans. E. Clowes and P.S. Harding-Vera. You can also find what little we know about Balaerian slingers in the opening chapters of L. Keppie, Slingers and Sling Bullets in the Roman Civil Wars of the Late Republic, 90-31 BC (2023). Finally, one must note N. Pilkington, The Carthaginian Empire (2019), an often heterodox but equally sometimes persuasive reassessment of what we know of Carthage that is intensely skeptical of our literary source tradition and an essential read (for agreement and disagreement) if one is intending to get knee-deep in the scholarship.)
First, before we get into the details, we should lay out the basic chronology of Carthaginian military history, because as we’re going to see, not only does Carthage draw upon a bunch of different sources of military manpower, those sources themselves change over time in their composition and role within the Carthaginian system.
Now we should start with some background here on the nature of Carthage and its control over its core territory in North Africa. Carthage was a Phoenician colony, founded in North Africa (in modern day Tunisia). The population was thus likely a mix of local Libyan peoples, Phoenician settlers and even other maritime peoples (Aegeans, e.g. Greeks). The Carthaginians themselves maintained a clear ideology of being Phoenicians, using a Punic language, worshiping Punic gods and making a clear connection to their mother-city of Tyre, however some modern DNA research has suggested the actual population of Phoenician colonies might have been more genetically diverse than we have generally supposed. Of course, not every resident of Carthage was likely to be a citizen and certainly the impression we get is that some Phoenician ancestry was a requirement for full citizenship.
Carthage was hardly the only such colony in North Africa (Utica, Thapsus (in North Africa), Leptis, Leptiminus, etc. were all such colonies), but there was also a substantial local Libyan population and at least initially Carthage was subordinate to those peoples; we’re told that quite Carthage’s first few centuries after its founding (mid-eighth century) paid tribute to the locals, a relationship that inverted quite dramatically as Carthage became stronger. Carthage seems to begin projecting power overseas seriously in the mid-to-late-500s, though we cannot always see this early process as well as we’d like. By c. 500, Carthage seems to control Sardinia and the western coast of Sicily. Some sign of Carthage’s expanding control in North Africa comes when they are able to block Dorieus (a Spartan prince) from creating a Greek colony in North Africa and then shortly thereafter also destroy his effort to found a colony in western Sicily, between 515 and 510 or so. Unfortunately, we’re not really well informed at all about the armies they used to do this
Instead, Carthaginian armies first start to become really visible to us in the context of the running contest between Carthage and Syracuse for control over the rest of Sicily, which kicks off in the 480s. From the 480s to the 270s, Carthage fights a series of wars with the Greeks on Sicily, the latter generally organized around the largest and strongest Greek city there, Syracuse. There is a tendency for students to be surprised that Carthage – given its apparent power in the third century – is unable to overcome (or be overcome by) Syracuse, but it is worth remembering that Syracuse is a really big polis, on the same scale as Athens or Sparta. Recall that from 415 to 413, the Athenians throw the lion’s share of their military, at the height of their power at Syracuse and lose effectively all of it for their trouble, so Syracuse – at least when well led and organized – is a fairly major power (in as much as any power other than the Achaemenids can be major) in this period.
In any case, the first Carthaginian-Greek war in Sicily begins in the 480s and ends with the Battle of Himera in 480. They’re then back at it from 409 to 405, then again from 398 to 396, then again from 383 to 381 (?), then again from 368 to 367, then again 345 to 341 and again from 311 to 306 and then finally from 278 to 276, Pyrrhus of Epirus shows up to campaign against Carthage on behalf of the Greeks. On the one hand, at any given time in these wars, territorial control often swings wildly between Carthage and Syracuse, but on the other hand zooming out, over the long-term relatively little changes and the whole thing resembles a stalemate: Carthage controls the west of the island, Syracuse the east and the settlements in the middle either manage in the fracture-zone between the powers or submit to one or the other.
Alongside the early phases of this running warfare on Sicily, Carthage is steadily subduing the area around it in North Africa, reducing the Libyan and Phoenician settlements in what is today Tunisia to semi-autonomous subjects. Those communities remained internally self-governing, but were in practice ruled by Carthage and we’ll talk about that relationship in the next post in the series. We can’t fully see this process clearly but by c. 400, Carthage clearly seems to have control over most of its immediate surroundings. Carthage also began interacting quite early with the Numidians, the Berber peoples to the west (generally divided into two kingdoms, Massaesylii and Massylii) sometimes recruiting them and sometimes fighting them. Certainly by the start of the third century if not earlier, Carthage is the dominant power in this relationship.
The Carthaginians are also clearly active in trade in Spain, though it is unclear to what degree the Phoenician settlements there fall under Carthaginian political control and when.
Thus even by c. 480, Carthage is one of the major imperial powers in the western Mediterranean, though hardly the only ‘major player’ and remains so, steadily growing in size and influence over the next several centuries. By c. 300, the Carthaginians have secured control over western Sicily, Corsica and Sardinia, have some small footholds in Spain and most importantly have secured control over most of what is today Tunisia (what the Romans would just call ‘Africa’) and have a dominant if frequently shifting position relative to the Numidians.
That set the stage for the major wars of the third century. Carthage was in a strong position in Sicily after the end of their war with Agathocles (in 306), leading to the Sicilians to appeal to Pyrrhus in the 270s. Pyrrhus, arriving in 278 was able to win significant victories and pin the Carthaginians back to their last major coastal base in Lilybaeum, but was unable to take it (being unable to break Carthaginian naval control) and subsequently forced out in 276 once his support among the Sicilian Greeks ebbed, suffering a nasty naval defeat on his way out for his trouble.
That left Carthage in a dominant position in Sicily (but still facing a potent foe in Syracuse) when in 264 a group of mercenaries (the Mamertines) leftover from Agathocles’ war who had seized Messina – under pressure from Syracuse – appealed to both Rome and Carthage for help. That led to a four(-ish) way war in which two of the sides (the Mamertines and Syracuse) rapidly found themselves rendered irrelevant. The result was the First Punic War (264-241) between Rome and Carthage, fundamentally a war for control over Sicily, although the Romans did invade North Africa (unsuccessfully) in 256.
Carthage loses the war, with Rome consolidating control over Sicily, only to be immediately beset by a new war, the Mercenary War (241-237), when a mutiny by Carthage’s unpaid mercenaries from the end of the First Punic War set off a general revolt of its subjects in North Africa. The Carthaginians win this war, particularly with the leadership of Hamilcar Barca, who is then too politically influential to be left in Carthage, so he is packed off with an army to go do stuff in Spain. The ‘stuff’ he does in Spain from 237 to his death in 228 is to subdue nearly the entire Mediterranean coast up to the Ebro River, with that task then completed by first his son-in-law, Hasdrubal the Fair and then Hamilcar’s eldest son Hannibal.
That sets the stage for ’round two’ with Rome, the Second Punic War (218-201), an absolutely massive war waged across Italy, Spain and Africa, which represents the peak military output of either Rome or Carthage (although the First Punic War, with its massive fleets, probably roughly matches it). Utterly defeated in 201, Carthage is shorn of its overseas empire and much of its more distant African holdings, essentially reduced to ‘merely’ controlling northern Tunisia. However, rapid Carthaginian economic recovery leads Rome to instigate a third war with Carthage, the Third Punic War (149-146). Unlike the previous two wars, this is not an even contest: Carthage by this point is much smaller and weaker a power than Rome. Determined Carthaginian resistance prolongs the war, but Rome is eventually able to seize the city and destroy the Carthaginian state in 146.
Now, one thing worth noting at the end of this brief, potted history is for nearly all of this period, we have only Greek sources (Romans, writing in Latin, only really come in with the Punic Wars and even then our earliest Roman sources – Fabius Pictor – are lost, so we get him processed through a Greek – Polybius). One of the features of the history we do have of Carthage that I suspect results from this is that Carthage seems to lose a lot. But it is, at least until 264, a strange sort of losing: Carthage shows up in our sources losing major battles but then one moves forward a few decades and Carthage’s empire is larger and more prosperous. And then Carthage loses another major battle and yet somehow, a few decades later Carthage is even more powerful.
So either Carthage is the world champion at failing upwards or there is something going on with our sources. And it isn’t hard to really guess what: our key source for Carthaginian history before 264 is Diodorus Siculus, that is, ‘Diodorus the Sicilian,’ a Sicilian Greek writing in the first century B.C. who thus very obviously has a side in Carthage’s long wars with the Sicilian Greeks. Even if Diodorus is doing his best to give us a straight story, which battles are his sources likely to remember or commemorate most prominently: the Time They Really Walloped the Carthaginians or perhaps smaller engagements that they lost? Thus while we cannot know for certain, I find that I suspect Carthage’s battle-record pre-264 is likely rather better than our sources suggest.
Post-264, it seems worth noting that while Carthage loses more often than they win against the Romans, they still manage to deliver Rome some pretty stunning defeats. The notion that Carthaginians are ‘peaceful merchants’ or just ‘unmilitary’ thus seems to be almost entirely empty, a nearly pure product of later stereotypes about ‘unmanly easterners’ rather than a conclusion justified by the evidence. At the very least, by the time Rome was ready to fight Carthage, the Carthaginians very much knew how to throw a punch – indeed, they would punch Rome far harder than any other foe.
That still provides some three hundred years where Carthage is a meaningful military power where we can see their military activities, so as you might imagine, the shape of the Carthaginian army changes a lot over that period.
The next thing we ought to do, to get an overall sense of the system, then, is to lay out the scale of Carthaginian forces at the height of the Second Punic War, representing the largest land mobilization that Carthage ever produced. The size of the mobilization is staggering, as is the diversity of how it was raised: like most imperial powers, Carthage’s army was a diverse medley of soldiers drawn from basically everywhere that Carthaginian power reached. The way these soldiers were incorporated into Carthage’s armies was in turn a product of what their relationship to the Carthaginian state was – citizens, subjects, vassals, allies, mercenary employees.
Our sources, most particularly Polybius, provide us enough detail to get a pretty decent accounting of Carthage’s ‘peak’ mobilization, which comes in 215. Hannibal, of course, had a Carthaginian field army at that time in Italy – he had won the Battle of Cannae (216) the year before – but there were also Carthaginian armies in Spain, Sardinia and Africa, along with an active fleet. Carthage alone of the Mediterranean powers of the era seems to have been able to match Rome’s capacity for multi-theater warfare: whereas Hellenistic kingdoms could really only have one primary theater of war at a time, both Rome and Carthage could wage multiple parallel campaigns simultaneously and did so.
So let’s break down the evidence for what we have.
We can begin with Hannibal’s army in Italy, which Polybius tells us (3.114.5) consisted of 40,000 infantry and 10,000 cavalry for the Battle of Cannae (216). We can actually work backwards with just a little bit of guessing to break down this army into its unit composition: Hannibal crosses the Alps with 12,000 Africans, 8,000 Iberians, and 6,000 cavalry, taking some losses in the subsequent battles but also absorbing around 9,000 Gallic infantry and 5,000 Gallic cavalry. Figuring for attrition, the composition of Hannibal’s army at Cannae has to look at least something like around 10,000 African infantry, 6,000 Iberian infantry, around 8,000 mixed ‘lights’ (North African lonchophoroi, which means ‘javelin-men’ not ‘pikemen’ as it is sometimes mistranslated) and Balearian slingers and 16,000 Gallic infantry to make the total. Of the cavalry we might suspect around 5,000 of it was Gallic cavalry and the rest split roughly evenly between Numidian cavalry from Africa and Iberian cavalry (both of which we’re told Hannibal has).
We then need to modify that force for Hannibal’s losses at Cannae: he lost 4,000 Gauls, 1,500 Iberians and 200 cavalry, but was reinforced late in the year (Polyb. 3.117.6; Livy 23.13.7) with 4,000 more Numidian cavalry and 40 elephants. That leaves Hannibal in 215 with an army of roughly 50,000: 10,000 African infantry, 12,000 Gallic infantry, 4,500 Iberian infantry, 8,000 mixed ‘lights’ (lonchophoroi and Balearian slingers), around 5,000 Gallic cavalry and perhaps 10,000 other cavalry, of which we might guess that maybe 2/3rds were Numidian and 1/3rd Iberian.
At the same time in Italy there is a second Carthaginian army operating in Bruttium (modern Calabria; Hannibal is operating out of modern Apulia) under the command of Hanno with 17,000 infantry composed mostly of Roman socii that have defected to Hannibal, along with 1,200 cavalry, mostly Spanish and Numidian (Livy 24.15.2).
The thing is Hannibal does not have Carthage’s largest army. One of the mistakes students make in assessing the Second Punic War is focusing – as most modern treatments do – almost entirely on Hannibal. But for Carthage, getting reinforcements to Hannibal is very hard – Rome at this point has a strong navy so they can’t easily sail to Italy – but the war is also very active in Spain. Carthage had come to control the Mediterranean coast of Spain as a result of the conquests of Hamilcar Barca (we’ll discuss this more when we get to these guys in a couple of weeks) and Rome was seeking to tear that part of the empire away.
Carthage had three generals operating in Spain by 215 – Hasdrubal and Mago Barca (Hannibal’s brothers) and Hasdrubal Gisco. Livy reports the combined strength of all three at 60,000 (Livy 23.49) and once again with some careful tracking through Livy and Polybius we can basically break this force down to roughly 24,000 African infantry (a mix of Hannibal’s troops left behind and reinforcements brought by Mago), a touch less than 2,000 African cavalry, and the remainder – about 34,000 – mostly Iberian troops along with some small units of Gauls (300 from Liguria) and Balearian slingers (500). We can be fairly ‘rough’ with these numbers because we’re dealing with ‘paper strengths’ that are going to be off to some degree in any case – the point here is a rough approximation of an estimate, because our sources aren’t going to get better than that.
In addition, there was a Carthaginian army dispatched to Sardinia to try to retake it, a force Livy reports as being roughly the same size as the reinforcements Mago brought to Spain, which would mean 12,000 infantry and 1,500 cavalry, probably nearly all African (Livy 23.23.12).
Finally, Carthage maintained a force still in Africa. Hannibal had, at the war’s outset, transferred to Africa some 13,850 Iberian infantry, 870 Balearian slingers and 1,200 Iberian cavalry, while redeploying some 4,000 Metagonians (from what is today eastern Morocco) to Carthage as well.
Taking all of that together we can estimate very roughly (with some rounding) that Carthage has, under arms, in 215:
For a total of roughly 162,000 men under arms. Notably missing from this total are any Carthaginian citizen troops, but for reasons I’ll get to below, I do think there probably were some in North Africa. For comparison, the peak mobilizations of the major successor states (the Seleucid and Ptolemaic kingdoms) are probably around 80,000 men. Carthage is doubling that mobilization and very nearly matching Rome’s own maximum mobilization (around 185,000 men).4
Now you may have noticed something a little odd for the Carthaginian army implied by the figures above: there aren’t any Carthaginians in it. And that tends to be one of the core things that folks ‘know’ about Carthaginian armies, which is that these were ‘mercenary’ armies, where Carthaginians only served as officers. That is, after all, more or less directly what Polybius tells us and historians ancient and modern tend to take Polybius at his word. And while Polybius is being more than a little sneaky with his description of Carthaginian armies as mercenary in nature, the idea that Carthaginians didn’t serve in quantity in Carthaginian armies is at least half true, but with important geographical and chronological limitations.
Here, we are interested in the Carthaginian citizens themselves. And we begin with the first exception to the idea that Carthaginian citizens didn’t fight, the chronological one: Carthaginian citizen armies are actually very common everywhere (that is, both at home and abroad) in the fifth and fourth century. Diodorus (11.22.2) reports ‘Phoenicians’ in the Carthaginian army for the Battle of Himera (480) which are likely Carthaginian citizen soldiers we hear of Carthaginian citizen soldiers in later Carthaginian expeditions to Sicily in 409 too. As late as 339, at the Battle of the Crimissus, the Carthaginian army includes, according to Diodorus, a Sacred Band of Carthaginian citizens several thousand strong (Diod. Sic. 16.80.4) which seems to be a picked force from a larger body of Carthaginian citizens, given that he describes its members as distinguished even among the citizens for valor, reputation and wealth.
Now in most treatments the next thing that will get said is that in the third century – when both the First (264-241) and Second (218-201) Punic Wars occur – the Carthaginians changed this policy and citizens stopped serving except as officers. But I think that perhaps misses what is really happening here and the reason has to do with the perspective of our sources: we have no Carthaginian sources or even North African sources. What we have are the reports primarily of Romans (who fought Carthage), Greeks on Sicily (who fought Carthage) and mainland Greeks like Polybius, who relied on the other two. My point is not necessarily that these sources are hostile to Carthage (though they are), but rather that their focus is directed. We are seeing Carthage like one would see a statute in a dark room lit entirely from one side: only half the statute will be illuminated.
Our sources are very interested in the armies that Carthage sends against Syracuse and Rome and almost entirely uninterested – or uninformed! – about the forces that Carthage might muster in other places. We only see Carthaginian North Africa clearly in brief snippets: when a Greek or Roman tries to invade it (310, 256, 204and 149) or in the context of a major revolt like the Mercenary War (241-237) which draws our sources attention.
But what do we see whenever the action shifts to North Africa? Citizen soldiers in Carthage’s armies. While Diodorus inserts into his narrative a line about how the Carthaginians were unprepared for fighting when Agathocles (tyrant of Syracuse) lands his army in Africa in 310, they quickly manage to put together a citizen soldier army – Diodorus says of some 40,000 soldiers, but Diodorus’ numbers here are often useless (Diod. Sic. 20.10.5-6). We don’t hear anything about citizen soldiers during Rome’s unsuccessful invasion in 256 (during the First Punic War), but when Carthage’s expeditionary army (returned from Sicily at the war’s end) revolts in 241, Carthage immediately raises a citizen army to put down the revolt and succeeds in doing so (Polyb. 1.73.1-2). Likewise, when P. Cornelius Scipio soon-to-be-Africanus lands in North Africa in 204, the Carthaginians raise citizen forces (alongside all of their other troops) to try to stop him and Carthaginian citizens formed a major part of Hannibal’s army at Zama (202; Polyb. 15.11.2-4), including both infantry and cavalry.
And of course, when Rome returned for the final act in the Third Punic War (149-146), Carthage – largely shorn of its empire – responded by mobilizing a citizen force to defend the city, alongside freed slaves (App. Pun. 93-5) and resisted fairly stoutly.
In short, with the exception of M. Atillius Regulus’ invasion of 256, every time Carthaginian Africa is ‘illuminated’ for us we see Carthaginian citizen forces. Now our sources often present these forces as basically ‘scratch’ forces, raised in a panic, but while the Carthaginians sometimes lose the battles that result, these armies are not a ‘rabble’ by any means. Carthaginian citizen forces were evidently sufficient to defeat their own mercenaries and the Libyan revolt in 241. At Zama (202), the Carthaginian citizens form the second rank of Hannibal’s army and while Polybius is quick to lean into stereotypes calling them cowards (for not reinforcing the first battle line, composed of mercenary troops), in practice what he actually describes is that the Carthaginian citizen line is able to throw the Roman hastati back and is only forced to retreat by the advance of Scipio’s second line of principes (Polyb. 15.13.5-8).
My suspicion is thus that Carthaginian citizen soldiers may have never fully gone away, but rather they may have been confined largely to operations in North Africa. It makes a degree of sense that the Carthaginians might want to wage their imperial wars almost entirely with auxiliary troops recruited from their dependencies (or paid for as mercenaries), with Carthaginian citizens serving only as generals and officers, while reserving their citizen soldiers for operations closer to home. And there must have been more of such operations than we are aware of. Remember: Carthaginian armies really only become fully visible to us as they interact with Greek and Roman armies, but obviously Carthage must have accomplished the subjugation of much of North Africa, must have managed to subordinate (if not subdue) the Numidians, must have been able to hold that control through military strength (for our sources are very clear that Carthaginian control was often resented) and finally must have been able to also deter the Saharan, Berber and Lybian peoples on their borders.
In short, there is almost certainly quite a lot of Carthaginian campaigning in Africa which we can’t see clearly and it is possible that Carthaginian citizen soldiers continued to be active in these operations throughout. In that case, Carthage may well have kept its citizenry in some degree of readiness for war, which may explain why substantial bodies of Carthaginian citizen soldiers seem to be available and militarily effective so quickly when Carthage’s core territory in Africa is threatened. That said, short of some very convenient (and very unlikely) Punic inscriptions showing up, this remains merely a hypothesis; our sources offer no hint of this and indeed Polybius states the opposite, that the Carthaginian citizenry was broadly demilitarized.
Of course, if Carthaginian citizens did sometimes fight, that raises a key question: how did Carthaginian citizens fight? With what arms and tactics?
The first answer is that our evidence is infuriatingly limited here. After all, Carthaginian citizen soldiers do most of their fighting visible to us relatively early where our main sources are writers like Diodorus, who – because he is writing a universal history covering everything from the earliest mythology (he includes the Fall of Troy) down to his own day (mid-first century B.C.) – rarely gives a lot of details. Normally we might supplement this with visual evidence in artwork or equipment deposited in graves, but there is very, very little of this. That point has sometimes been taken to reflect Carthage’s ‘unmilitary’ character, but it is worth noting that prior to 146, we have similarly little archaeological or representational evidence of the Roman Republic’s armies and no one accuses the Romans of being ‘unmilitary’ in character.
What evidence we do have suggests that the Carthaginians largely fought as heavy infantrymen in a manner not too different from Greek hoplites. Now I want to caveat that immediately to say this doesn’t mean they fought as hoplites – it is certainly possible but by no means necessarily or certain that the Carthaginians might have adopted weapons or tactics from the Greeks. The Levant had its own infantry traditions on which the Carthaginians might have drawn which included heavy armor and large shields. At the same time, as noted, it seems like Phoenician colonies drew in a lot of Aegean (read: Greek) settlers, so it would hardly be shocking of the Carthaginians did adopt Greek armaments.
However, I want to pause for a moment to draw one point of important clarification: at no point did any Carthaginian or any soldier in Carthaginian service that we know of, fight in a Macedonian-style pike phalanx. The idea that the Carthaginians adopted this style of fighting is based entirely on old mistranslation of lonchophoroi as ‘pikemen’ when in fact the lonche is a light spear and these are light infantry javelin-men fighting in support of African heavy infantry. We’ll talk more about them next week.
We have a few small engravings (small engraved impression seals called ‘scarabs’) from Carthage and Phoenician settlements in Sardinia, which depict soldiers and they show men with large apparently circular shields and spears.5 Numidian royal monuments, which may be drawing on Carthaginian material culture (it would have been high status) feature large round shields as a design motif and one intriguing monument, a statue base excavated in Rome, has been supposed by Ann Kuttner to possibly be a Numidian comission showing Numidian arms (or perhaps the captured arms of Carthaginians?) and shows a large round shield of the same type seen on their royal monumnets, alongside tube-and-yoke cuirasses (two of which are set up as trophies) and plumed helmets of the pilos/konos type (a kind of Hellenistic Greek helmet).6 And our literary sources regularly describe the Carthaginians as forming heavy infantry battle lines (using the word φάλαγξ, phalanx, to describe them) and report Carthaginians as wearing helmets and armor, with large shields and spears.7
On that basis, both Gregory Daly and Joshua Hall (both op. cit.) conclude that the Carthaginians must have fought rather a lot like Greek hoplites and I think this is both basically correct and probably the best we can do. By the Punic Wars, we have hints that Carthaginian troops (both citizen and subject from North Africa) may also be adopting Italic equipment, which I’ll get into more in the next post: by the end of the Second Punic War and certainly by the Third Punic War, Carthaginian soldiers may have looked actually quite ‘Roman’ in their kit.
All of that said, as is obvious from the forces Carthage arrayed for the Punic Wars, Carthaginian armies included far more than just citizen soldiers – indeed, many Carthaginian armies evidently included few if any Carthaginian citizens outside of the officer corps. So to better understand Carthage’s armies, we are going to have to branch out to think about their other forces, which we’ll begin to do next week.
daringfireballfeed_feedFor The New Yorker, Ronan Farrow and Andrew Marantz go deep profiling Sam Altman under the mince-no-words headline “Sam Altman May Control Our Future — Can He Be Trusted?” 16,000+ words — roughly one-third the length of The Great Gatsby — very specifically investigating Altman’s trustworthiness, particularly the details surrounding his still-hard-to-believe ouster by the OpenAI board in late 2023, only to return within a week and purge the board. The piece is long, yes, but very much worth your attention — it is both meticulously researched and sourced, and simply enjoyable to read. Altman, to his credit, was a cooperative subject, offering Farrow and Marantz numerous interviews during an investigation that Farrow says took over a year and half.
A few excerpts and comments (not in the same order they appear in the story):
Yet most of the people we spoke to shared the judgment of Sutskever and Amodei: Altman has a relentless will to power that, even among industrialists who put their names on spaceships, sets him apart. “He’s unconstrained by truth,” the board member told us. “He has two traits that are almost never seen in the same person. The first is a strong desire to please people, to be liked in any given interaction. The second is almost a sociopathic lack of concern for the consequences that may come from deceiving someone.”
The board member was not the only person who, unprompted, used the word “sociopathic.” One of Altman’s batch mates in the first Y Combinator cohort was Aaron Swartz, a brilliant but troubled coder who died by suicide in 2013 and is now remembered in many tech circles as something of a sage. Not long before his death, Swartz expressed concerns about Altman to several friends. “You need to understand that Sam can never be trusted,” he told one. “He is a sociopath. He would do anything.”
A recurring theme in the piece is that colleagues who’ve worked with Altman the closest trust him the least. This bit about Aaron Swartz warning friends that Altman is a “sociopath” who “can never be trusted” is, to my knowledge, new reporting. Swartz’s opinion carries significant weight with me.1 Swartz is lionized (rightly) for his tremendous strengths, and the profoundly tragic circumstances of his martyrdom have resulted in less focus on his weaknesses. But I knew him fairly well and he led a very public life, and I’m unaware of anyone claiming he ever lied. Exaggerated? Sure. Lied? I think never.
Another central premise of the story is that while it’s axiomatic that one should want honest, trustworthy, scrupulous people in positions of leadership at any company, the nature of frontier AI models demands that the organizations developing them be led by people of extraordinary integrity. The article, to my reading, draws no firm conclusion — produces no smoking gun, as it were — regarding whether Sam Altman is generally honest/truthworthy/scrupulous. But I think it’s unambiguous that he’s not a man of great integrity.
Regarding Fidji Simo, OpenAI’s other “CEO”:
Several executives connected to OpenAI have expressed ongoing reservations about Altman’s leadership and floated Fidji Simo, who was formerly the C.E.O. of Instacart and now serves as OpenAI’s C.E.O. for AGI Deployment, as a successor. Simo herself has privately said that she believes Altman may eventually step down, a person briefed on a recent discussion told us. (Simo disputes this. Instacart recently reached a settlement with the F.T.C., in which it admitted no wrongdoing but agreed to pay a sixty-million-dollar fine for alleged deceptive practices under Simo’s leadership.)
This paragraph is juicy in and of itself, with its suggestions of palace intrigue. But it’s all the more interesting in light of the fact that, post-publication of the New Yorker piece, Fidji Simo has taken an open-ended medical leave from OpenAI. If we run with the theory that Altman is untrustworthy (the entire thesis of Farrow and Marantz’s story), and that Simo is also untrustworthy (based on the fraudulent scams she ran while CEO of Instacart, along with her running the Facebook app at Meta before that), we’d be foolish not to at least consider the possibility that her medical leave is a cover story for Altman squeezing Simo out after catching on to her angling to replace him atop OpenAI. The last thing OpenAI needs is more leadership dirty laundry aired in public, so, rather than fire her, maybe Altman let her leave gracefully under the guise of a relapse of her POTS symptoms?
Simo’s LinkedIn profile lists her in two active roles: CEO of “AGI deployment” at OpenAI, and co-founder of ChronicleBio (“building the largest biological data platform to power AI-driven therapies for complex chronic conditions”). If my spitball theory is right, she’ll announce in a few months that after recuperating from her POTS relapse, the experience has left her seeing the urgent need to direct her energy at ChronicleBio. Or perhaps my theory is all wet, and Simo and Altman have a sound partnership founded on genuine trust, and she’ll soon be back in the saddle at OpenAI overseeing the deployment of AGI (which, to be clear, doesn’t yet exist2). But regardless of whether the Altman-Simo relationship remains cemented or is in the midst of dissolving, it raises serious questions why — if Altman is a man of integrity who believes that OpenAI is a company whose nature demands leaders of especially high integrity — he would hire the Instacart CEO who spearheaded bait-and-switch consumer scams that all came right out of the playbook for unscrupulous car salesmen.
Regarding Altman’s stint as CEO at Y Combinator, and his eventual, somewhat ambiguous, departure, Farrow and Marantz write:
By 2018, several Y.C. partners were so frustrated with Altman’s behavior that they approached [Y Combinator founder Paul] Graham to complain. Graham and Jessica Livingston, his wife and a Y.C. founder, apparently had a frank conversation with Altman. Afterward, Graham started telling people that although Altman had agreed to leave the company, he was resisting in practice. Altman told some Y.C. partners that he would resign as president but become chairman instead. In May, 2019, a blog post announcing that Y.C. had a new president came with an asterisk: “Sam is transitioning to Chairman of YC.” A few months later, the post was edited to read “Sam Altman stepped away from any formal position at YC”; after that, the phrase was removed entirely. Nevertheless, as recently as 2021, a Securities and Exchange Commission filing listed Altman as the chairman of Y Combinator. (Altman says that he wasn’t aware of this until much later.)
Altman has maintained over the years, both in public and in recent depositions, that he was never fired from Y.C., and he told us that he did not resist leaving. Graham has tweeted that “we didn’t want him to leave, just to choose” between Y.C. and OpenAI. In a statement, Graham told us, “We didn’t have the legal power to fire anyone. All we could do was apply moral pressure.” In private, though, he has been unambiguous that Altman was removed because of Y.C. partners’ mistrust. This account of Altman’s time at Y Combinator is based on discussions with several Y.C. founders and partners, in addition to contemporaneous materials, all of which indicate that the parting was not entirely mutual. On one occasion, Graham told Y.C. colleagues that, prior to his removal, “Sam had been lying to us all the time.”
Graham responded to this on Twitter/X thus:
Since there’s yet another article claiming that we “removed” Sam because partners distrusted him, no, we didn’t. It’s not because I want to defend Sam that I keep insisting on this. It’s because it’s so annoying to read false accounts of my own actions.
Which tweet includes a link to a 2024 tweet containing the full statement Farrow and Marantz reference, which reads:
People have been claiming YC fired Sam Altman. That’s not true. Here’s what actually happened. For several years he was running both YC and OpenAI, but when OpenAI announced that it was going to have a for-profit subsidiary and that Sam was going to be the CEO, we (specifically Jessica) told him that if he was going to work full-time on OpenAI, we should find someone else to run YC, and he agreed. If he’d said that he was going to find someone else to be CEO of OpenAI so that he could focus 100% on YC, we’d have been fine with that too. We didn’t want him to leave, just to choose one or the other.
Graham is standing behind Altman publicly, but I don’t think The New Yorker piece mischaracterized his 2024 statement about Altman’s departure from Y Combinator. Regarding the quote sourced to anonymous “Y.C. colleagues” that he told them “Sam had been lying to us all the time”, Graham tweeted:
I remember having a conversation after Sam resigned with a YC partner who said he and some other partners had been unhappy with how Sam had been running YC. I told him Sam had told us that all the partners were happy, so he was either out of touch or lying to us.
And, emphasizing that this remark was specifically in the context of how happy Y Combinator’s partners were under Altman’s leadership of YC, Graham tweets:
Every YC president tends to tell us the partners are happy. Sam’s successor did too, and he was mistaken too. Saying the partners are unhappy amounts to saying you’re doing a bad job, and no one wants to admit or even see that.
Seems obvious in retrospect, but we’ve now learned we should ask the partners themselves. (And they are indeed now happy.)
I would characterize Graham’s tweets re: Altman this week as emphasizing only that Altman was not fired or otherwise forced from YC, and could have stayed as CEO at YC if he’d found another CEO for OpenAI. But for all of Graham’s elucidating engagement on Twitter/X this week regarding this story, he’s dancing around the core question of the Farrow/Marantz investigation, the one right there in The New Yorker’s headline: Can Sam Altman be trusted? “We didn’t ‘remove’ Sam Altman” and “We didn’t want him to leave” are not the same things as saying, say, “I think Sam Altman is honest and trustworthy” or “Sam Altman is a man of integrity”. If Paul Graham were to say such things, clearly and unambiguously, those remarks would carry tremendous weight. But — rather conspicuously to my eyes — he’s not saying such things.
From the second half of the same paragraph quoted above, that started with Aaron Swartz’s warnings about Altman:
Multiple senior executives at Microsoft said that, despite Nadella’s long-standing loyalty, the company’s relationship with Altman has become fraught. “He has misrepresented, distorted, renegotiated, reneged on agreements,” one said. Earlier this year, OpenAI reaffirmed Microsoft as the exclusive cloud provider for its “stateless” — or memoryless — models. That day, it announced a fifty-billion-dollar deal making Amazon the exclusive reseller of its enterprise platform for A.I. agents. While reselling is permitted, Microsoft executives argue OpenAI’s plan could collide with Microsoft’s exclusivity. (OpenAI maintains that the Amazon deal will not violate the earlier contract; a Microsoft representative said the company is “confident that OpenAI understands and respects” its legal obligations.) The senior executive at Microsoft said, of Altman, “I think there’s a small but real chance he’s eventually remembered as a Bernie Madoff- or Sam Bankman-Fried-level scammer.”
The most successful scams — the ones that last longest and grow largest — are ones with an actual product at the heart. Scams with no actual there there go bust quickly. The Bankman-Fried FTX scandal blew up quickly because FTX never offered anything of actual value. Bernie Madoff, though, had a long career, because much of his firm’s business was legitimate. It wasn’t only the Ponzi scheme, which is what enabled Madoff to keep the Ponzi scheme going for two decades.
But the better comparison to OpenAI — if that “small but real chance” comes true — might be Enron. Enron was a real company that built and owned a very real pipeline and energy infrastructure business. ChatGPT and Codex are very real, very impressive technologies. Enron’s operations were real, but the story they told to investors was a sham. OpenAI’s technology is undeniably real and blazing the frontier of AI. It’s the financial story Altman has structured that seems alarmingly circular.
In a 2005 Y Combinator “class photo”, Altman and Swartz are standing next to each other. Despite the fact that Altman was sporting a reasonable number of popped polo collars (zero), Swartz was clearly the better-dressed of the two.* ↩︎
* Aaron would’ve loved this footnote. Christ, I miss him.
With rare exceptions, I continue to think it’s a sign of deep C-suite dysfunction when a company has multiple “CEOs”. When it actually works — like at Netflix, with co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters (and previously, Sarandos and Reed Hastings before Hastings’s retirement in 2023) — the co-CEOs are genuine partners, and neither reports to the other. There is generally only one director of a movie, but there are exceptions, who are frequently siblings (e.g. the Coens, the Wachowskis, the Russos). A football team only has one head coach. The defensive coordinator is the “defensive coordinator”, not the “head coach of defense”. It’s obvious that Fidji Simo reports to Sam Altman, and thus isn’t the “CEO” of anything at OpenAI. But OpenAI does have applications, and surely is creating more of them, so being in charge of applications is being in charge of something real. By any reasonable definition, AGI has not yet been achieved, and many top AI experts continue to question whether LLM technology will ever result in AGI. So Simo changing her title to (or Altman changing her title to) “CEO of AGI deployment” is akin to changing her title to “CEO of ghost busting” in terms of its literal practical responsibility. ↩︎︎
slacktivist_feeddaringfireballfeed_feedThis new museum in Utrecht (about 30–40 minutes south of Amsterdam) seems just astonishing. The rainbow wall of iMacs alone is incredible.
baseball_rpf_ao3_feedby Anonymous
Kehden visits Andrew for his first start.
Words: 211, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English
thedrawplay_feed
Waking up and checking our phones is now just a constant stream of misery so I cannot tell you how delightful it was to have a stupid, low-stakes drama story take over the feed for a day. It would appear, without official confirmation, that Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel and Senior NFL reporter for The Athletic Dianna Russini are possibly having an affair.
The two were spotted at a luxury resort in Sedona being all cute together. They locked hands, they hugged, hung out in swimsuits in a hot tub and next to each other, you know, stuff professional colleagues do as part of the job. They were also there with friends! Those friends were just off-screen, also having a good time. That’s the story they went with, apparently.
Now we don’t have any evidence of them sucking face or worse, but you generally don’t hang out in the same hot tubs and lock hands with someone you have a strictly professional relationship with. The absence of friends in the pictures also isn’t evidence that friends aren’t there, but it sure as hell looks like two married adults hung out with each other in a way that was beyond normal levels of professionalism. Are they fuckin? Probably.
These are two consenting adults ruining nobody’s relationships but their own, and normally, it would be funny to just laugh at them getting caught like the new Coldplay Couple, but Russini’s position as a reporter adds a frustrating wrinkle to this. If they are having an affair, it means she committed one of the Big Sins of journalism: fucking your source. Naturally, this will now cast doubt on all of her reporting, and internet sleuths are already at work combing through her previous reports and podcast appearances for anything that feels like a piece of the puzzle. Some of it is pretty weak, some of it is a genuine side-eye.
All of these little mentions and anecdotes could be jokes, but now we are stuck wondering. Russini’s entire career is now going to be subject to whispers and jokes, and whatever hard work she actually does will be forever discounted. If the affair is false, this sucks for her. If true, she at least partly deserves it, but every other female reporter in the business has a right to be furious with her for it. She potentially broke an ethical boundary.
Mysogynists and dipshits already make jokes and often sincerely believe women with high positions in industries slept their way to the top. Russini possibly just confirmed that stereotype on herself, and these dopes will use her as an example to discredit and hurt other female reporters. I remember how much bullshit Erin Andrews went through at the height of her popularity, to the point where she got fucking spied on. Mina Kimes’ mentions are full of misogyny, even when she just posts a cute picture of her dog.
This is what sucks about all of this. Russini, if guilty, can be argued to deserve to have her career questioned. That’s the bed she made. No one else in the industry deserves to be questioned because of her actions. If Russini is actually innocent here, then she is also a victim, because now everything she worked for is up in smoke due to a misunderstanding. Gamergate started because of a false accusation about sleeping with someone for a good review, this shit can get so stupid and unfair.
Vrabel will be fine, outside whatever personal drama it causes. He’s not a reporter so his only ethical failing here is cheating on his family, which is his own personal problem that isn’t really our business. He’ll just get hit with jokes for a while.
Either way, it doesn’t look good for the two. To my knowledge, we haven’t had any of these “friends” confirm Russini/Vrabel’s story, which seems like it would be easy to do if true. A lot of people have speculated that the pictures might be from a private-eye, possibly hired by the family of one of them. If one or both of them end up divorced soon, that’s probably the cleanest sign the rumor is true.
The post Mike Vrabel’s Arizona Affair appeared first on The Draw Play.
slacktivist_feeddaringfireballfeed_feedJason Snell, writing at Six Colors:
Software developer Photon, whose product requires running a bunch of Macs to connect to iMessage, discovered a pretty major bug:
Every Mac has a hidden expiration date. After exactly 49 days, 17 hours, 2 minutes, and 47 seconds of continuous uptime, a 32-bit unsigned integer overflow in Apple’s XNU kernel freezes the internal TCP timestamp clock… ICMP (ping) keeps working. Everything else dies. The only fix most people know is a reboot.
The whole story is wild (albeit technical). Photon says they’re working on a fix, but really, this is something Apple should be working on.
If you keep track of time using milliseconds, and store that in an unsigned 32-bit integer, it overflows after 49 days, 17 hours, 2 minutes, and 47 seconds. That’s the bug.
I think this bug is new to Tahoe. If you look at Apple’s open-source XNU kernel code — e.g. lines 3,732 to 3,745 in tcp_subr.c — you can see that the lines assigning the time in milliseconds to a uint32_t variable were checked in just six months ago, whereas most of the file is five years old. Also, I personally ran my MacBook Pro — at the time, running MacOS 15.7.2 Sequoia — up to 91 days of uptime in January. I even mentioned that remarkable uptime in my annual report card, in praise of Apple’s software reliability. Apple’s pre-Tahoe reliability, that is.
I was hesitant to link to this at all because the original (unbylined) report from Photon is so hard to follow. It’s downright manic — over 3,500 words with 33 section headings (<h2> and <h3> tags), with no cohesive narrative. The bug, seemingly, is not that complicated. The whole write-up from Photon just screams “AI-generated slop” to me, and I thus hesitate even to link to Snell’s piece linking to it. But I think the bug is real, and my sympathy for everyone afflicted with MacOS 26 Tahoe is sincere. (And if I’m wrong about the post being AI slop and a human at Photon actually wrote this, I would suggest taking it easy with the cocaine.)
daringfireballfeed_feed“thenickdude”, on Reddit:
They’re using this to detect if you have Creative Cloud already installed when you visit on their website.
When you visit https://www.adobe.com/home, they load this image using JavaScript:
https://detect-ccd.creativecloud.adobe.com/cc.png
If the DNS entry in your hosts file is present, your browser will therefore connect to their server, so they know you have Creative Cloud installed, otherwise the load fails, which they detect.
They used to just hit http://localhost:<various ports>/cc.png which connected to your Creative Cloud app directly, but then Chrome started blocking Local Network Access, so they had to do this hosts file hack instead.
(Via Thom Holwerda at OSNews.)
They didn’t have to do this, of course. In fact, quite obviously, they definitely should not be doing this. Adobe is just a third-party developer, no better, no more trusted, no more important than any other. Imagine if every piece of software on your computer added entries to your /etc/hosts file. Madness. Adobe should be ashamed of themselves. Adobe used to be a bastion of best practices for developers to follow. Now their installer/updater is indistinguishable from malware.
See also: Marc Edwards on Mastodon, and Michael Tsai.
nfl_rpf_ao3_feedby Anonymous
浪潮绕着它汹涌就像绕着我们在罗马的梦床
Words: 2671, Chapters: 1/?, Language: 中文-普通话 國語
paperpools_feed
Was going to post this on Substack, but they don't let you indent blocks of text.
Today’s insanely long installment concerns a major prize which I was told I’d won back in February, but for which I turned out not to be eligible because unable to promote the prize to their satisfaction. I have held off posting this, since the prize was to be confidential until its announcement on April 8.
On February 10 I went to Amsterdam to stay in an apartment a reader had very kindly offered me. I was in a bad way after the publication of Your Name Here; had hoped to be very quiet, to write and clear the head. The wifi had been disconnected, but this seemed like a good thing, conducive to work.
On February 11 I got an email on my phone from my editor at New Directions, who said I must not ignore an email from Michael Kelleher. Barbara has my gmail address; the general public has access to a gmx address which doesn’t show up on the phone, requires opening the browser. Checked, saw email asking me to call him.
We talked on the 12th. He told me I had won a Windham-Campbell Prize for fiction of $175,000.
For about 3 seconds I was thrilled: this would give me the chance to work on texts using Edward Tufte's information design without relying on a publisher for technical support, something I had failed to put in place in over 20 years.
I then learned that the award was contingent on extensive promotion of the prize. While I thought I could attend the 6-day festival at Yale in September, I was not in a state to drop everything to make an audio interview and promotional video and engage in phone discussions of the publicity process.
Communication was difficult, not only because of absence of wifi but because my phone later seemed to run out of data. It took a while to determine that the festival was not enough; the promotional video was absolutely non-negotiable. Another one bites the dust.
People get huffy about suicide (selfish to do it, help should be sought, seeking help is called threatning suicide); it’s true that it causes distress, so one tries to avoid it. But the best way is to avoid being driven to the edge in the first place. If you’re trying not to crack up, there are some things you can’t do; it’s hard to get people to accept that.
Have set out this messy story for the record.
2/12/2026 00:49 [after preliminary emails from Barbara & Michael]
Dear Michael ,
I'm so sorry ! I came to Amsterdam yesterday and am staying in an apartment whose WiFi isn't working, so can't use my laptop & zoom. Have never installed zoom on my phone so a bit leery now.
Would it help to talk on the phone? If so I can be reached at [redacted.
With best wishes
Helen
[Email from Michael saying he is in a meeting until 9pm but free to talk the next day]
2/12/2026 1:33
Having trouble sleeping so 9pm your time would probably be all right, but if that's a long day for you tomorrrow would be fine -.maybe 9 am your time?
Helen
[Email from M agreeing to 9]
2/12/2026 2:15 [H to M]
tonight? tomorrow? (Both were possibilities)
[email saying he will call in 8 minutes]
2/12/2026 02:59 [H to M]
Terrific!
[We talk. He asks if it is OK to record. I say Of course.] He asks if I have heard of the Windham-Campbell Prize and I say I think so. He explains that it was founded with a bequest from Windham to honour Campbell: Windham had been a writer and had unexpectedly received a royalties check of $5000 in [I think] 1947 from [I think] a play he had worked on. The money had given him three years to write his first novel. Windham and Campbell had remembered how much it had meant to have this time to write and wanted to set up an arts fund that would give other writers time. The prize had been launched in [I think] 2013. I had been selected as one of the winners; it was a prize of $175,000.
He explains that the decision-making process is completely secret. You can’t apply; requests for nominations are sent out, an initial selection is made and followed up with requests for references. This had been going on for a year. My name had been put forward and many people had advocated for me. People loved my work!
There were a few conditions: To come to a 6-day festival at Yale in September, when the prize money would be paid. [That didn’t sound too bad. But he kept going on, and it sounded worse and worse, and each requirement was presented as something very minor] Write a piece for the Yale Review, make a podcast with him, make a video and audio recording before the announcement on April 8. He explained that during the pandemic they had faced constraints but they had found a way to make videos and record interviews by sending production equipment to people’s homes!
I tried to sound grateful and enthusiastic since this was presumably wanted for the recording, talking about the chance to incorporate Tuftean infoviz into fiction, but it sounded as though the prize would require instantly putting a stop to work yet again. He said he would send me an email with the terms.
2/12/2026 16:46
Email sending requirements for prize, with attached letter of terms to which I must agree. Perhaps the text of the terms will make clear how challenging this would be for someone of restricted capacity.
According to the letter,
The award and prize money will be conferred at a ceremony at Yale University on September 16, 2026. Yale will host a festival celebrating the work of you and your fellow prize recipients from September 15-18, 2026. The requirements for accepting the prize are that you 1) attend the ceremony and participate in the festival, 2) film a short personal video for the prize announcement and 3) contribute an original piece to a special issue of The Yale Review. (In the event that we are unable to host an in-person festival, you will be asked to participate in a similar number of events for a virtual festival), 4) record an episode of the Windham-Campbell Prizes Podcast in May or June of this year. The only additional requirements for accepting the prize are that you indicate that you are a “recipient of the Windham-Campbell Literature Prize” in your author biography and publicity materials. Afterwards, you are free to use the prize money as you please. No reporting is required.
The email goes into a great deal more detail on arrangements for video and other publicity:
Video Interview and Portrait Photography
We will be sending a production team from 5:00 Films and Media to your location to film a video profile and photograph an official portrait. To that end:
Publicity
Please complete this information and publicity survey no later than Monday, February 16, 2026:
Please proof this bio for accuracy:
Born in Maryland in 1957, Helen DeWitt is the author of five books of fiction, including The Last Samurai (2000), hailed as the best book of the twenty-first century by New York Magazine. Echoes of a lifetime spent living across different locales, from Brazil to England, reverberate in her work, where polyglot characters navigate the world through rational logic, only to be confounded by their own baffling species. In her novella The English Understand Wool (2022), DeWitt is at her most delightfully Swiftian, roasting the publishing industry through the tale of a seventeen-year-old girl raised to avoid mauvais ton, or bad taste, who finds herself pressured to sell her trauma in a maudlin memoir. One emerges from this witty, laugh-out-loud adventure into an author’s note offering instructions on how one can directly support her work (or even just buy her a cup of coffee)—the author’s genius brought to human proportions. DeWitt is that rare writer who refuses compromises that would dilute her work’s power despite the personal sacrifices at stake. Her latest novel, Your Name Here (2025), co-authored with journalist Ilya Gridneff, took twenty years to publish and is a mind-melding mashup featuring autofiction, real-life correspondence, a book-within-a-book, and a suite of second-person narrators. Having studied Classics at Oxford University, where she earned her PhD, DeWitt has since eschewed academia and remains fiercely committed to exploring alternative ways of realizing her literary vision, which includes over 100 projects on her hard drive. She lives between Berlin and a cottage in the woods of Vermont.
Please respond to this email immediately, confirming your acceptance of the requirements to participate in prize announcement videos and festival events (virtual or in-person, as circumstances permit), contribute to a special issue of The Yale Review, participate in media outreach and special projects (which may include interviews, podcasts, or other forms of media), and hereafter to include some version of the phrase "recipient of the Windham-Campbell Prize" in your author bio. Payment of the award will take place on or after Friday, September 18, 2026, contingent on the successful completion of all of the above.
I think I am looking death in the face. Can’t get my head around this – impossible to imagine Pynchon or Cormac McCarthy, in early career, contemplating this with anything but horror. If I had 8 months clear before the festival I might be able to go to that, but how can I drop everything now, when I had finally cleared time to write after 5 very bad years? Must think of something polite to say. Must find Wifi to explain.
I thought perhaps it wouldn’t be a big deal, simply going to the festival, because we can think of so many writers we admire for whom the whole thing would be unthinkable – off the top of my head, Dickinson, Proust, Kafka, Beckett, Pessoa, Salinger, Harper Lee, Pynchon, DeLillo, Cormac McCarthy, Ferrante. But I must certainly explain.
I find that the University Library is 15 minutes away and think I can get Wifi there. I walk over (getting lost a couple of times) and discover that it is (as far as I can tell) not open to the public, only to members of the University. (Possibly, now I think of it, a necessary defense against throngs of tourists in search of Wifi.)
Go back to apt, exh’d.
2/12/2056 17:45 [H to M]
Dear Mike,
I'm sorry, but I can't cope with trying to answer this on my phone. I tried to use the University library today but it was only open to university members. I will see whether I can get my laptop online at the public library tomorrow and answer everything then.
With best wishes,
Helen
Email at 18:07 from MK saying he forgot the cc’s (there are a lot)
Email at 19:02 from MK in reply to my email saying not to worry
2/13/26 12:04
Email from Hannah Bright asking me to complete publicity form in Google and suggesting we have phone or video chat to discuss process
2/13/26 22:40 Email from Chad Schreiner, producer at 5:00 Films & Media, explaining that they will be preparing films for the prize announcement on April 8 and asking to set up 30-minute phone call to discuss video content, filming process, portrait photography, with link to Calendly to set up time
Must try again to find wifi.
I find there is a public library about a 30-minute walk away, so I go there. There are plenty of places to hook up a laptop, but the instructions for Wifi are all about how to connect a phone. Do not have the fortitude to ask a member of staff or other visitor so leave.
18:23 Back at the apartment I send out a tweet hoping someone has a suggestion.
I'm in Amsterdam thanks to a very kind reader. A joy of the apartment is in fact current absence of WiFi (recalcitrant provider) but I urgently need to deal with a couple of professional emails where phone won't do. Tried library b only saw instructions for app to connect phone
Anyone in Amsterdam who might be able to help? Seems the days of laptop friendly cafes are long gone.
People respond, including one recommending his co-work space, and one person suggests, erm, Starbucks. Yes. Headpiece filled with straw. Head so stupid, did not INSTANTLY THINK to look for a Starbucks instead of wandering the city in search of a library. There is a Starbucks a 6-minute walk away.
Starbucks closes at 8. It is too late to go there today.
2/14/26 11:40 (from Starbucks) [H to M]
Dear Mike,
I'm sorry not to have replied immediately. As I've said, I am staying in an apartment where the wifi doesn't work, and it's very hard for me to write emails on my phone. I kept looking for a library to get connected and failing - the university library doesn't let outsiders in, the public library only had instructions for connecting a phone to wifi. Last night someone suggested Starbucks, which was obvious but I had been too tired to think of it.
I am facing a problem.
Will Evans of Deep Vellum/Dalkey made an offer for YOUR NAME HERE in May 2022. I was desperate to get back to writing after caring for my mother for the first 15 months of the pandemic, but I thought I must agree out of loyalty to my co-author.
Will said they would publish in late 2023 early 2024, but in the end he took three and a half years to get the book into print, missing every conceivable deadline many times, littering the book with mistakes that had to be fixed. I could not live on the very small advance, split with my co-author, but though other money came in I could not use any of it to finish my own books. Every time I tried to clear time there would be some new crisis. I found myself struggling with crushing fatigue - some days I would not be able to get out of bed. Sometimes putting on socks was the achievement of the day. People are constantly asking me for interviews, but it would have been better not to do any; I had to force myself to do two out of loyalty to my co-author.
At last it was over. I thought I could use 2026 to salvage the books Will and his team had kept derailing. In January a producer renewed his option on THE ENGLISH UNDERSTAND WOOL, so I had $25,000 and this time I could actually use it. I arranged to go to Amsterdam thanks to an offer from a reader. From March 23 to May 16 I have 8 weeks of a carrel - a lockable office - booked at the Staatsbibliothek. (These are very rare - bookings open twice a year, and you have to log in at 8 am to seize a place before they're gone.) After that the plan was to go to my cottage in Vermont, which has no internet access and no cellphone access.
None of these arrangements facilitate organizing logistics with people - the whole point was to set up places where I wouldn't have to talk to anyone, where I could think about nothing but the books that had been crowded out by the years of chaos. And all these years with Deep Vellum have used up all the energy that ought to be available for fixes. Just how tired and stupid do you have to be not to realize Starbucks would have internet access? Not to realize there is a Starbucks a 6-minute walk from the house?
Anyway, if we could make a fair allocation of energy, it's obvious that the Windham-Camptell is spectacularly generous, and if it sets store by participants' promoting the prize it has every right to expect people to be involved in the program in the way it prefers. It's not fair that Deep Vellum should absorb all available energy in years of chaos. It's not fair, but it just is the case that I am now someone who takes two days to think of Starbucks as a place with an internet connection.
I feel as though, if I were following my original plan for 2026, writing would bring back energy as it always does, and I would easily be able to take part in the festival week planned for September. I wondered whether it would be acceptable for me to do that, and not struggle to pull off the various things that are part of the announcement program.
With many apologies,
Helen
PS I will try to complete the Google document while I have access to Wifi.
[NOTE: This was very unfair to Will, who did not personally do everything at DV, and to Deep Vellum/Dalkey, who were not solely responsible for everything wrong in the 3.5 years. It’s true that it took 8 months to finalize a contract, that a lot of things needed last-minute fixing at the very protacted end, that publicity was rough, that delays in the last year forced me to withdraw from a Writer-in-Residence position at UVA scheduled for February 2026; but my co-author was the main point of contact for the long intermediate period between signature & last year. Could not go into desperate months-long scramble to get post-Brexit residency, the Konstantinou saga, the French translator saga, & so much more – if YNH had been published quickly I might have been less undone by the rest. Was trying to compress desperation into short space.]
Long silence. Made what would later prove fatal mistake: spent hours play mah jong on my phone, under impression I had unlimited roaming data in EU. Very late, wondered if Thunderbird had somehow sent email from different gmail account which did not appear on phone. Hour of internet searching to find out how to access Gmail 2, where I find email with timestamp from mid-afternoon:
2/14/26 16:43 [M to H]
Email from Michael explaining that both publicity and attendance at the festival are mandatory so a solution must be found. He has talked to Chad and thinks they can do the video on a single day in Amsterdam, with perhaps an hour or two on the phone before the production team arrives. They can either film at my place or arrange another venue. He would like to talk on the phone to agree on a date; they would only need one day for shooting video and b-roll [what is a b-roll] and portrait photo.
[What is a b-roll? According to Google’s AI, it is supplemental or alternative footage intercut with the main, primary footage (A-roll) to enrich the narrative, add visual interest, and provide context.]
Exh’d. Don’t know what to say. Look, suppose you want me to do a 315-lb bench press. I say I can’t and you say it’s mandatory. Saying it’s mandatory does not make it possible for me to bench 315. And now there has already been a phone call, and if I am writing a flood of words coming in at the ear displaces voices, structure, paradigms, game analysis, the work taking shape in the head. And now it seems multiple phone calls are required simply as a preliminary. And I have been walking the streets of Amsterdam in search of wifi to write a single email.
I see that I must write another email and try to explain better. Can’t do it w 2-thumbed typing on phone.
I head out next morning for Starbucks. It is snowing. I get lost. I keep trying, crossing now one canal now another, trudging through the snow, backtracking, getting lost, and when I’ve got lost 6 times I go home.
Warning from WinSim, my German cellphone provider: apparently I have reached upper limit of data for roaming? Is phone about to get cut off?
Write to editor at New Directions, Barbara Epler.
6/15/26 18:04
Barbara, having serious problems with Michael kelleher. Any chance I could.talk to you, maybe on WhatsApp? My number is [redacted].
6:46 tweet to ND (afraid phone will get cut off)
@NewDirections help! Phone out of data, can’t get to Starbucks. Ask barbara to tellMK I have no way to contact him, can only do what I said I would do, available September. Hope to write from berlin mid-march.
DM from Twitter follower suggesting I get an e-sim. I look into this; my phone does not accommodate e-sims. Follower says I could buy a new temporary sim card and swap it in. Might be able to do this if I could first swap in a temporary head.
Time passes. No word. I think I must try again to reach Starbucks.
2/15/26 20:14. Starbucks! I complete the Google doc re publicity
2/15/26 20:33 [time stamp is Berlin time, an hour later than Amsterdam;SB about to close]
Dear Michael,
Thunderbird seems to have sent my email from a different gmail address, one which I can't automatically check from my phone.
Found this at last very late last night. Tried to return to Starbucks today to reply and got lost 6 times wandering the streets of Amsterdam, which is typical when the voices coming into the head take up 90% of capacity. I know from experience that if I keep pushing to deal with practicalities while the mind is in this state the next stage is losing passport, cards, keys, finding myself locked out in the street with no way to contact anyone who could help. Important to back away before cracking up.
My German cellphone company says I have nearly exhausted the data available for overseas roaming - it keeps shutting off connection. So anything that relies on a phone call can't happen.
When we first spoke you explained that during the pandemic you had found a solution to getting videos made which you were very pleased with; I gather the current plan is an adaptation of that.
The pandemic also left millions dead or with long-term disabilities; I would assume it must also have forced you to agree to exceptions to the publicity requirement for people dealing with physical or mental disability. I believe I ought to be able to claim this disability exception as a matter of course.
If in fact the only issue confronted was that of getting videos made, if no serious thought was given to the implications of a global health crsisis, nothing I can say is likely to change it. But the word "mandatory' is not an Open Sesame; I have said what I am capable of and am not able to do more.
You have explained that the inspiration for the prize was the $5000 royalty check which gave Windham three years to write a novel. The thing that was lifechanging was a windfall, which unexpected royalties checks do tend to be. If the superstructure of the prize excludes people who are not able to do all the extra things you want, that hardly seems in the spirit of what was intended by its generous founders.
Sincerely,
Helen
20:49 email from B saying she just got email is at lunch can she call in hour and half
20:59 Of course. Thank you!
22:33 I do manage to call B on WhatsApp
No idea what’s going on with phone or what warning meant, but it still definitely doesn’t seem like something to be relied on for publicity liaison or interviews.
I try to explain to Barbara. I explain about getting lost 6 times trying to find Starbucks 3 streets away, and how the next phase is much worse, and how I need to be quiet and write. I expain that I have spent months looking like a Beckettian tramp, and surely they do not want to haul a Beckettian tramp in front of the camera. We discuss possibility of asking for prize to be given next year. Barbara says she will talk to Mike.
2/16/26 18:39
Email from B who has talked to Mike. She suggested September-only appearance but he thought it would not be fair to the other winners. Perhaps the video could be like that of a Chinese author who did not want face shown so they filmed around her, or perhaps an audio-only presentation.
[Mike seems not to have grasped the issue with roaming]
He said because I had brought up issue of disabilities he must talk to Yale legal counsel.
Barbara floated possibility of delaying prize for a year, that by next spring I could probably make time for video or audio presentation. He said it had never been done before but said he would have to speak to some people and would get back to us in a few days.
2/18/26.
Wake up very sick, with stomach spasms that I have to wait out, hot, sore, shivering. Have been through this before, when people are making nice noises while ignoring desperation. When my cousin was dying of lung cancer, w no health insurance, my uncle would not release money left in trust for him but kept uttering teflonic Reaganite sentimentalities, said What about AA? Maybe my cousin’s friends in AA could set up a rota to look after him? Went out to dinner with my cousin’s twin and her boyfriend (who’d been putting him up for a year), collapsed in spasms on floor of restaurant.
2/18/26. 18:47 [email from Mike]
Michael writes. He is delighted that they can host me for the festival at Yale, which many winners have described as a highlight. The videos are a cornerstone of how they introduce their winners to their audience and build the legacy of the prizes. He can ask the publicist to back off re requests for interviews and we can also not do a podcast in May. They want me to be comfortable with how I am presented in the profile video. They can rent a studio in Amsterdam and arrange a car service to take me there. Rather than three reels for social media they would record 60-90 seconds of me reading from my work.
2/19/26 00:39 [email to Mike sent from phone]
Sorry, you deserve a polite reply but I am v ill. Stomach spasms, excruciating, cant eat or drink or get out of bed. Hot, sore, violent shivers. No idea how long will last.
Think a video will not work of me shuddering in bed. Maybe? Get key of Berlin apt from neighbor and film there, lots of papers, photos, team cd rummage around and if necessary sent equipment in advance to neighbor. Maybe you cd get people like Ryan Ruby and Rebecca ruykeser and Sheila heti to read from my work.
Can send contact details if necessary.
Sorry to be brief but pretty sick
Helen
2/19/26 20:57 [to Mike from phone]
Perhaps you could get my ex-husband David to talk about my work and the background - he's professor of Classics at NYU and terribly charming and charismatic, and could give a real sense of how transformational the prize would be. His email address is [redacted]
Helen
Sorry to keep casting around for alternatives, but still having spasms and incapacitated
2/23/26 15:06 [email from Mike]
Mike is sorry to hear I am sick. He has been consulting with the board and university colleagues. Using third-party recordings or filming in an empty location would not fulfill prize requirements. My participation is essential; he suggests postponing my prize for a year. It would then be possible to film at my convenience during the 12 months. He gives a link to a video of Wong May which uses a voice-over of the writer and films her hands rather than her face.
2/23/26 15:40 [email to Mike]
Dear Michael
I think Wong May's approach is one that would work for me but I would need to be in Berlin to produce something like this.
If that is acceptable I would prefer to do this now but I would need to go back to Berlin, where all the materials are available.
I seem to remember that the video was to be made after March 9. If I could be available then would that work?
You can perhaps understand that it's hard to make a sudden change of gear having set up something quite different. But it would be better for me to do this now and then not think about it.
You might not understand. Last year I agreed to do a seminar on zoom for Brandeis and so booked a blow-out with a hairdresser on the day - deliberately not booking a cut bc much cd go wrong. The hairdresser suggested a little trim, did not have resolution to refuse, her "trim" of the bangs left me with a Mr. Spock cut ON THE DAY. So when you suggest a video, I think that I am not strong enough to control a hairdresser, and I don't want to be filmed looking like Spock.
This is not an irrational fear when it's the norm for people to apply filters to their videos, and to me the obvious solution is to eliminate the video and make it about the writing. But if the video matters so much, it seems a bit silly to make failure to stand up to a hairdresser the deal breaker for the prize. It would be better to do a video like wong may's.
Best
Helen
2/23/26 16:21 [M to H]
Mike likes Wong May’s video. Before they proceed he needs me to formally agree to the terms of participation (re videos, publicity and festival participation); if there are elements outside the video they are willing to adjust these.
2/24/26 15:22 [M to H]
Email from Mike asking whether I have seen the above email because they need to move forward.
I had thought I could cope if I got the video out of the way, but as soon as I agreed I regretted it. I had thought I could get it out of my head. But it doesn’t work that way. If something is completely irrational the mind keeps going around and around and around for hours – it keeps me up till 5 am, I sleep, as soon as I wake it is going around and around and around again, and it goes on for days, weeks, months – this was the whole reason to come to Amsterdam! To be cut off. To shut down the arguments in the crazy head.
Also, this did not look good. Mike had not drafted new terms incorporating the concessions offered earlier – I was to formally agree to the original terms and rely on not being held to all of them at their discretion. Just how stupid would you have to be to do that?
Could also not see how making the video would not be reminiscent of the game show in Lightning Rods. I would not be able not to think of it.
Could something else be done? Maybe it was asking too much of a team of commercial video producers to make a film of my apartment. But wd it be so different from filming Bacon’s studio, now (I think) transferred to Dublin? I knew Helen Marten, winner of the Turner Prize (that is, she had won and insisted on sharing it); she had once invited me to take part in a Prada-sponsored installation in Paris. What if Helen M. were to make a video in the Absence of the Author? Surely this would be much more interesting than a bit of intellectual kitsch, something of genuine artistic interest? Might it not be obvious to the board and colleagues that this was much better, and self-evidently offering greater prestige to the prize? I began to draft an email to Helen & halfway through thought – but how can I interrupt her work for this nonsense?
I asked myself: Can this possibly be legal? Janet Frame was about to be lobotomized when her first book unexpectedly won a prize. Artaud was confined to an asylum and subject to ECT. Walser was confined to an asylum. One wouldn’t expect them to make a video? Could a prize possibly exclude anyone who was schizophrenic, clinically depressed, suffering from PTSD? Laura Hillenbrand has ME/CFS – can they disqualify anyone with ME? Anyone suffering from Long Covid? Instead of all this begging and pleading and explaining, maybe it would be better to have a lawyer stalk in and kick ass. Well, might not be legal, but I could not think of a way to find a lawyer quickly, and if I tried to find out it would drag on and on and on.
Poor crazy head. The prize was inspired (as I had said in my email) by the extraordinary help it gave Windham when he unexpectedly got a royalties check. I have had that kind of windfall – and the thing about royalties is that your entitlement is not contingent on sanity, on ability to talk on the phone, to engage in PR. Why would anyone think all this compulsory PR was an improvement?
And what was the point? Sometimes arts NGOs badger recipients to do things they don’t want to do because it appeals to donors. But Windham-Campbell doesn’t need donors! It is fully funded by the Windham-Campbell bequest! They don’t need the money!
Or sometimes an organization thinks it needs to work on outreach – perhaps it wants to encourage members of underserved communities, people who might not have heard of it, to apply. But you can’t apply for Windham-Campbell! The selection process is a secret! It can’t be about outreach!
It did not make sense, and it was never going to make sense. But the mind would keep going around and around, convinced that people doing something so senseless must be able to see it was completely bonkers. But they weren’t going to see it. So I should stop.
2/24/26 16:25 [email to Mike]
Dear Mike,
When we communicated yesterday I thought that if my prize were put off until
next year I would have all the commitments hanging over my head; if I could
somehow do the video now I could get it out of the way and not have to think
about it.
As soon as I volunteered to do this I had doubts because of the disruption it
would cause. I then got your email asking me to agree to the original terms and
conditions, with no adaptation reflecting the various concessions you had
offered. So involvement in PR would still be at the team's discretion.
I'm sorry to say that I can't guarantee being able to do what is required. If I
simply stop now I can use the whole of 2026 and 2027 for writing without
interruption; after the last few years I desperately need this. So I must
regretfully decline to accept the prize on the specified terms. I am sure you
will be able to find a candidate who can comply with them.
I shall of course respect the confidentiality surrounding the prize before its
announcement on April 8.
With best wishes,
Helen
2/24/26 17:02 [email from Mike]
Mike wishes there were a way to make it work but it sounds as though it would be too disruptive to my writing and so accepts my decision to decline the prize. Admiration for my writing, good wishes, etc.
I went back to Berlin a few days later. I was worried I might crack up in a strange place; it would matter less if I was back in my own apartment, and it was better to go while I was still able to get there. On the way I did lose my Barclaycard Visa, but it could definitely have been worse.
I think that if I had been in Berlin when I got the news, if the mind had not been beset by these obstacles to communication, if I had not reached a place where I expected to have a clear run at writing and suddenly had it snatched away, it might have been all right. Given that the prize involves a year of secret deliberation, followed by publicity blitz requiring winners’ immediate participation, it does rather set itself up for Hardyesque twists of fate.
* Upon returning to Berlin I noticed a message on my phone from Winsim, my cellphone provider, saying I had used 80% of my data, that this would automatically be extended at the charge agreed in the contract, & that I could buy a Data Snack of 2GB, 5GB, or 10GB at a modest price for the rest of the month. So it seems I was not about to be cut off. Poor crazy head.
[I joined the Authors Guild when I got back to Berlin to see whether disqualification on the basis of inability to provide a video was legal. According to the Authors Guild this is legal.]
daringfireballfeed_feedActing Attorney General Todd Blanche, speaking of the president of the United States in a totally normal way:
I love working for President Trump. It’s the greatest honor of a lifetime. And if President Trump chooses to nominate somebody else and asks me to go do something else, I’ll say, “Thank you very much, I love you, sir.”
The phrase Blanche was looking for is “Thank you sir, may I have another.”
house_chase_ao3_feed从来只有人想抱着狗往下跳，怎么到chase这是反过来的
*应该是连载
*有一点双c不打tag了
Words: 3198, Chapters: 1/?, Language: 中文-普通话 國語
little_women_ao3_feedby Rypay
Laurie is publicly promoted to the rank of “brother.” He soon discovers the position comes with none of the benefits enjoyed by the rest of the lucky few.
Words: 1896, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English
little_women_ao3_feedby Rypay
Laurie es ascendido públicamente a la categoría de “hermano”. Pronto descubre que el cargo no incluye ninguno de los beneficios observados en el resto de los afortunados.
Words: 1879, Chapters: 1/1, Language: Español
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