Fortress of the Mind Publications is pleased to announce that the audiobook of the new translation of Frontinus’s Stratagems is now available. The link to Amazon Audible can be found here. The book is read by narrator Saethon Williams, whose expert audio renditions have featured in Quintus Curtius’s other translations. Besides Amazon Audible, the audiobook can be found at a number of retailers, library platforms, and streaming services:
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A literary review of the new translation of Stratagems appeared on the Classical Wisdom substack on October 6, 2025. The review is entitled Rome’s Lost Art of War.
I once heard someone pose the question, “Why didn’t the Greeks or Romans produce a military theorist like Sun Tzu?” The answer to this question is that they did, in fact, produce a theorist just as profound—arguably more profound—than the great Chinese sage. The problem is that you’ve never heard of him. His name is Frontinus. He lived from about A.D. 31 to about 104. Here I intend to explain who he was, what is found in his book Stratagems, and why his work is so important.
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Fortress of the Mind Publications is very pleased to announce that Quintus Curtius’s new annotated translation of Frontinus’s Stratagems has been released. It is currently available in paperback and Kindle editions. The hardcover edition will be available very shortly, and the audiobook edition is expected in early November.
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August of 2025 will see the publication of Michael Fontaine’s How to Have Willpower: An Ancient Guide To Not Giving In. The volume is a modern translation and interpretation of two classical texts: Plutarch’s essay On Dysopia and Prudentius’s poem Psychomachia. Very roughly speaking, these works discuss how to manage our emotional states and overcome the challenges posed by shame and vices.
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I expect to publish a new, annotated translation of the Roman military classic Stratagems. It will contain a detailed explanatory introduction, hundreds of footnotes, a commentary on the text, a bibliography, and an extensive index.
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Below are listed the most visited essays of 2024. Not surprisingly, the movie pieces showed considerable traffic. But I did not expect a few essays from much earlier years to resurface: as the waters of time churn and seethe, what was once submerged can often break through the surface. The essays are listed in descending order, based on the number of views.
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I was grateful to have been invited to speak (via Zoom) at the 2024 Stoicon in Melbourne Australia. I was asked to say a few words about Cicero’s Stoic Paradoxes, which I had translated in 2015. The video of my presentation is below:
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Centuries, the complete collection of my essays from 2020 to 2023, was released today. The book is available in paperback, hardcover, and Kindle editions. The essays deal with varied topics in moral philosophy, history, and biography. In addition to essays, the volume also includes a special collection of aphorisms and maxims under the chapter “Gnomology.” An enduring source of practical wisdom and inspiration, these timeless writings are unified by, and imbued with, a passionate belief in direct experience, moral structure, and endurance in adversity. The full table of contents can be found here.
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How To Get Over A Breakup: An Ancient Guide To Moving On, by Ovid. Translated and introduced by Michael Fontaine. Princeton University Press, 2024. Available in hardcover, Kindle, and audiobook.
Ovid is the most famous of the amorous poets of Rome’s literary Golden Age. What distinguishes him from his approximate contemporaries Tibullus and Propertius is his depth of insight, and this is why we still read him today.
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Quintus Curtius 
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