Creation

Son of a Persian prince and a Greek sorceress, grandson of the prophet Zoroaster, friend of Xerxes the Great King, ambassador to the courts of India, China and Greece, Cyrus Spitama is also the narrator of Creation and probably the greatest namedropper who ever lived. There were a lot of names to drop in the fifth century BC. Pericles, Thucydides, Sophocles, Confucius, Pythagoras and even Buddha walk on and off stage as the great and ancient empires reach their apex.
And Cyrus, ever eager for knowledge and greatly given to gossip, learns all their secrets, rituals and beliefs. He spills the beans on courts and harems, becomes au fait with Babylonian brothels, knows the Egyptian cure for breast cancer and has all the inside information on the big banks. But most of all, he learns the divine and diverse truths of the universe. For as wars wax and wane, rulers come and go, philosophers fret and prophets pontificate, Cyrus realizes that each culture knows everything - and nothing - about the theory of creation.