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The Roman army hires a former legionnaire to hunt\xa0down a courier and intercept a letter he is carrying from the apostle Paul. But when this mercenary\xa0overtakes the courier,\xa0something happens that neither he nor the empire could have predicted.\n\nThis is the plot of the latest novel from writer Steven Pressfield, entitled\xa0A Man at Arms. Pressfield is the author of numerous works of both fiction, including Gates of Fire and Tides of War, and non-fiction, including The War of Art and The Warrior Ethos. On today's show, Steven explains why he decided to return to writing a\xa0 novel set in the ancient world after a 13-year hiatus from doing so, and why he chose to center it around one of Paul's epistles and the threat the Roman empire perceived\xa0in the growing movement of Christianity. We discuss how the protagonist of A Man at Arms, Telamon,\xa0embodies the archetype of the warrior and a philosophy\xa0of "dust and strife," and yet has exhausted\xa0the archetype\xa0and is ready to integrate something\xa0else into it -- a philosophy of love. Steven explains how the journey Telamon is on applies to all artists, entrepreneurs, and individuals, and the transition we all must make from the first half of life in which we're discovering our gifts and honing our skills, to the second half of life, in which we figure out what those gifts and skills are for.\xa0\n\nGet the show notes at aom.is/manatarms.