Source texts. Secondary sources. Out-of-print books. Essays and wikipedia posts.
Not sure how many hours I’ve spent digging around for the odd details of Rome in the time of Caligula and Claudius for my latest story. Did they have pockets? Was there a fountain in the Forum? What was the source of that aquaduct? Did anyone try to assassinate Caligula? How did they lock their doors? If an auspex read the signs and an augur interpreted them, what did the ceremony look like?
But it is never, ever enough. If I’m going to go rooting around in Graves’s sandbox, I had better have my S together. But the best I can manage at this point is to just not make any flagrant errors.
