Your votes determine who will move on to the Sweet Sixteen. Voting closes at 3:30pm CT on Wednesday, March 22 in order to allow us time to create the next survey which will open at 9:00 am March 23.

You may vote for whomever you choose, and we encourage you to pick a few upsets. Correctly predicting the upset is what makes for a winning bracket! You can also influence the voting heavily by asking friends and family to vote for your picks. All you need is a unique email each time a vote is entered.*

So, vote early and vote often. Follow @BCPublishers on Twitter to see voting updates, quotes from winning and losing authors, and more.

*Emails will not be used for anything except eliminating votes from identical accounts.

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West: Hispania
* Augustus’ reported last words were, “I found Rome of clay; I leave it to you of marble.” Thales was esteemed in his times as an original thinker and one who broke with tradition.
* Legend surrounds what we are told about Pythagoras, presenting him as a mathematical genius and a mystic. All Plato’s works of dialogues from which he is purposefully detached.
* Nero exhausted the Roman treasury rebuilding the city around his Golden House. Alexander overthrew the Persian Empire, carried Macedonian arms to India, and laid the foundations for the Hellenistic.
* Mark Antony took charge of Caesar’s will and papers and gave a stirring eulogy for the fallen leader. Though none of his works remain extant, Socrates is credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy.
East: Alexandria
* Homer says of Zeus, “He then lowered his glowing countenance, and the ambrosial locks swayed on his immortal head, till vast Olympus reeled.” Zeus once told Ares, “To me you are the most hateful of all the gods of Olympus.”
* One hymn describes Hermes as the “luck-bringing messenger of the deathless gods, the giver of grace and good things.” Women were understandably reluctant to receive Hades’ addresses, as he was huge and sulfurous.
* The humble, hardworking Hephaestus was generally represented as a sturdy and muscular man with a shortened, lame leg. Poseidon ruled the vast sea, living on the ocean floor in a palace made of coral and jewels.
* Though goddess of the moon, Artemis was chiefly goddess of the wilderness, the hunt, and wild animals. An anonymous poet wrote “Hera…is the illustrious one whom all the blessed ones throughout high Olympus hold in awe and honor.”
Midwest: Carthage
* Homer, many scholars believe, may have been illiterate. Cicero built an immediate reputation at 25 when he conducted his first case, successfully, in defense of sex.
* While in Athens, Horace joined the army of Brutus as a tribunus. Hesiod, one of the oldest known Greek poets, once won a tripod for a song at a funeral.
* Caesar is often depicted wearing a garland to cover his receding hair line. Vergil wanted to have the Aeneid burned upon his death.
* Carmen and error led to Ovid's banishment to an island on the Black Sea during the rule of Augustus. Lucian was known to the philosopher Galen for writing fabricated sayings and expressions to exposing ignorance.
Central: Athens
* Janus was the guardian of doorways and gates, as well as the god of beginnings and endings. If anyone violated the moral order or did anything to excess, those affected thereby could call upon Nemesis for revenge.
* On the Acropolis at Athens, Nike was the personification of victory under the aegis of Athena. Hypnos was bribed by Hera to lull Zeus to sleep so that the Greeks could gain an upper hand over the Trojans during the Trojan War.
* Iris was the personification of the rainbow and the link between the divine and human. According to Ovid, Prometheus was the creator of the human race.
* Eris, goddess of Strife, is the instigator of the judgment of Paris and thus of the Trojan War. Helius, the sun-god with an ability to see everything, was the first to see Hades abduct Persephone and Ares’s affair with Aphrodite.