Sublime

In 133 BCE, the votes for the next year’s tribunes were slowly being delivered on the Capitoline Hill when the posse invaded. A battle followed, in which Tiberius was bludgeoned to death with a chair leg. The man behind the lynch mob was his cousin Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica Serapio, an ex-consul and the head of one of the main groups of Roman

It was Peter who returned first, reaching Toulouse in the autumn of 1299. That the purpose of his visit was to see a money changer suggests that securing the mission’s finances were his priority. For all his careful planning, Peter’s cover was blown almost immediately, when he was recognised by Peter, the son of Raymonde de Luzenac, a rich widow wh

Nous résignerons-nous, cependant, à n’être plus, comme les Italiens nous ont annoncé leur volonté de ne pas le demeurer, qu’un « musée d’antiquailles » ? Ne nous le dissimulons pas : le choix même ne nous est plus permis.

Vespasian in 79 CE was the only emperor in the first two dynasties to die without any rumours of foul play surfacing.

The other source was Cicero’s province. While boasting, maybe correctly, that he had never broken the law in extorting money from the provincials, he still left Cilicia in 50 BCE with more than 2 million sesterces in local currency in his luggage. How exactly it was acquired is not certain: a combination perhaps of Cicero’s meanness with his expens

the Romans,

In a way reminiscent of the modern Catholic Church’s requirement of authenticated miracles in making a new saint, they claimed to ask for proof or witnesses; the appearance of a comet apparently demonstrated the apotheosis of Julius Caesar, but the stories of Livia’s suspiciously large cash reward to the senator who was prepared to say that he had

Dès le IVe siècle, les chrétiens ont démembré et brûlé Hypatie, une philosophe égyptienne célèbre pour ses travaux fabuleux sur l’astronomie. Il a fallu ces créateurs qu’ont été les navigateurs comme Christophe Colomb, les cartographes, les explorateurs qui, poussés par leur curiosité, ont quitté leur pays, pour réussir à démentir l’Église. Puis ça