History

We also discuss, among other things: decapitated ostriches, fatal rose petals, and Mary’s robust reappraisal of Marcus Aurelius’s ‘sub-Stoic’ maundering.

Many people were outraged by what they regarded as his non-parliamentary use of medieval laws to raise money. The most notorious was ship money. This turned an old law, where coastal counties provided ships to the Crown, into a money tax levied on all the counties, including those inland.

On both days, the extraordinary beauty of the flame arising from the funeral pile was noticed. The weather was beautifully fine. The Mediterranean, now soft and lucid, kissed the shore as if to make peace with it. The yellow sand and blue sky intensely contrasted with one another: marble mountains touched the air with coolness, and the flame of the... See more

You must go down into the world of mortals like a ray of light, like a shower of refreshing rain; you must illuminate it like Apollo, shake it to its depths and give it a new life like Zeus, otherwise you are not worthy of your heaven.

Active for over fifty years, Porphyrios caused great concern for Byzantine seafarers. Emperor Justinian I (r. 527–565) made it an important matter to capture it, though he could not come up with a way to do so.