Immortal Son of the Sun
The sunbeam …
an obelisk is a rough stone, rising to a great height, shaped like a pillar in the stadium; and it tapers upwards in imitation of a sunbeam, keeping its quadrilateral shape, till it rises almost to a point,…
Eternal Rome
Rome everlasting until her end.
Skimmers and Laughter Lovers
At the weekend, Reuter’s wrote (good PR!) about the Yudo version of the fourth century, Philogelos or Laughter Lover, the oldest surviving Joke compilation. Their tag line pointed out that Monty Python’s Dead Parrot Sketch had been told long before.
A man goes up…
The bite that saves the hair
Way back, Roman women would tear out their hair for their city,
The Romans, being besieged by the Gauls, made engines for throwing weapons of the hair of women; and on this account they erected an altar and temple to Venus…
Another secular word
The word Secular …
c.1290, “living in the world, not belonging to a religious order,” also “belonging to the state,” from O.Fr. seculer, from L.L. sæcularis “worldly, secular” … Used in ecclesiastical writing like Gk. aion “of this world” (see cosmos).
came from…