The Art of Pompeii - Alison Balsom plays Neruda and Haydn Trumpet Concertos
“Ancient Scroll finally deciphered after 2,000 years.” Be sure to drink your ovaltine?
Gaius Corpulus to Flatulus Maxius:
Greetings to you and to all in your household. To your wife and children I send my best wishes for health and prosperity. And I do beseech you to remind that mischievous Celtic slave girl to keep our little secret. I am confident you will not endeavor to enquire of her as to its nature.
My thoughts often turn to home and the superb wine pressed from the vineyards on the slopes of Vesuvius. And it is on the subject of Vesuvius that is the occasion for this epistle.
My travels in the East have introduced me to certain men of knowledge, and who claim that the superb soil of a region is sometimes associated with the past wrath of Vulcan displayed in a fury of fire, smoke and terrible destruction. They further informed that such incidents follow not long on the heels of great shaking of the ground as Vulcan himself hammers his forge closer and closer to those to whom he would bring harm.
You no doubt remember clearly the great shaking that destroyed much of Pompeii just two years before I was called to my first tour of duty in Cappadocia. And so I write urge that you and your family relocate to Rome or Capua without delay.
Whatever you do — don’t just roll up this letter and stick it on the shelf.
"I hit the gas line Art! Run!!!"
“Journal of Alexander the Great” by Henry Livingston (1793) - Prose
https://henrylivingston.com/writing/prose/journal.htm
...
Journal of an Asiatic Expedition attempted by me, Alexander the son of Olympia, (and perhaps the son of Philip.)
446th Olympiad, June 23. Eight o’clock in the evening. Confoundedly tired with marching through this sun-burnt oriental country. A puddle of fresh water is a natural curiosity, and my canteen is half full of sediment. But the hope of filling our knapsacks with Persian gold keeps us from repining. I mean to measure my mattrass in less than an hour, and if that slut Thais keeps me in bed till six o’clock to-morrow morning, I’ll know why. There is no campaigning with or without these trollops.
24th. Ten in the morning. Just finished reviewing my troops — Adjutant-general Parmenio is as formal as his old maiden sister — to receive and return the salutes of a thousand fellows is worse than to be engaged in a decent skirmish. I ever hated ceremony. Give me a girl, a bottle, and a battle, sans souci.
25th. Three in the afternoon. My scouts have this moment come in and inform, that I can easily reach the banks of the Granicus in two hours; and that the Persians, gay as gems and gold can make them, and numerous as locusts, line the eastern shore as far as the eye can reach. My men expect a scratch, but I and Darius’s general perfectly understand each other. I have promised him a province when I shake his hand at Babylon, and I know the coward will rely upon me. I am to make the onset with great play fury, and he is to retreat as ostentatiously as he pleases.
—Seven o’clock. Well, the farce is over, and we Invincible Macedonians have got the Granicus in our rear! My opponent behaved pretty well; although he ought to have pretended resistence a little longer than he did. I believe the rascal thought more than once that we were in earnest. I will give one of the half starved poets that hang upon me, a pistareen and mug of grog, to describe this day’s bustling as a battle of amazing magnitude: Paint Bucephalus as plunging thro’ the foaming current, and bearing me resistless at the head of thirty thousand veterans on a foe, valiant, tho’ unequal — describe the eagle of victory hovering over my helmet — and the Fates fainting on the shore. The fools of posterity perhaps may read the nonsense and believe it.
...
Little known fact: the scrolls were found in the closet of Hilarius Clintonum, wife of Willumus Clintonum, were they had been kept secretly for years.
Drink your Ovaltine!
What have the Romans ever done for us....except for the roads...water...
Ring around the rosey
Apocket full of posies
Ashes ashes we all fall down
Vote for Pedro.
-PJ
Google Translate does a really bad job with Latin. I have my doubts about this one.
ping
Pound pastrami, can kraut, six bagels—bring home for Emma