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--> YouTube-Generated Transcript <--
· Introduction
0:03 · In the ninth year of the Yanxi Era, the twentieth in the reign of Han Huan Di, 27th emperor
0:09 · of the Han Dynasty, a small party of foreigners was received in the imperial palace at Luoyang.
0:16 · Although the gifts they brought – elephant tusks, rhinoceros horn, and turtle shell – were
0:22 · not especially impressive, they claimed to have come from a great realm in the far west,
0:28 · as vast and powerful as the Middle Kingdom itself, where an emperor named Marcus Aurelius
0:33 · reigned.
0:34 · We don't know who these men were, or why they traveled so far.
0:38 · But their presence at the court of the Chinese emperor illustrates the vast range and reach
0:45 · of Roman merchants and adventurers.
0:47 · The Mediterranean – or, as the Romans called it, Mare Nostrum (our sea) – was always
· The world known to the Romans
0:54 · the heart of the classical world; Plato famously compared the Greeks, with their coastal cities,
1:01 · to frogs around a pond.
1:03 · By Plato's time, Greek scholars knew the whole span of the sea, from the Pillars of
1:07 · Hercules to the Nile Delta, and had divided its coasts into the three continents of Europe,
1:14 · Asia, and Africa.
1:16 · The campaigns of Alexander the Great made the Middle East and Central Asia familiar
1:21 · to classical cartographers.
1:23 · And the Romans, with their far-ranging conquests and massive trade networks, came to know much
1:29 · of the Old World.
1:32 · Around the middle of the second century, the Roman mathematician Claudius Ptolemy produced
1:36 · a map of the known world, systematically assigning latitudes and longitudes to some 8,000 places
1:43 · across the three continents.
1:45 · The world plotted in Ptolemy's coordinates is a wide one, stretching from the Canary
1:50 · Islands to western China.
1:52 · It is also an immediately recognizable one, though its accuracy diminishes with distance
1:58 · from the Mediterranean.
2:01 · As Ptolemy's map illustrates, the Romans – for all their rhetoric about universal
2:06 · empire – were aware that the world was much larger than their domains.
2:11 · Like the Greeks before them, they knew that the world was round.
2:15 · Thanks to Eratosthenes, who had calculated the circumference of the Earth with remarkable
2:20 · accuracy, they knew their empire occupied a relatively small portion of the globe.
2:26 · And despite the agonies of ancient travel, a steady trickle of scouts, merchants, and
2:32 · missionaries ventured deep into the blank spaces of Ptolemy's map.
· ClickUp
2:38 · [ad text redacted]
3:49 · And now, to resume our topic: what were the most distant places explored by the Romans?
· Arabia
3:57 · Southward, as in every direction, geography and opportunity determined the distances that
4:03 · the Romans traveled.
4:05 · Mediterranean merchants routinely visited Arabia Felix – modern Yemen – the land
4:10 · of frankincense and myrrh.
4:13 · Despite the fact that the spice-bearing regions were said to be tormented by flying snakes,
4:19 · Augustus sent an army to conquer the whole southwestern corner of the Arabian Peninsula.
4:24 · The failure of that campaign prevented Arabia Felix from becoming part of the empire, but
4:31 · a legionary detachment was eventually stationed on the Farasan Islands, just off the Arabian
4:37 · coast.
· East Africa and the Nile
4:39 · Roman merchants also followed the monsoon winds down the east coast of Africa.
4:44 · By the second century, they had crossed the equator, reaching the vicinity of Zanzibar.
4:49 · A few ventured even farther south, to places where the gargantuan Mountains of the Moon
4:55 · loomed on the horizon.
4:58 · These mythical peaks – possibly inspired by distant views of Kilimanjaro – were rumored
5:03 · to be source of the Nile.
5:05 · The Nile itself, of course, was the most convenient inland route into Africa.
5:12 · Although the province of Egypt reached only to the rapids of the Second Cataract, near
5:16 · the modern border between Egypt and Sudan, Roman influence extended much further – especially
5:21 · under Augustus, when a Roman army marched through Nubia.
5:25 · Later, when Nero was considering an invasion of Ethiopia, a group of legionaries was sent
5:31 · as far as the Sudd, a vast swamp in what is now South Sudan that defied exploration until
5:38 · the nineteenth century.
· West Africa and the Sahara
5:40 · West of the Nile was the Sahara Desert, virtually impassable before the introduction of the
5:45 · camel around the beginning of the Roman imperial era.
5:49 · During the reign of Claudius, a Roman general ventured deep into the Sahara, where he reported
5:55 · finding plains blanketed in dust and mountains blackened by the heat.
6:00 · About a half-century later, a Roman merchant set out from Libya with a caravan, spent four
6:05 · months in the desert, and emerged in a fertile land teeming with rhinoceroses – probably
6:11 · the tropical savannah of what is now southern Chad.
6:16 · Southerly trade winds made it easy for ancient ships to sail down the Atlantic coast of Africa.
6:22 · The difficulty of returning north against those winds, however, limited the reach of
6:27 · exploration.
6:29 · After the Third Punic War, the historian Polybius led a Roman fleet as far as what is now southern
6:35 · Morocco.
6:37 · Centuries earlier, a Carthaginian navigator named Hanno had reportedly voyaged much farther,
6:42 · passing a great volcano known as the Chariot of the Gods.
6:46 · Although a few scholars think Hanno may have seen Mount Cameroon, it's unlikely that
6:52 · any ancient fleet could have sailed so far south and returned against the prevailing
6:57 · winds.
· The Canaries and Madeira
6:58 · An expedition sent by Juba – the African client king who married a daughter of Antony
7:04 · and Cleopatra – discovered the Canary Islands, named for the wild dogs (canes) that roved
7:10 · their shores.
7:12 · Spanish navigators had already discovered the Madeira archipelago, which came to be
7:17 · identified with the mythical Isles of the Blessed.
7:20 · The vast expanse of the Atlantic beyond, the void from which Plato had conjured Atlantis,
7:27 · was unknown.
7:28 · A few Greek thinkers speculated about a continent in the uttermost west, whose rivers choked
7:34 · the surrounding seas with silt.
7:37 · But to the best of our knowledge, no attempt was ever made to reach it.
· Britain
7:42 · Although their existence had been known for centuries, the British Isles only became familiar
7:47 · to Mediterranean scholars after the Roman conquest of Britain.
7:51 · The process of reconnaissance continued for decades: long after the province had been
7:57 · established, Demetrius of Tarsus, a Greek scholar, was sent with a detachment of troops
8:03 · to reconnoiter the Isles of Scilly off the coast of Cornwall.
8:07 · And it was only during the governorship of Agricola, a generation after the initial Roman
8:12 · invasion, that an imperial fleet circumnavigated Britain.
8:16 · Agricola's men were not the first Mediterranean sailors to reach the northern tip of Britain.
· Thule
8:24 · Centuries before, Pytheas of Massalia – a Greek astronomer apparently motivated by scientific
8:29 · curiosity – had explored the British coast before continuing north to a mysterious island
8:35 · called Thule.
8:37 · Pytheas described Thule as a dismal place, shrouded in fog and soaked by freezing rains,
8:43 · where the summer sun scarcely set.
8:47 · Although Thule has been variously identified with Shetland, the Faroe Islands, and Iceland,
8:53 · it's most likely that Pytheas reached the coast of modern Norway.
· Around the Baltic
8:59 · After visiting Thule, Phytheas sailed east into the Baltic Sea, apparently as far as
9:04 · the vicinity of modern Hamburg.
9:07 · A Roman fleet replicated this feat in the reign of Augustus, and at least one Roman
9:12 · merchant ventured even farther east, traveling overland to what is now the north coast of
9:18 · Poland to gather amber for Nero.
9:21 · Despite these forays, Roman knowledge of northeastern Europe remained vague: Scandinavia was thought
9:28 · to be an island, and the regions east of the Baltic were said to be inhabited by men with
9:33 · the bodies of beasts.
9:36 · Much of central Asia was equally mysterious.
9:38 · Although the coasts of the Black Sea were seeded with Greek colonies, from which adventurous
· Around the Black and Caspian Seas
9:44 · travelers ventured into the immensity of the Ukrainian steppe, the lands beyond were largely
9:50 · cut off from the Mediterranean world by rugged terrain and the hostile power of Parthia.
9:55 · There were, however, a few exceptions: an inscription discovered near the shore of the
10:02 · Caspian Sea documents the presence of Roman legionaries in what is now Azerbaijan, and
10:08 · Roman troops may have briefly occupied what is now northern Iran during the reign of Nero.
· Central and northern Asia
10:15 · Roman geographers were familiar with the shape of the Caspian Sea and the courses of the
10:20 · great rivers around the lost Greek kingdom of Bactria.
10:24 · But the northern reaches of central Asia were populated by monsters and legends.
10:30 · Even the relatively sober Pliny the Elder located Amazons and a tribe known as the lice-eaters
10:36 · there.
10:37 · It was sometimes said that, beyond a range of mountains shrouded in perpetual night,
10:43 · the Hyperboreans dwelt in a land never troubled by a bitter breeze.
10:49 · But by the Roman imperial era, it was known that an icy sea crowned the globe.
· India
10:55 · The northern reaches of Eurasia had little appeal for the Greeks and Romans.
11:00 · The Far East, by contrast, with its spices and silks, held out the irresistible allure
11:07 · of enormous profits.
11:10 · Trade with India was especially lucrative.
11:13 · In the wake of Alexander's conquests – and, later, those of the Indo-Greek kingdoms, which
11:18 · briefly occupied territory as far east as the Ganges valley – the geography of northern
11:23 · India was relatively well-known.
11:25 · But it was only in the first century BC, and especially after the Roman conquest of Egypt,
11:32 · that Mediterranean merchants began to cross the Indian Ocean routinely.
11:37 · Setting out from ports along the Egyptian coast of the Red Sea, these merchants used
11:42 · the monsoon winds – which blow northeast in the winter, and southwest in summer – to
11:47 · navigate to and from India, where they traded for pepper, cinnamon, and Chinese silk.
11:54 · The immense value of this trade – a single ship could carry cargoes worth millions of
11:58 · sestertii – attracted both captains and investors; by the reign of Augustus, 120 Roman
12:06 · ships were sailing for India every year.
12:09 · Although most trade was confined to ports along the west coast of the subcontinent,
12:14 · a few Roman merchants may have operated as far east as what is now southern Vietnam.
· China
12:21 · Silk brought the Romans even farther from the Mediterranean.
12:24 · After its initial appearance in Roman markets during the first century BC, Chinese silk
12:30 · became an indispensable luxury, used in everything from legionary standards to the robes of the
12:35 · emperors.
12:36 · Supply, however, lagged far behind demand, since the flow of silk was controlled (and
12:43 · heavily taxed) by the Parthian Empire.
12:46 · In an effort to lower prices, Roman merchants developed trade routes that circumvented the
12:52 · Parthians.
12:53 · The most important of these, which reached China via Central Asia, began from the ports
12:59 · of western India Very few Roman merchants traveled to China,
13:04 · since it was much safer and swifter to deal with central Asian or Indian middlemen.
13:10 · A few, however, made the long journey.
13:14 · Sometime in the early imperial era, an enterprising businessman from Roman Syria crossed the Parthian
13:20 · Empire and made his way over the steppe to the Chinese frontier.
13:24 · The party of Romans that reached the court of the Chinese emperor during the reign of
13:29 · Marcus Aurelius was almost certainly composed of merchants.
13:33 · Another merchant reached China in the mid-third century, after the collapse of the Han Dynasty.
13:39 · He was sent home with a party of captives and a Chinese officer as his escort.
13:44 · A troupe of acrobats from Roman Syria, sent by the King of Parthia, flipped and tumbled
13:50 · in the Chinese court.
13:52 · Roman Syria also produced the Nestorian Christian missionaries who founded a cathedral in the
13:57 · Chinese capital.
13:59 · But the most poignant evidence of contact between China and Rome was discovered at the
14:04 · oasis settlement of Miran.
14:07 · There, on the rim of the bitter Taklamakan Desert, a Buddhist shrine was discovered,
14:13 · walls aglow with classicizing frescoes.
14:16 · The name of the artist, painted in one corner, was Titus.
14:21 · If you enjoyed this video, please consider supporting toldinstone on Patreon.
14:26 · You might also enjoy my book, Naked Statues, Fat Gladiators, and War Elephants.
14:33 · Thanks for watching.

--> YouTube-Generated Transcript <--
	·	Introduction
0:03	·	In the ninth year of the Yanxi Era, the twentieth in the reign of Han Huan Di, 27th emperor
0:09	·	of the Han Dynasty, a small party of foreigners was received in the imperial palace at Luoyang.
0:16	·	Although the gifts they brought – elephant tusks, rhinoceros horn, and turtle shell – were
0:22	·	not especially impressive, they claimed to have come from a great realm in the far west,
0:28	·	as vast and powerful as the Middle Kingdom itself, where an emperor named Marcus Aurelius
0:33	·	reigned.
0:34	·	We don't know who these men were, or why they traveled so far.
0:38	·	But their presence at the court of the Chinese emperor illustrates the vast range and reach
0:45	·	of Roman merchants and adventurers.
0:47	·	The Mediterranean – or, as the Romans called it, Mare Nostrum (our sea) – was always
	·	The world known to the Romans
0:54	·	the heart of the classical world; Plato famously compared the Greeks, with their coastal cities,
1:01	·	to frogs around a pond.
1:03	·	By Plato's time, Greek scholars knew the whole span of the sea, from the Pillars of
1:07	·	Hercules to the Nile Delta, and had divided its coasts into the three continents of Europe,
1:14	·	Asia, and Africa.
1:16	·	The campaigns of Alexander the Great made the Middle East and Central Asia familiar
1:21	·	to classical cartographers.
1:23	·	And the Romans, with their far-ranging conquests and massive trade networks, came to know much
1:29	·	of the Old World.
1:32	·	Around the middle of the second century, the Roman mathematician Claudius Ptolemy produced
1:36	·	a map of the known world, systematically assigning latitudes and longitudes to some 8,000 places
1:43	·	across the three continents.
1:45	·	The world plotted in Ptolemy's coordinates is a wide one, stretching from the Canary
1:50	·	Islands to western China.
1:52	·	It is also an immediately recognizable one, though its accuracy diminishes with distance
1:58	·	from the Mediterranean.
2:01	·	As Ptolemy's map illustrates, the Romans – for all their rhetoric about universal
2:06	·	empire – were aware that the world was much larger than their domains.
2:11	·	Like the Greeks before them, they knew that the world was round.
2:15	·	Thanks to Eratosthenes, who had calculated the circumference of the Earth with remarkable
2:20	·	accuracy, they knew their empire occupied a relatively small portion of the globe.
2:26	·	And despite the agonies of ancient travel, a steady trickle of scouts, merchants, and
2:32	·	missionaries ventured deep into the blank spaces of Ptolemy's map.
	·	ClickUp
2:38	·	[ad text redacted]
3:49	·	And now, to resume our topic: what were the most distant places explored by the Romans?
	·	Arabia
3:57	·	Southward, as in every direction, geography and opportunity determined the distances that
4:03	·	the Romans traveled.
4:05	·	Mediterranean merchants routinely visited Arabia Felix – modern Yemen – the land
4:10	·	of frankincense and myrrh.
4:13	·	Despite the fact that the spice-bearing regions were said to be tormented by flying snakes,
4:19	·	Augustus sent an army to conquer the whole southwestern corner of the Arabian Peninsula.
4:24	·	The failure of that campaign prevented Arabia Felix from becoming part of the empire, but
4:31	·	a legionary detachment was eventually stationed on the Farasan Islands, just off the Arabian
4:37	·	coast.
	·	East Africa and the Nile
4:39	·	Roman merchants also followed the monsoon winds down the east coast of Africa.
4:44	·	By the second century, they had crossed the equator, reaching the vicinity of Zanzibar.
4:49	·	A few ventured even farther south, to places where the gargantuan Mountains of the Moon
4:55	·	loomed on the horizon.
4:58	·	These mythical peaks – possibly inspired by distant views of Kilimanjaro – were rumored
5:03	·	to be source of the Nile.
5:05	·	The Nile itself, of course, was the most convenient inland route into Africa.
5:12	·	Although the province of Egypt reached only to the rapids of the Second Cataract, near
5:16	·	the modern border between Egypt and Sudan, Roman influence extended much further – especially
5:21	·	under Augustus, when a Roman army marched through Nubia.
5:25	·	Later, when Nero was considering an invasion of Ethiopia, a group of legionaries was sent
5:31	·	as far as the Sudd, a vast swamp in what is now South Sudan that defied exploration until
5:38	·	the nineteenth century.
	·	West Africa and the Sahara
5:40	·	West of the Nile was the Sahara Desert, virtually impassable before the introduction of the
5:45	·	camel around the beginning of the Roman imperial era.
5:49	·	During the reign of Claudius, a Roman general ventured deep into the Sahara, where he reported
5:55	·	finding plains blanketed in dust and mountains blackened by the heat.
6:00	·	About a half-century later, a Roman merchant set out from Libya with a caravan, spent four
6:05	·	months in the desert, and emerged in a fertile land teeming with rhinoceroses – probably
6:11	·	the tropical savannah of what is now southern Chad.
6:16	·	Southerly trade winds made it easy for ancient ships to sail down the Atlantic coast of Africa.
6:22	·	The difficulty of returning north against those winds, however, limited the reach of
6:27	·	exploration.
6:29	·	After the Third Punic War, the historian Polybius led a Roman fleet as far as what is now southern
6:35	·	Morocco.
6:37	·	Centuries earlier, a Carthaginian navigator named Hanno had reportedly voyaged much farther,
6:42	·	passing a great volcano known as the Chariot of the Gods.
6:46	·	Although a few scholars think Hanno may have seen Mount Cameroon, it's unlikely that
6:52	·	any ancient fleet could have sailed so far south and returned against the prevailing
6:57	·	winds.
	·	The Canaries and Madeira
6:58	·	An expedition sent by Juba – the African client king who married a daughter of Antony
7:04	·	and Cleopatra – discovered the Canary Islands, named for the wild dogs (canes) that roved
7:10	·	their shores.
7:12	·	Spanish navigators had already discovered the Madeira archipelago, which came to be
7:17	·	identified with the mythical Isles of the Blessed.
7:20	·	The vast expanse of the Atlantic beyond, the void from which Plato had conjured Atlantis,
7:27	·	was unknown.
7:28	·	A few Greek thinkers speculated about a continent in the uttermost west, whose rivers choked
7:34	·	the surrounding seas with silt.
7:37	·	But to the best of our knowledge, no attempt was ever made to reach it.
	·	Britain
7:42	·	Although their existence had been known for centuries, the British Isles only became familiar
7:47	·	to Mediterranean scholars after the Roman conquest of Britain.
7:51	·	The process of reconnaissance continued for decades: long after the province had been
7:57	·	established, Demetrius of Tarsus, a Greek scholar, was sent with a detachment of troops
8:03	·	to reconnoiter the Isles of Scilly off the coast of Cornwall.
8:07	·	And it was only during the governorship of Agricola, a generation after the initial Roman
8:12	·	invasion, that an imperial fleet circumnavigated Britain.
8:16	·	Agricola's men were not the first Mediterranean sailors to reach the northern tip of Britain.
	·	Thule
8:24	·	Centuries before, Pytheas of Massalia – a Greek astronomer apparently motivated by scientific
8:29	·	curiosity – had explored the British coast before continuing north to a mysterious island
8:35	·	called Thule.
8:37	·	Pytheas described Thule as a dismal place, shrouded in fog and soaked by freezing rains,
8:43	·	where the summer sun scarcely set.
8:47	·	Although Thule has been variously identified with Shetland, the Faroe Islands, and Iceland,
8:53	·	it's most likely that Pytheas reached the coast of modern Norway.
	·	Around the Baltic
8:59	·	After visiting Thule, Phytheas sailed east into the Baltic Sea, apparently as far as
9:04	·	the vicinity of modern Hamburg.
9:07	·	A Roman fleet replicated this feat in the reign of Augustus, and at least one Roman
9:12	·	merchant ventured even farther east, traveling overland to what is now the north coast of
9:18	·	Poland to gather amber for Nero.
9:21	·	Despite these forays, Roman knowledge of northeastern Europe remained vague: Scandinavia was thought
9:28	·	to be an island, and the regions east of the Baltic were said to be inhabited by men with
9:33	·	the bodies of beasts.
9:36	·	Much of central Asia was equally mysterious.
9:38	·	Although the coasts of the Black Sea were seeded with Greek colonies, from which adventurous
	·	Around the Black and Caspian Seas
9:44	·	travelers ventured into the immensity of the Ukrainian steppe, the lands beyond were largely
9:50	·	cut off from the Mediterranean world by rugged terrain and the hostile power of Parthia.
9:55	·	There were, however, a few exceptions: an inscription discovered near the shore of the
10:02	·	Caspian Sea documents the presence of Roman legionaries in what is now Azerbaijan, and
10:08	·	Roman troops may have briefly occupied what is now northern Iran during the reign of Nero.
	·	Central and northern Asia
10:15	·	Roman geographers were familiar with the shape of the Caspian Sea and the courses of the
10:20	·	great rivers around the lost Greek kingdom of Bactria.
10:24	·	But the northern reaches of central Asia were populated by monsters and legends.
10:30	·	Even the relatively sober Pliny the Elder located Amazons and a tribe known as the lice-eaters
10:36	·	there.
10:37	·	It was sometimes said that, beyond a range of mountains shrouded in perpetual night,
10:43	·	the Hyperboreans dwelt in a land never troubled by a bitter breeze.
10:49	·	But by the Roman imperial era, it was known that an icy sea crowned the globe.
	·	India
10:55	·	The northern reaches of Eurasia had little appeal for the Greeks and Romans.
11:00	·	The Far East, by contrast, with its spices and silks, held out the irresistible allure
11:07	·	of enormous profits.
11:10	·	Trade with India was especially lucrative.
11:13	·	In the wake of Alexander's conquests – and, later, those of the Indo-Greek kingdoms, which
11:18	·	briefly occupied territory as far east as the Ganges valley – the geography of northern
11:23	·	India was relatively well-known.
11:25	·	But it was only in the first century BC, and especially after the Roman conquest of Egypt,
11:32	·	that Mediterranean merchants began to cross the Indian Ocean routinely.
11:37	·	Setting out from ports along the Egyptian coast of the Red Sea, these merchants used
11:42	·	the monsoon winds – which blow northeast in the winter, and southwest in summer – to
11:47	·	navigate to and from India, where they traded for pepper, cinnamon, and Chinese silk.
11:54	·	The immense value of this trade – a single ship could carry cargoes worth millions of
11:58	·	sestertii – attracted both captains and investors; by the reign of Augustus, 120 Roman
12:06	·	ships were sailing for India every year.
12:09	·	Although most trade was confined to ports along the west coast of the subcontinent,
12:14	·	a few Roman merchants may have operated as far east as what is now southern Vietnam.
	·	China
12:21	·	Silk brought the Romans even farther from the Mediterranean.
12:24	·	After its initial appearance in Roman markets during the first century BC, Chinese silk
12:30	·	became an indispensable luxury, used in everything from legionary standards to the robes of the
12:35	·	emperors.
12:36	·	Supply, however, lagged far behind demand, since the flow of silk was controlled (and
12:43	·	heavily taxed) by the Parthian Empire.
12:46	·	In an effort to lower prices, Roman merchants developed trade routes that circumvented the
12:52	·	Parthians.
12:53	·	The most important of these, which reached China via Central Asia, began from the ports
12:59	·	of western India Very few Roman merchants traveled to China,
13:04	·	since it was much safer and swifter to deal with central Asian or Indian middlemen.
13:10	·	A few, however, made the long journey.
13:14	·	Sometime in the early imperial era, an enterprising businessman from Roman Syria crossed the Parthian
13:20	·	Empire and made his way over the steppe to the Chinese frontier.
13:24	·	The party of Romans that reached the court of the Chinese emperor during the reign of
13:29	·	Marcus Aurelius was almost certainly composed of merchants.
13:33	·	Another merchant reached China in the mid-third century, after the collapse of the Han Dynasty.
13:39	·	He was sent home with a party of captives and a Chinese officer as his escort.
13:44	·	A troupe of acrobats from Roman Syria, sent by the King of Parthia, flipped and tumbled
13:50	·	in the Chinese court.
13:52	·	Roman Syria also produced the Nestorian Christian missionaries who founded a cathedral in the
13:57	·	Chinese capital.
13:59	·	But the most poignant evidence of contact between China and Rome was discovered at the
14:04	·	oasis settlement of Miran.
14:07	·	There, on the rim of the bitter Taklamakan Desert, a Buddhist shrine was discovered,
14:13	·	walls aglow with classicizing frescoes.
14:16	·	The name of the artist, painted in one corner, was Titus.
14:21	·	If you enjoyed this video, please consider supporting toldinstone on Patreon.
14:26	·	You might also enjoy my book, Naked Statues, Fat Gladiators, and War Elephants.
14:33	·	Thanks for watching.