Pompeii, famously destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD, is treasure trove due to its extraordinary state of preservation. One would be forgiven for thinking that everything had been found in the century modern archaeologists have spent excavating the Roman city. But this would be a mistake, as on October 24th the Pompeii
The office of Pope has historically always been a highly important one. Such a role was and is intensely political, with the Pope uniquely being able to influence foreign powers through their people and their faith. This power does not always attract the pious, and the history of the Vatican and the broader Catholic Church
There is no question that the fate of Rome, her empire, Europe and by extension the western world was changed by one man. In the space of a single human lifetime this man took the august but creaking Roman Republic and, driven by his own ambition as much as a love for his people, remade
You all know about Pythagoras, the triangle guy? His brilliant theorem to calculate the lengths of the sides of a right-angled triangle is elegant, and unlike almost every other idea the ancient Greeks came up with (with apologies to Euclid) it turned out that he got it right first time. We still use his equation
Roman emperors are perhaps remembered for their notoriety more than anything else. We remember Julius Caesar, after whom all the subsequent rulers took their name, as a brilliant commander (and because he wrote an awful lot of histories about himself) but he is most famous for his actions against the dying Roman Republic, for which
Cure-alls are, generally speaking, never what they claim. Most medical wonder drugs are nothing of the sort, and snake oil salesmen have existed throughout history, prospering as long as there are people out there who are prepared to believe them. But this is not to say that all such medical supplements are fraud. Some have