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[Aimi]

Eirene...I love you.
 
You are the best goddess of peace. 
 
Would unlike and like your posts again!
 
Please tell me more.

 
Aw.

Lemme see if I can think of something suitably stupid/weird/bizarre. How about the Laokoon group?

In 1506, some Roman workmen unearthed several classical statues. Papal and cultural authorities conferred, and determined that these statues were from a set described by C. Plinivs Secvndvs in his Natural History as having been in the palace of the Emperor Titvs. Pliny said these statues were of the Trojan priest Laokoon and his sons, who were killed by Poseidon's serpents. Poseidon was on the side of the Achaians, and he was a bit cheesed off that Laokoon warned his people that the Trojan horse was a trap and told the king to keep it out of the city. (Strangely, the Trojans didn't think his death was suspicious, and brought the horse into the city anyway, with predictable results.) Anyway, the Italians were overjoyed to find this Greco-Roman statuary, but there was a problem: the statues were somewhat damaged and fragmented, and significant pieces were missing.

One of these pieces was Laokoon's right arm, which was severed at the elbow. Further investigation of the site yielded no result. Pope Julius II, however, wanted a complete set. So he held contests to determine the sculptor to craft a replacement arm. The first few winners actually put their replacement arms onto copies of the original statues, but in 1532, Montorsoli, one of Michelangelo's students, put an outstretched forearm onto Laokoon, where it stayed for centuries. Other artists added their own flourishes to other replacement parts of the Laokoon Group over the years, including the great Canova in the early nineteenth century.

You can probably guess where this is going. In 1906, an archaeologist located a marble arm not too far from the site where the Laokoon Group was first discovered. This arm languished in storage until the 1950s, when the Vatican Museum staff finally realized that it was in fact the lost Laokoon arm. It even fitted perfectly on Laokoon's shoulder stump. Four centuries later, the statue was (more or less) complete.

Unfortunately, it got weird. (Weirder, anyway.) The Montorsoli arm was a great piece of workmanship, outstretched and everything. It looked tremendous, even if it was wrong. The real arm was kind of junky, badly preserved, and worst of all, it bent back at the most bizarre angle. You can see it here: it just looks bad, like Laokoon's hand is broken off. And on the flip side, that Montorsoli arm is a work of art in and of itself: it was created by Michelangelo's student, a real Renaissance master.

The Laokoon Group - with the new arm - is in public display at the Vatican Museum still. It's sitting in the Octagon courtyard, in the museum's Greco-Roman antiquities section. You can see it yourself. (Please do not touch the marble, though.) And it is amazing. But that one arm is sooooooo screwed up. It's right - technically - but "right" in this case is really stupid-looking.

If you had the choice, which would you display? The statue with the original arm, which looks dumb, or the statue with the Montorsoli arm, which isn't the original but is still totally a work of art?
 

Hey I used to teach history and worked in the field for a while.  If I had a quid for every time I hear someone made incarnate historical reference  I would have A LOT of dosh. Used to make me so cross and I would take the ****** out of them but it got old very fast. When Braveheart came out my head nearly popped for obvious reasons. It was then I stopped correcting people because besides coming over as a "know it all" I realised most people are going to believe what they want anyway and me correcting them made them resentful. Though I am quite strict with my kids and have been known to  make my close American friends cross with my interjections but I am only human for goodness sake!

Yeah, I get that a lot too. My first semester as a graduate student, I TAed a history course taught by one of the university's "rising star" professors. It was the usual undergraduate "Plato-to-NATO" nonsense, drive-by European history. So it wasn't going to be a great course anyway. But the prof made it worse. His field is American history, and he's really pretty good at it, but he is garbage at other stuff. He said some embarrassingly wrong things in lecture, like claiming that the Roman Republic's alliance system was all about getting food, and that Western European chivalry came from Islam, and that the Fourth Crusade was the last one, and that Crusaders were all about loot because they were "second sons" who had no chance at inheritances back home, and so on and so forth. I mean, not questions of interpretation: these things were just flat-out wrong, like he went on a trip to Europe over the summer and took what the tour guides said seriously.

And the worst part was that I couldn't do anything about it, except try to tell the students the correct history whenever I had seminar time, or one-on-ones in office hours. There weren't really any administrative or academic ways to correct the situation, because he was my boss and he had tenure and even my advisor couldn't make him stop.

I'm still pretty early in the teaching stage of things. Idealistic, but - I hope - not "stupid idealistic". There are plenty of occasions where I won't bother to try to correct somebody who insists on being wrong: because I don't like being That Person, because it's not a classroom or serious setting, because it's pointless to try to change this specific person's mind, or whatever. But I still try, when I can, and when I think it'll work, because I genuinely believe that my job is to make sure people learn the right way to do history, and not taking the opportunity to help nudge them in the right direction makes me feel awful.

[AutumnWitch]

 
Aw.

Lemme see if I can think of something suitably stupid/weird/bizarre. How about the Laokoon group?

In 1506, some Roman workmen unearthed several classical statues. Papal and cultural authorities conferred, and determined that these statues were from a set described by C. Plinivs Secvndvs in his Natural History as having been in the palace of the Emperor Titvs. Pliny said these statues were of the Trojan priest Laokoon and his sons, who were killed by Poseidon's serpents. Poseidon was on the side of the Achaians, and he was a bit cheesed off that Laokoon warned his people that the Trojan horse was a trap and told the king to keep it out of the city. (Strangely, the Trojans didn't think his death was suspicious, and brought the horse into the city anyway, with predictable results.) Anyway, the Italians were overjoyed to find this Greco-Roman statuary, but there was a problem: the statues were somewhat damaged and fragmented, and significant pieces were missing.

One of these pieces was Laokoon's right arm, which was severed at the elbow. Further investigation of the site yielded no result. Pope Julius II, however, wanted a complete set. So he held contests to determine the sculptor to craft a replacement arm. The first few winners actually put their replacement arms onto copies of the original statues, but in 1532, Montorsoli, one of Michelangelo's students, put an outstretched forearm onto Laokoon, where it stayed for centuries. Other artists added their own flourishes to other replacement parts of the Laokoon Group over the years, including the great Canova in the early nineteenth century.

You can probably guess where this is going. In 1906, an archaeologist located a marble arm not too far from the site where the Laokoon Group was first discovered. This arm languished in storage until the 1950s, when the Vatican Museum staff finally realized that it was in fact the lost Laokoon arm. It even fitted perfectly on Laokoon's shoulder stump. Four centuries later, the statue was (more or less) complete.

Unfortunately, it got weird. (Weirder, anyway.) The Montorsoli arm was a great piece of workmanship, outstretched and everything. It looked tremendous, even if it was wrong. The real arm was kind of junky, badly preserved, and worst of all, it bent back at the most bizarre angle. You can see it here: it just looks bad, like Laokoon's hand is broken off. And on the flip side, that Montorsoli arm is a work of art in and of itself: it was created by Michelangelo's student, a real Renaissance master.

The Laokoon Group - with the new arm - is in public display at the Vatican Museum still. It's sitting in the Octagon courtyard, in the museum's Greco-Roman antiquities section. You can see it yourself. (Please do not touch the marble, though.) And it is amazing. But that one arm is sooooooo screwed up. It's right - technically - but "right" in this case is really stupid-looking.

If you had the choice, which would you display? The statue with the original arm, which looks dumb, or the statue with the Montorsoli arm, which isn't the original but is still totally a work of art?
 

Yeah, I get that a lot too. My first semester as a graduate student, I TAed a history course taught by one of the university's "rising star" professors. It was the usual undergraduate "Plato-to-NATO" nonsense, drive-by European history. So it wasn't going to be a great course anyway. But the prof made it worse. His field is American history, and he's really pretty good at it, but he is garbage at other stuff. He said some embarrassingly wrong things in lecture, like claiming that the Roman Republic's alliance system was all about getting food, and that Western European chivalry came from Islam, and that the Fourth Crusade was the last one, and that Crusaders were all about loot because they were "second sons" who had no chance at inheritances back home, and so on and so forth. I mean, not questions of interpretation: these things were just flat-out wrong, like he went on a trip to Europe over the summer and took what the tour guides said seriously.

And the worst part was that I couldn't do anything about it, except try to tell the students the correct history whenever I had seminar time, or one-on-ones in office hours. There weren't really any administrative or academic ways to correct the situation, because he was my boss and he had tenure and even my advisor couldn't make him stop.

I'm still pretty early in the teaching stage of things. Idealistic, but - I hope - not "stupid idealistic". There are plenty of occasions where I won't bother to try to correct somebody who insists on being wrong: because I don't like being That Person, because it's not a classroom or serious setting, because it's pointless to try to change this specific person's mind, or whatever. But I still try, when I can, and when I think it'll work, because I genuinely believe that my job is to make sure people learn the right way to do history, and not taking the opportunity to help nudge them in the right direction makes me feel awful.

 

Ha! I was TA'ing when I was getting my MA at a small liberal arts college in America and they didn't always have enough classes for all their profs so sometimes they would have them fill in in other classes that were "close enough" especially for freshmen. They had this one guy from France teaching pre-Cival War American History. Now I am not American and probably not as up on it as some people but this French guy had his doctorate in the Classics and didn't know an abolitionist from a carpetbagger. He would read a few chapters the night before his lecture and wing it or sometimes have me do it with no warning. On the other hand, I learned a lot of American history that term cuz it became all about CMA very quickly.

[Recon Member]

Emperor Caligula once went to war with Poseidon by having his whole army attack the sea with spears. There's that. 

[Dominus]

10 Facts About The Great Beast Aleister Crowley

He seems like a nice guy.

[Chewin]

Emperor Caligula once went to war with Poseidon by having his whole army attack the sea with spears. There's that. 

 

A popular and entertaining quoted fact, except for all intents and purposes, this most likely didn't happen. 

 

During Caligula's attempt at conquering Britain he had the men gather seashells from the beach, which is based on the Roman historian Suetonious writings, which was a fabrication on his part, either b/c he couldn't resist the temptation of a good story or a misunderstanding; due to the word seashell (musculi) was a Roman army slang for the engineer's huts, which is what the soldiers thought Caligula said when he ordered to pick up seashells from the beach.

 

It is well known that Caligula was mad, so adding another story into the pile of crazy acts that he committed serves just another purpose for entertainment. 

 

PS. To be a bit nit-picky, Poseidon was the Greek God. Neptune is the Roman one. Though neither Suetonius and Cassius Dio mentioned either God, but simply the sea.

[Aimi]

Inbreeding will do that to you...
 
Of course, from what I recall the historical record never really said she was beautiful, but focused more on her personality. Unfortunately, it's been quite some time so I suppose I could be wrong...

Correct.

The thing about Kleopatra VII is, the only contemporary evidence we have on her features comes from coinage. Kings and queens put their faces on their coins, as propaganda and whatnot: you know the deal. And her coins don't have the most flattering look. Usually she's depicted with a hooked nose or a fairly large one, with rather unremarkable features otherwise.

The problem with coin-portraits is that they are incredibly small. A tetradrachm, one of the more common coin weights from the Hellenistic era, was usually 2 to 5 centimeters in diameter, depending on composition. Most Internet images of ancient coins actually show them heavily magnified, far larger than actual size. Trying to divine real facial features from such tiny portraits is folly. Either the coins are too small or weathered to tell, or the portrait is too small for the artist to have been realistically capable of putting a good face on the die. With a five-centimeter portrait, a hooked nose could simply be the result of poor work by the diemaker rather than intentional depiction.

Side digression on coin-types and portraits below:

Spoiler

The ancient Greek kingdom of Baktria, in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India, has almost no surviving written records. Virtually all of what we know about its history is archaeological, and for most of the last two centuries most of that archaeology has been coins. The Baktrian kings minted zillions of coins and spread them around all over the place, from China to south India to Roman Britain. Yes, once upon a time Greek Afghanistan - "the land of a thousand cities" according to the Roman historian M. Ivnianvs Ivstinvs - was one of the richest places in the world.

A hundred years ago, a Scottish gentleman-turned-classicist named William Woodthorpe Tarn got super interested in Alexander the Great, and in Alexander's successor-kings. Tarn was particularly intrigued by Baktria, and his magnum opus, The Greeks in Bactria and India (first published in the 1930s), claimed to synthesize the history of their reign for the first time. Tarn's innovation was to create a narrative based in large part on a careful study of the coin-types of the Baktrian kings, weaving it in with the few written sources and a couple of other works. He analyzed the facial appearances of the rulers on coins, and combined that with a deep dive into the symbolism on each coin.

Unfortunately, almost everything that Tarn figured out about Baktrian political history was wrong. For one thing, a significant number of the coins he used were hoaxes, something that was not discovered in many cases until after his death. (He was the victim of the hoax, not the perpetrator.) But more importantly, his methodology was highly suspect. As I've just mentioned, coin-portraits are extremely unreliable guides. It is very dubious that they are accurate depictions of a king or queen's face. To try to divine familial relationships based on the apparent similarities between ancient five-centimeter engravings was silliness of the highest order. For Tarn, deep political relationships turned on such things as the smile appearing on the coins of the Baktrian king Antimachos, which he thought looked like a smirk, which clearly meant that Antimachos was a cunning leader, which meant that he could have done X, Y, and Z things. That's ridiculous.

Modern numismatics is a much more sober field. Fortunately.

So making a conclusive statement about Kleopatra's face isn't really possible. What little contemporary evidence we have points toward her being not particularly pretty, but that evidence isn't worth much. The usual historical caveats also apply: different standards of beauty, of course, but also the salient issue that without modern grooming it's very unlikely that anybody from two thousand years ago would look all that nice, even the kings and queens.

But if you want to believe in a supermodel Ptolemaic queen, I for one don't see any severe problems with that.

[Fiddles dee dee]

 
If you had the choice, which would you display? The statue with the original arm, which looks dumb, or the statue with the Montorsoli arm, which isn't the original but is still totally a work of art?

 

Can I demand more?

 

Can I choose both? Put the original on and display it as was originally created with the spare on display next to it. Detail the whole story and maybe even provide a replica with the Montorsoli arm and ask people which is the more beautiful possibly? It's a fantastic opportunity to start a discussion on aesthetics vs reality or discuss art and history and how the two are most assuredly not mutually exclusive. 

 

The city of Brisbane in Australia is the state capital because British dignitaries refused to walk across mudflats and were prone to seasickness. The best anchorage is actually 20km to the south of the city but during a visit requiring the governor of New South Wales to appoint a site for development the tide was out about 1.5 km from the best anchorage for 400km where the fresh water source for the "town" was located. Due to the governor being prone to sea sickness he insisted the ship anchor as close as possible to the town. The result being he was carried across the mudflat and his refusal to accept the location as viable. Instead, the halet of Brisbane was chosen due to the shorter distance to travel from ship to shore but generally shallower anchorage.

[Fiddles dee dee]

 

A popular and entertaining quoted fact, except for all intents and purposes, this most likely didn't happen. 

 

During Caligula's attempt at conquering Britain he had the men gather seashells from the beach, which is based on the Roman historian Suetonious writings, which was a fabrication on his part, either b/c he couldn't resist the temptation of a good story or a misunderstanding; due to the word seashell (musculi) was a Roman army slang for the engineer's huts, which is what the soldiers thought Caligula said when he ordered to pick up seashells from the beach.

 

It is well known that Caligula was mad, so adding another story into the pile of crazy acts that he committed serves just another purpose for entertainment. 

 

PS. To be a bit nit-picky, Poseidon was the Greek God. Neptune is the Roman one. Though neither Suetonius and Cassius Dio mentioned either God, but simply the sea.

 

I was about to post this. 

 

Also didn't he appoint his horse a senator?

[Chewin]

 The Laokoon Group - with the new arm - is in public display at the Vatican Museum still. It's sitting in the Octagon courtyard, in the museum's Greco-Roman antiquities section. You can see it yourself. (Please do not touch the marble, though.) And it is amazing. But that one arm is sooooooo screwed up. It's right - technically - but "right" in this case is really stupid-looking.

If you had the choice, which would you display? The statue with the original arm, which looks dumb, or the statue with the Montorsoli arm, which isn't the original but is still totally a work of art?

 

Very entertaining read. I've seen the statue myself, though wasn't aware of this fact (teaches me to take a proper tour guide next time). 

 

Why I value historical authenticity, I am a bit biased when it comes to marble statues since I simply admire the share beauty of it for several reasons, so I would personally have it on display with the Montorsoli's arm.

[Chewin]

I was about to post this. 

 

Also didn't he appoint his horse a senator?

 

A counselor yes, but not senator, which was used as a prank to the other Senators and not as a sign of his folly. Though of course it is debatable, as with many of his deeds.

[mybudgee]

TOOL's Danny Carey is a huge Aleister Crowley fan/follower. He arranges his drums in a geometrical pattern according to some of Crowley's theories.

 

Also, here you go:

 

[Fiddles dee dee]

A counselor yes, but not senator, which was used as a prank to the other Senators and not as a sign of his folly. Though of course it is debatable, as with many of his deeds.

 

How about Claudius spending the better part of a decade on an island populated exclusively by goats and small children?

[Undead Han]

I think it is impossible to say whether or not Cleopatra would be considered attractive to modern eyes. There are a number of coins and busts that depict her, but they all have differences and it is impossible to say which most reflect her true likeness. Some may have exaggerated certain features to portray a message, such as one coin where her features mirror those of her lover Antony.

 

If the Vatican Cleopatra was an accurate portrayal, I think she was attractive. The image below is a plaster cast of it:

 

 

The original may have been sculpted when she was in Rome.

 

In any case there were a number of ancient sources who described her as attractive, to varying degrees. Appian described Antony as awed by her intelligence and good looks. Cassius Dio claimed she was a woman of surpassing beauty and brilliant to look upon. Plutarch's praise is fainter than Dio's, saying that she was not an incomparable beauty, but adding that her wit and charm made her irresistible. 

 

On that note Plutarch is often misquoted as implying that Cleopatra wasn't attractive, but that isn't really what he says. He just states that her beauty was not beyond compare. That could be said about a great many people alive today who are nonetheless attractive.

 

Having said all of the above, it's kind of a shame today that Cleopatra is mostly remembered for her physical beauty, whether history or legend, and an overblown (and likely false) reputation as a seductress, rather than for her intelligence. She spoke several languages and held her own with some of the best & brightest political schemers of her age. All of the ancient sources also remark upon her wit and charisma, and that was much a draw for Julius Caesar and Marcus Antonius as any physical beauty.

[Chewin]

How about Claudius spending the better part of a decade on an island populated exclusively by goats and small children?

 

A well earned vacation? 

 

Joking aside, that does sound troubling if that is all there is to it. 

[Aimi]

If the Vatican Cleopatra was an accurate portrayal, I think she was attractive. The image below is a plaster cast of it:
 

 
The original may have been sculpted when she was in Rome.

Oh my goodness I forgot about this when I was talking about "contemporary evidence" and now I feel like a doof even though it's not totally certain that it is contemporary it's still a silly thing to forget.

Anyway, partially because of that, your post is better - and much more on-topic - than mine was.

[AutumnWitch]

Oh my goodness I forgot about this when I was talking about "contemporary evidence" and now I feel like a doof even though it's not totally certain that it is contemporary it's still a silly thing to forget.

Anyway, partially because of that, your post is better - and much more on-topic - than mine was.

This is quick read with cites. Beware nude art on the site.

 

 

http://www.heritaged...-evidence/92015

[Dermain]

*snip*
Yeah, I get that a lot too. My first semester as a graduate student, I TAed a history course taught by one of the university's "rising star" professors. It was the usual undergraduate "Plato-to-NATO" nonsense, drive-by European history. So it wasn't going to be a great course anyway. But the prof made it worse. His field is American history, and he's really pretty good at it, but he is garbage at other stuff. He said some embarrassingly wrong things in lecture, like claiming that the Roman Republic's alliance system was all about getting food, and that Western European chivalry came from Islam, and that the Fourth Crusade was the last one, and that Crusaders were all about loot because they were "second sons" who had no chance at inheritances back home, and so on and so forth. I mean, not questions of interpretation: these things were just flat-out wrong, like he went on a trip to Europe over the summer and took what the tour guides said seriously.
*snip*

 

I had a similar experience with an American history professor, who's specialty was American history (which makes this story worse). It was also around the time when I became disillusioned by history as a whole. For whatever reason, this professor had an extreme dislike of  our seventh president, Andrew Jackson (also the fellow who is on the American $20 bill). He glossed entirely over Jackson's contribution during the War of 1812, ignored Jackson's presidential campaign, ignored Jackson's fight and eventual dissolution of the Bank of the United State, how the Southern states almost seceded under Jackson, and instead only focused on Jackson's enforcing of the Indian Removal Act (where Native Americans were forcibly relocated by the American military).  

 

It wasn't the only thing he messed up. The class basically went from the end of the revolutionary war (which was done quite admirably) to the American Civil War. There was little mention of the war of 1812 (the first war America lost), the war with Mexico, the constant bickering over what to do with slavery, President James Buchanan's mismanagement of the country that led to the civil war, etc. Instead, it was just "Some stuff happened. Andrew Jackson is evil. Abraham Lincoln was elected as the 16th president, and the civil war happened. Lincoln was assassinated, Andrew Johnson took his place and bungled reconstruction (the period where the Southern states were "re-accepted", and where slavery was overturned causing those states to figure out ways to keep slavery in place without calling it slavery).

 

That was not a fun class for me...

 

 

A popular and entertaining quoted fact, except for all intents and purposes, this most likely didn't happen. 

 

During Caligula's attempt at conquering Britain he had the men gather seashells from the beach, which is based on the Roman historian Suetonious writings, which was a fabrication on his part, either b/c he couldn't resist the temptation of a good story or a misunderstanding; due to the word seashell (musculi) was a Roman army slang for the engineer's huts, which is what the soldiers thought Caligula said when he ordered to pick up seashells from the beach.

 

It is well known that Caligula was mad, so adding another story into the pile of crazy acts that he committed serves just another purpose for entertainment. 

 

PS. To be a bit nit-picky, Poseidon was the Greek God. Neptune is the Roman one. Though neither Suetonius and Cassius Dio mentioned either God, but simply the sea.

 

 

Which is the problem with addressing anything about Caligula in general. We can't really separate actuality from the entertaining fictional stories about him.

 

On a somewhat related note, it is said that Emperor Nero fiddled while Rome burned during one of the many fires that plagued the city (I forget the exact date). 

 

There are a number of problems with this statement. The first being that the fiddle was not invented yet. If Nero was playing an instrument it would have been a lyre (or something similar). The second being that Nero is generally portrayed as being overjoyed about Rome burning down, so overjoyed that he decided to play a musical instrument to celebrate the occasion. 

 

Seeing how Nero believed himself to be some great "artist" (I believe he was known for forcing his council to sit through his atrocious poems) it is likely that he decided to compose a song (likely a dirge) to commemorate the burning of Rome. 

 

The third problem is that Nero is seen as being responsible for the fire itself, and he (again) decided to celebrate by playing music. Which is of course possible, but if I recall correctly Nero wanted to rebuild Rome with marble/stone. Which he couldn't do if there was a nice wooden section of the city still present. While it's still possible he was responsible for the fire, it is also possible that he decided to take advantage of the situation by rebuilding Rome.

 

Again, it has been quite some time since I reviewed any of this material, so feel free to correct me AutumnWitch/Eirene if either of you know more.

[Sigma Tauri]

Did you know?

 

The anticoagulant drug, warfarin, was originally intended to kill rats.

[Dermain]

Did you know?

 

The anticoagulant drug, warfarin, was originally intended to kill rats.

 

Ah, pharmaceuticals...a harem of hilarity and/or unethical behavior...

[Chewin]

On a somewhat related note, it is said that Emperor Nero fiddled while Rome burned during one of the many fires that plagued the city (I forget the exact date). 

 

There are a lot of rumors on that account, but yes it is unlikely that Nero played the fiddle, considering it wasn't invented yet and many other 'sources' claim that it was a harp instead. There are also accounts that state "playing the fiddle" was just a metaphor for his infamous ineffectiveness during the incident.

 

Though what gets often ignored is that Nero did in fact take action during the fire, coordinating fire fights and opening his gardens for people to take shelter and imported food to the people from nearby cities after the fire (which was accounted by Tacitus). As to why it is wildly know that he played the harp during the incident, well I think I recall that it was met with a lot of scorn by how much of a music lover Nero was, so it became popular that he played the harp while Rome burned (as you said yourself).

 

Whether he was behind the fire is a rumor, and considering he felt cornered by having everyone blaming him for the fire, he persecuted and blamed Christians brutally. Though that didn't help him much.

[Undead Han]

If true, the reaction of the Roman Emperor Flavius Honorius to news that Rome had fallen to the barbarians would certainly qualify as bizarre:

 

"At that time they say that the Emperor Honorius in Ravenna received the message from one of the eunuchs, evidently a keeper of the poultry, that Rome had perished. And he cried out and said, 'And yet it has just eaten from my hands!' For he had a very large rooster, Rome by name; and the eunuch comprehending his words said that it was the city of Rome which had perished at the hands of Alaric, and the emperor with a sigh of relief answered quickly: 'But I thought that my fowl Rome had perished.' So great, they say, was the folly with which this emperor was possessed."

 

---Procopius, The Vandalic War 

[Das Tentakel]

If true, the reaction of the Roman Emperor Flavius Honorius to news that Rome had fallen to the barbarians would certainly qualify as bizarre:
 
"At that time they say that the Emperor Honorius in Ravenna received the message from one of the eunuchs, evidently a keeper of the poultry, that Rome had perished. And he cried out and said, 'And yet it has just eaten from my hands!' For he had a very large rooster, Rome by name; and the eunuch comprehending his words said that it was the city of Rome which had perished at the hands of Alaric, and the emperor with a sigh of relief answered quickly: 'But I thought that my fowl Rome had perished.' So great, they say, was the folly with which this emperor was possessed."
 
---Procopius, The Vandalic War

 
'Se non è vero, è ben trovato'

 

I would probably consign that one to the garbage bin, but it did make for a rather nice subject for a painting by Waterhouse:

 

[mousestalker]

Some more about Gillette razors. The safety razor was invented and marketed by a man named King Gillette. He actually had an ulterior motive for doing this. He wanted to make a great deal of money so that he could promote his rather eccentric political ideas. He hit upon a disposable razor as the best way to generate a steady stream of income. Being rich gave him prominence and a better ability to promote his ideals.

 

King Gillette died penniless.

[Fiddles dee dee]

I here you don't like alot of other things as well, something about grammatical or spelling errors grinding you're gears, I should probably be careful of that, don't want you. Pointing out any grammatical errors, no sir-ma'am

Why do you hurt me so Reezy?