Dante Alighieri was born in 1265 to Bella and Alighiero Alighieri. His mother died in Dante’s infancy, and his father passed away when the poet had barely reached fifteen. It was not a wealthy family by any measure; although Dante’s Florentine lineage was distinguished, his family was unable to convert pedigree to lucre.
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Alexander the Great’s incursions into the Indian subcontinent brought him into conflict with local rulers unwilling to submit to Macedonian rule. One of these rulers is known to history by the name Porus. The sources are vague and contradictory, but he apparently controlled the Punjabi region bordered by the Jhelum and Chenab rivers.
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The adventures of the Armenian king Papa, who lived from A.D. 353 to about 375, are described by the Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus (XXX.1). Gibbon gives the king’s name as Para; other sources variously spell his name as Pap or Papa. We nod at all these spelling variations, and suggest the reader choose the one he favors most.
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There is an instructive historical anecdote that appears in the writings of both Frontinus (Stratagems IV.4) and Valerius Maximus (VI.5). It describes an incident that took place in 394 B.C. during the consulship of Camillus.
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Several days ago I read one of Edgar Allan Poe’s lesser-known stories, “The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether.” It was first published in 1845. Readers may not be familiar with the story; but as it seems to offer a useful commentary on contemporary affairs, I wanted to share my thoughts about it.
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The Roman writer Aulus Gellius, in his Attic Nights (XIII.22), records the following anecdote. Gellius was once conversing with his teacher, one Titus Castricius, whom he describes in glowing terms as “a man of the greatest prestige and dignity.”
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Today only historians of the sea have heard of the horrific loss of the steam packet Rothsay Castle in 1831. Yet in its day, the tragedy aroused considerable public indignation and mourning in England; and it remains one of the most unsettling of the nineteenth century’s long list of maritime calamities. We will retell the tale.
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It often happens that, in the affairs of states and princes, conveniences lead to dependency, and from dependency to ruin. What may first appear to be advantageous, may in time prove to be only the first link of a chain forged for the purpose of bondage. History abounds with examples of this slide into servitude, but we will relate two from the military history of the second century Greek author Polyaenus.
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The Roman emperor Julian, wary of the encroaching borders of the Persians, undertook a military campaign against the Persian Empire in March of A.D. 363. Despite some initial successes, the operation resulted in a defeat for Roman arms and Julian’s own death in battle. Yet the field of conflict yielded more than just a litany of forgotten sieges and dusty marches. The emperor had occasion to deliver two masterpieces of rhetoric, expressive of some of the noblest, and most memorable, sentiments ever uttered by a wearer of the imperial purple. We will review both of them here.
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The world recently learned that the estate of British author Roald Dahl actually allowed a team of censors to purge words and phrases from the author’s works that they deemed “offensive.” This is a terrifying escalation in the left’s war on the literary record and on artistic expression in general. The idea that censors would dare to reach back into old books and rewrite them would have been unthinkable even a decade ago. It is communist thought-policing, pure and simple. Every writer or artist should be taking steps now to protect their work from tampering by potential future vandals. If our concept of art is to have any meaning at all, the artist’s work must be seen as inviolate and sacrosanct.
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Quintus Curtius 
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