Tea at Trianon: Plagues That Ravaged the Roman Empire

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, February 7, 2024

Plagues That Ravaged the Roman Empire

There has always been climate change, for millions of years. The earth is constantly changing, very slowly, most of the time. From Smithsonian:

Their findings add to the growing body of research about how changes in the climate—like those occurring today because of human-caused global warming—can also affect human health.

“Investigating the resilience of ancient societies to past climate change … might give us better insight into these relationships and the climate change-induced challenges we are facing today,” lead author Karin Zonneveld, a micropaleontologist at Germany’s University of Bremen, tells Live Science’s Stephanie Pappas. To study the climate of the Roman Empire, scientists drilled down into the sediment of the Gulf of Taranto, a body of water between the “sole” and “heel” of Italy’s boot. They pulled out long samples of the sediment, then analyzed the various layers, similar to how dendrochronologists study tree rings.

They were able to link layers of sediment with specific periods in time because of the presence of volcanic glass from well-known volcanic eruptions throughout history, including the infamous eruption of Vesuvius in 79 C.E. (Read more.)