Sunday, March the 14th, 2004

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Quote of the Day

“Heliogabalus made elaborate preparations for his own death, expecting that it would come in the midst of some uprising. He had a courtyard in his palace paved with porphyry so that he might throw himself down on it from a high place. He had a steel dagger fitted with a diamond-studded, carved gold hilt, to stab himself. He had especially spun a rope of gold and silk, to strangle himself. Surprised in the latrine by his assassins, he choked himself to death on the sponge that, to use Montaigne's expression, ‘the Romans used to wipe their behinds'.” — Alexandre Dumas, in the preface to his Grand Dictionnaire de Cuisine.