Translated from French with ChatGPT (please notify us of errors) Upon the mosaic floor, one can discern a fish, of which only the head and bones remain, a half-eaten bunch of grapes, crustacean shells, an opened nut being nibbled by a mouse, and dozens of other food remnants. The artist’s meticulous depiction, with subtle plays […]
A Knife More Roman than Swiss
Translated from French with ChatGPT (please notify us of errors) A question for sharp minds: who invented the “Swiss Army knife”? Counterintuitively, the answer is not in the question, and Swiss expertise in this area was preceded. By Roman predecessors, no less. But let’s first define what we’re talking about. What makes the so-called “Swiss” […]
Silphium: The First Victim of Overexploitation
Translated from french with claude.ai (please notify us of errors) The Libyan tribes discovered it, the Greeks made it legendary, the Romans drove it to extinction. According to Pliny the Elder, it was “a precious gift of nature”[1]. Here, in three acts, is the story of an extraordinary plant that vanished 2,000 years ago, but […]