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Yahoo
3 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Prosciutto di Portici: A ham-shaped portable sundial likely owned by Julius Caesar's father-in-law — before it was buried by Mount Vesuvius
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Name: Prosciutto di Portici What it is: A silver-plated bronze sundial Where it is from: Herculaneum, near Naples, Italy When it was made: Between 8 B.C. and A.D. 79 Related: Ram in the Thicket: A 4,500-year-old gold statue from the royal cemetery at Ur What it tells us about the past: In the shadow of Vesuvius, archaeologists discovered a pocket-sized bronze sundial in the shape of a ham in the summer of 1755. Nearly overlooked amidst the statues and charred scrolls buried at the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum, the "Prosciutto of Portici" is the earliest known Roman portable sundial. The silver-coated bronze ham measures about 4.4 by 3 inches (11.3 by 7.8 centimeters). The body of the object is crisscrossed by incised lines, and a series of Latin letters graces the bottom right quadrant. On the left edge, a bronze stump indicates that the gnomon — the "hand" of a sundial — has broken off. When 18th-century archaeologists stumbled on the object in their excavation tunnels under the municipality of Portici (later identified as the ancient town of Herculaneum) they initially thought it was a miniature ham sculpture with stripes. A closer examination revealed the object was a Roman sundial — a unique object that has been studied for more than two centuries. According to Christopher Parslow, an archaeologist and art historian at Wesleyan University who published a book on the sundial in 2024, the horizontal lines indicate the number of hours before or after sunset; the seven vertical lines represent months of the zodiac calendar; and the letters below are abbreviations of the 12 months in the Roman calendar. Thanks to one of these abbreviations — AU for August — the sundial can be dated to some time after 8 B.C., when the Roman Senate officially renamed the month of Sextilis to Augustus in honor of the first emperor. Sundials can be extremely accurate, but only if they are calibrated to a specific location. Based on the markings and the angle of the gnomon, which has since been lost but was originally recorded as being shaped like a pig's tail, Gianni Ferrari, an ancient sundial expert, estimated in 2019 that the ham clock was calibrated for someone living around 41°N latitude — just about where Herculaneum is. MORE ASTONISHING ARTIFACTS —Oseberg tapestry: Viking Age artwork from a boat burial that may depict the Norse tree of life —Hatnefer's heart scarab: An exquisite ancient Egyptian gold necklace inscribed with the Book of the Dead —Hårby Valkyrie: A 1,200-year-old gold Viking Age woman sporting a sword, shield and ponytail Historians have long assumed that the owner of the Villa of the Papyri was L. Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, the father-in-law of Julius Caesar, who likely commissioned the Epicurean philosopher Philodemus to draft the numerous charred scrolls that were recently "virtually unwrapped." This may explain why the Roman pocketwatch was shaped like a ham. For adherents of Epicurean thought, the lowly pig was often used as a metaphor, as it was seen as a naturally pleasure-seeking creature. Experts continue to debate how well the prosciutto sundial worked. While earlier scholars estimated an error of only a couple minutes, Ferrari found significantly higher errors, in the range of tens of minutes, in the object's time-telling ability. And based on a 3D scan and reconstruction of the sundial, Parslow determined that the sundial could be used to tell time to the half or quarter hour. "The instrument probably was a mark of distinction and a jewel," Ferrari wrote, "rather than being a precision instrument giving the correct time." This unique ancient "pork clock" was buried during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79. It is on display at Italy's National Archaeological Museum in Naples.
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
How Trump's 'Emergency' Powers Could Become Permanent
The office of dictator was created in the early Roman Republic, when it granted a single person—a prominent and trusted citizen—immense power in times of emergency. The dictator effectively became the commander in chief of Rome's forces, imposing martial law to address external or internal threats that imperiled the city. Despite the negative connotation of the word today, the dictator did not rule in perpetuity but rather was typically appointed for a six-month period. Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus, later an inspiration to George Washington, was endowed with this authority three times, did his duty, and returned to being a farmer afterward. Yet well-intentioned legislative measures can become corrupted through time and the demands of political expediency. In 121 BCE, facing a populist uprising from Gaius Gracchus, the Roman Senate issued a Senatus consultum ultimum, or 'final decree of the Senate,' effectively suspending due process procedures so that the tribune could be seized and executed without a trial. The decree also, rather conveniently, shielded the senators themselves from any responsibility for actions taken during the crisis. Less than 40 years later, Sulla would use the same legislative procedure to entrench himself as dictator for life, crushing his enemies and pushing through his own agenda. Julius Caesar would do the same following his civil war against Pompey the Great, marking the end of the Roman Republic and paving the way for rule by emperor. A couple of millennia later, and half a world away, Donald Trump is taking steps in that direction. There is no specific mention of emergency powers in the U.S. Constitution, but many scholars have argued that such powers are implied by the structure of the executive branch, and courts have generally been willing to acknowledge the legitimacy of the president to assume them, especially when granted prior authority by Congress. Abraham Lincoln assumed emergency powers when he briefly suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War, which the Constitution expressly permits. Woodrow Wilson was the first president to formally declare a national emergency, in his case to address our maritime shipping inadequacies as we were poised to enter World War I. FDR issued three national emergency proclamations—one to stop the bank run in his first days in office and two related to World War II. In 1976, Congress passed the National Emergencies Act, giving presidents broad emergency powers. Initially, Congress included a check on this authority, including in the bill a provision that it could rein in an emergency declaration by the president through a vote. But the Supreme Court overturned that check in the 1983 case of INS v. Chadha, while leaving in place the president's largely unrestrained emergency powers. Presidents have taken advantage of this: Ronald Reagan used the NEA six times during his eight years in office, including to impose sanctions on apartheid South Africa. Bill Clinton used it a whopping 18 times to do things like stop Iran from enriching uranium and thwart Middle Eastern terrorism. George W. Bush declared an emergency 14 times, in every instance against specific foreign entities related to terrorism or antidemocratic efforts in nations like Afghanistan, Iraq, and Lebanon. Barack Obama acted similarly, and so did Trump, predominantly, in his first administration, with the exception of his use of it to bypass Congress in the construction of a Southern border wall. Joe Biden was accused of taking emergency powers too far, as well, when he tried to apply them to his plan for student loan debt relief in the wake of Covid, but beyond that he used this congressionally granted authority in typical ways: to address actual and identifiable threats. Since retaking office, Trump has declared eight national emergencies in just a few short months. He's used the NEA to militarize the Southern border against 'invasion' and to enact tariffs against the entire world. He declared a national energy emergency, even though no such emergency exists, so that he can push through more fossil fuel permits. All of these 'emergencies' under the NEA come in addition to Trump's invocation of the arcane 1798 Alien Enemies Act, which the administration has used to violate the due process rights of undocumented immigrants and sentence them to a lifetime of detention in El Salvador. Elon Musk's DOGE farce claimed the necessity to act with similar impulsiveness and disregard for workers' rights in its chain-saw approach to cutting government: We need to move fast and break things because, Musk has asserted, the 'waste' is extraordinary and the threat imminent. Trump will likely go considerably further. He's bandied about the idea of using the 1807 Insurrection Act to use American troops to deal with a 'rebellion' within the United States. For now, that idea was rejected based on the recommendations of Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, but Trump could return to it should protests continue to spread throughout the country or if he feels his draconian anti-immigration policies are being undermined. And recently, Trump's top henchman Stephen Miller has mused about suspending habeas corpus for undocumented immigrants, depriving them of any due process rights whatsoever. 'The Constitution is clear, and that, of course, is the supreme law of the land, that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended at a time of invasion,' said Miller, a senior White House adviser. 'So I would say that's an action we're actively looking at.' Miller further posited that it would be a decision left solely up to the administration, which 'radical rogue judges' would not be able to overrule. Essentially, the administration would act as prosecutor, judge, and executioner. What would stop such an abolition of basic freedoms from extending to U.S. citizens? If Trump (or Miller by proxy) decide that certain U.S. citizens are hampering their 'national security' efforts, they could potentially justify suspending habeas corpus for them as well. It would be a big step if they tried it now, but they seem to be inching in that direction—and would be enabled by the Supreme Court ruling in Chadha and a Congress controlled by a feeble, impotent Republican Party. Despite slow-walking Trump's insurrection trial and granting extraordinary powers and independence to the president in Trump v. United States, even Chief Justice John Roberts appears to be starting to recognize the dangers of granting unlimited power to the White House. On Monday, he told a group of Georgetown Law students that the rule of law is 'endangered,' evidently not perceiving his own role in its decimation. He expressed fear that judges doing their duty would be maligned and perhaps impeached. It's hard to figure that Roberts isn't directly reacting to Miller's philosophy on executive power as it relates to the courts. In the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crash, Obama chief of staff and future Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel famously said, 'Never let a crisis go to waste.' Some have called this 'Rahm's rule': the recognition that every crisis brings opportunities to do things that might otherwise have been difficult or impossible. Trump and Miller have exploited and expanded this notion, developing their own rule of governance—what may be called the 'Trump doctrine.' The strategy is so simple as to be barbaric, as crude in its methods as it is cruel in its execution: Create a continual state of crisis and turmoil, allowing the president to assume expansive emergency powers—a backdoor method of achieving a unitary executive and possibly going much further. Crises lend themselves to authoritarian rule, and often in the aftermath it's extraordinarily difficult to return to republican government. Trump has created a permanent crisis state. Yet the real crisis began when tens of millions of Americans made the mistake of putting a fascist back in office after his first attempt to overthrow the government.
Yahoo
15-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Opinion - Tax events that changed the course of history
April 15 is here. Although tax day may not change your personal history — except for making you and other Americans a little poorer — there have been many times when taxes and tax policies have changed history. Here are five of them. Tax freedom and hieroglyphs. In 1799, when Napoleon Bonepart was in the middle of his Egyptian campaign, one of his soldiers found a large black stone in the Nile Delta near the town of Rashid (Rosetta). You know it today as the Rosetta Stone. The stone recorded the same message in three different scripts: ancient Greek, Demotic (which is ancient Egyptian written in a common script) and hieroglyphs. The text was eventually translated, allowing scholars to read hieroglyphs for the first time in centuries. The stone explained that the Egyptian ruler Ptolemy V in 196 BC had granted a tax exemption for the resident priests at the temple in Memphis, one of the historic capitals of Egypt. The priests placed the stone in front of the temple to, in essence, tell any tax collectors to keep moving, thus promoting the principle that religious establishments would not be taxed. Julius Ceasar, democratic socialist. Most people know that Julius Caesar (100-44 BC) became involved with the Egyptian ruler Cleopatra and that he was assassinated in the Roman Senate. But did you know he could have been a model for progressive politicians like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-N.Y.)? Johns Hopkins University economists Stephen H. Hanke and Joshua Blustein write that Caesar took several controversial actions, including dividing the land among the poor 'with the goal of the gradual equalization of the classes through a broad program of redistribution.' In addition, 'He remitted a whole year of rent for poor tenants and ordered … the cancellation of one-fourth of all outstanding debt. He instituted rent controls and gave handouts of 100 denarii to each pleb [commoner].' He might also have tried to forgive all student loan debt, had that been an option. Ceasar also reformed the tax system by introducing a customs tax and an inheritance tax and by imposing the first sales tax — a 1 percent flat rate applied across the empire. His successor, Caesar Augustus, raised the sales tax to 4 percent. Hanke and Blustein warn that progressives like Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) are following in Ceasar's socialist footsteps. A new tax leads to the New Testament. Chapter 2 of the Gospel of Luke begins, 'And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed.' Mary and Joseph traveled from their home in Nazareth to Bethlehem because Caesar Augustus had called for a census to update his tax rolls to increase revenue. By requiring people to return to their ancestral homes, Caesar unknowingly fulfilled a biblical prophecy from the Old Testament book of Micah 5:2: 'But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, … from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose coming forth is from of old, from ancient days …' Who says good things can't come from bad taxes? Taxes and bareback riding. You have probably heard of Lady Godiva's infamous ride. But you likely don't know the backstory. Lady Godiva — whose name in Old English was Godgifu (meaning God's Gift) — was a pious, wealthy landowner and noblewoman in her own right, and the wife of Earl Leofric. In 1057, Leofric imposed heavy new taxes on his subjects in the town of Coventry. Lady Godiva pleaded with him to repeal the taxes, but Leofric refused. Finally, Leofric tired of her pleadings and told her, 'Mount your horse naked and ride through the marketplace of the town, from one side right to the other, while the people are congregated.' If she did, he would repeal the taxes. The story goes that she took off her clothes, let down her long hair covering most of her body, and rode through the marketplace, accompanied by two soldiers. Leofric honored his agreement and rescinded the new taxes, except for the tax on horses. Fear the (Russian) beard. The Russian Emperor Peter the Great (1672-1725) is widely considered one of Russia's greatest monarchs. Peter was enamored with Western Europe and wanted Russians, a Slavic people, to embrace the styles and culture of the West. And so he imposed a tax on beards to encourage Russian men to abandon their traditional full beards and become clean-shaven like Westerners. Sadly, although Peter wanted to make Russians more like Europeans, the goal of the current Russian 'emperor' seems to be to make Europeans more like Russians. Merrill Matthews is a public policy and political analyst and the co-author of 'On the Edge: America Faces the Entitlements Cliff.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Hill
15-04-2025
- Politics
- The Hill
Tax events that changed the course of history
April 15 is here. Although tax day may not change your personal history — except for making you and other Americans a little poorer — there have been many times when taxes and tax policies have changed history. Here are five of them. Tax freedom and hieroglyphs. In 1799, when Napoleon Bonepart was in the middle of his Egyptian campaign, one of his soldiers found a large black stone in the Nile Delta near the town of Rashid (Rosetta). You know it today as the Rosetta Stone. The stone recorded the same message in three different scripts: ancient Greek, Demotic (which is ancient Egyptian written in a common script) and hieroglyphs. The text was eventually translated, allowing scholars to read hieroglyphs for the first time in centuries. The stone explained that the Egyptian ruler Ptolemy V in 196 BC had granted a tax exemption for the resident priests at the temple in Memphis, one of the historic capitals of Egypt. The priests placed the stone in front of the temple to, in essence, tell any tax collectors to keep moving, thus promoting the principle that religious establishments would not be taxed. Julius Ceasar, democratic socialist. Most people know that Julius Caesar (100-44 BC) became involved with the Egyptian ruler Cleopatra and that he was assassinated in the Roman Senate. But did you know he could have been a model for progressive politicians like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-N.Y.)? Johns Hopkins University economists Stephen H. Hanke and Joshua Blustein write that Caesar took several controversial actions, including dividing the land among the poor 'with the goal of the gradual equalization of the classes through a broad program of redistribution.' In addition, 'He remitted a whole year of rent for poor tenants and ordered … the cancellation of one-fourth of all outstanding debt. He instituted rent controls and gave handouts of 100 denarii to each pleb [commoner].' He might also have tried to forgive all student loan debt, had that been an option. Ceasar also reformed the tax system by introducing a customs tax and an inheritance tax and by imposing the first sales tax — a 1 percent flat rate applied across the empire. His successor, Caesar Augustus, raised the sales tax to 4 percent. Hanke and Blustein warn that progressives like Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) are following in Ceasar's socialist footsteps. A new tax leads to the New Testament. Chapter 2 of the Gospel of Luke begins, 'And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed.' Mary and Joseph traveled from their home in Nazareth to Bethlehem because Caesar Augustus had called for a census to update his tax rolls to increase revenue. By requiring people to return to their ancestral homes, Caesar unknowingly fulfilled a biblical prophecy from the Old Testament book of Micah 5:2: 'But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, … from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose coming forth is from of old, from ancient days …' Who says good things can't come from bad taxes? Taxes and bareback riding. You have probably heard of Lady Godiva's infamous ride. But you likely don't know the backstory. Lady Godiva — whose name in Old English was Godgifu (meaning God's Gift) — was a pious, wealthy landowner and noblewoman in her own right, and the wife of Earl Leofric. In 1057, Leofric imposed heavy new taxes on his subjects in the town of Coventry. Lady Godiva pleaded with him to repeal the taxes, but Leofric refused. Finally, Leofric tired of her pleadings and told her, 'Mount your horse naked and ride through the marketplace of the town, from one side right to the other, while the people are congregated.' If she did, he would repeal the taxes. The story goes that she took off her clothes, let down her long hair covering most of her body, and rode through the marketplace, accompanied by two soldiers. Leofric honored his agreement and rescinded the new taxes, except for the tax on horses. Fear the (Russian) beard. The Russian Emperor Peter the Great (1672-1725) is widely considered one of Russia's greatest monarchs. Peter was enamored with Western Europe and wanted Russians, a Slavic people, to embrace the styles and culture of the West. And so he imposed a tax on beards to encourage Russian men to abandon their traditional full beards and become clean-shaven like Westerners. Sadly, although Peter wanted to make Russians more like Europeans, the goal of the current Russian 'emperor' seems to be to make Europeans more like Russians.
Yahoo
01-03-2025
- Climate
- Yahoo
Should we 'Beware the Ides of March' when it comes to dodging storms?
"Beware the Ides of March." It's a phrase we hear every year as meteorological spring begins to take hold, but is there any real cause for concern? After all, some of America's greatest storms usually form during this infamous period. The phrase dates back to the times of Julius Caesar and is one of the most iconic sayings thanks to William Shakespeare's play. As legend has it, a person who could foresee the future warned Caesar that danger loomed and advised him to "beware the Ides of March." Under the ancient Roman calendar, the Ides referred to the full Moon of any month, which usually occurred between the 12th and 16th. Unlike future versions of the calendar, the Roman calendar is believed to have originally been based on the phases of the Moon and the seasons. Each year began in March and ended in December, totaling 304 days, according to experts from the University of Chicago. Julius Caesar was assassinated by Roman senators on March 15, 44 BCE, which is why the saying "beware the Ides of March" is still associated with that infamous date. When Is The Happiest Time Of Day? According to historical experts, Caesar had been working with astronomers to reform the calendar system to something more similar to what is used today: a Sun-based system, rather than one based on the lunar cycle. These reforms were implemented around 45 BCE, roughly a year before his death, and came to be known as the Julian calendar. The revamped system had 365 days, with a leap year added every four years, based on the understanding at the time that it took 365.25 days for the Earth to orbit the Sun. A person today might consider this advancement to be genius, but according to historians, this very innovation might have contributed to Caesar's death. The shift away from Roman traditions was just one of many reforms Caesar enacted that angered traditionalists and ultimately led to his assassination. According to historians, the Roman Senate honored Caesar's death by renaming the seventh month of the year from "Quintilis" to "Julius," which later became known as "July" with the rise of the English language. The calendar system was used for more than 1,600 years until Pope Gregory XIII introduced the Gregorian calendar, which is still the system in use today. The Julian calendar's addition of an extra day in February every four years eventually caused the calendar to become too displaced from the seasons. To address this, a scientist by the name Aloysius Lilius devised a plan to use leap days only in years divisible by four, except for end-of-century dates, which must be divisible by a factor of 400. The restrictions on leap days largely addressed the problems with the Julius system and helped keep the calendar more aligned with the planet's orbit around the Sun. Demise Of Australia's Large Kangaroos Likely Not Caused By Climate Change, Study Suggests The Ides of March coincides with the time of year when the transition from winter to spring occurs across North America. March 15 has witnessed a number of significant weather events over the years, including the devastating "Storm of the Century" in 1993. This record-breaking storm system produced heavy snowfall, flooding and wind damage, leading to the deaths of over 300 people and causing approximately $5 billion in damage. The central pressure of the nor'easter was equivalent to that of a Category 3 hurricane, and it impacted more than 120 million residents across the eastern United States. In 1938, an Ides of March tornado outbreak struck the Ohio and Mississippi Valleys, killing dozens of people. Belleville, Illinois, outside of St. Louis, Missouri, appeared to be one of the hardest hit areas, with meteorologists estimating wind speeds of F4 strength. And in 1941, one of the worst blizzards to ever affect the Upper Midwest triggered hurricane-force wind gusts and claimed 71 lives, according to the National Weather Service."Winds gusted to 75 mph at Duluth, Minnesota, and reached 85 mph at Grand Forks, North Dakota. Snow drifts twelve feet high were reported in north-central Minnesota," the NWS article source: Should we 'Beware the Ides of March' when it comes to dodging storms?
