Allusions/references To Actual History, Geography and Current Science
- Set in Rome in AD 74, during the reign of Emperor Vespasian.
- In Ancient Rome, the Vestal Virgins (sacerdos Vestalis), were the virgin holy priestesses of Vesta, the goddess of the hearth. Their primary task was to maintain the sacred fire of Vesta. The Vestal duty brought great honor and afforded greater privileges to women who served in that role. They were the only female priests within the Roman religious system.
- The Arval Brethren (Latin: Fratres Arvales) were a body of priests in ancient Rome who offered annual sacrifices to lares and gods to guarantee good harvests. The modern world knows them mainly for their stone-carved records of their oaths, rituals and sacrifices.
Read more about this topic: One Virgin Too Many
Famous quotes containing the words actual, geography, current and/or science:
““The best way to hate is the worst.
‘Tis to find what the hated need,
Never mind of what actual worth,
And wipe that out of the earth.
Let them die of unsatisfied greed....””
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“The totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs, from the most casual matters of geography and history to the profoundest laws of atomic physics or even of pure mathematics and logic, is a man-made fabric which impinges on experience only along the edges. Or, to change the figure, total science is like a field of force whose boundary conditions are experience.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)
“We set up a certain aim, and put ourselves of our own will into the power of a certain current. Once having done that, we find ourselves committed to usages and customs which we had not before fully known, but from which we cannot depart without giving up the end which we have chosen. But we have no right, therefore, to claim that we are under the yoke of necessity. We might as well say that the man whom we see struggling vainly in the current of Niagara could not have helped jumping in.”
—Anna C. Brackett (1836–1911)
“Man lives for science as well as bread.”
—William James (1842–1910)