259
When Porus, the Indian king, surrendered to Alexander the Great at Jhelum, he had only one request to make of him.
Alexander the Great’s Indian expedition (327-325 BC) pushed the boundaries of his vast empire into much of what is now Pakistan and into India’s Punjab. The most serious resistance came from Porus, King of Paurava, in a fierce battle in May 326 BC at the Hydaspes or River Jhelum in the Punjab, during which Alexander demonstrated once again that he was a prince as well as a general.
Picture: From the Walters Art Museum, via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.. Source.
Posted June 25 2022
260
It began to look as if Abraham Thornton might go down for rape and murder, so his attorneys dug deep into their bag of legal tricks.
In August 1817, Abraham Thornton was charged with the rape and murder of pretty and vivacious Mary Ashford. His lawyers cobbled together a shaky alibi, and the jury, not wishing to risk hanging an innocent man, acquitted him. Public outrage prompted the Home Secretary to let Mary’s brother William appeal the decision, and it was then that Thornton’s lawyers made a jaw-dropping application.
Picture: © Nic McPhee, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0.. Source.
Posted June 22 2022
261
Peter the Great wanted Russia to join the nations of Western Europe, but the nations of Western Europe refused to make room for him.
On the eve of the Great Northern War (1700-1721), most Europeans saw Russia only as an uncouth land useful as a supplier of wax, hemp and leather goods. Her ambitious new Tsar, Peter I, swore that Germany would soon admire her industry, and France her elegance, and that the Dutch and English would salute her navies; but without a European seaport, all this was an idle dream.
Picture: By Nikolai Florianovitch Dobrovolskiy (1837-1900), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.. Source.
Posted June 22 2022
262
In one of his ‘Cato Letters’, John Trenchard took issue with the view (popular in Westminster) that the public could not be left to make up their own minds.
John Trenchard MP was not so naive as to imagine that the general public were always right. But he thought they owed their errors to being misled by politicians, and that they usually recognised the truth when they were allowed to see it. If only, he sighed, the politicians would stop trying to pull the wool over our eyes, and concentrate on doing the job for which they were elected.
Picture: © InfoGibraltar, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0.. Source.
Posted June 22 2022
263
The authors of the ‘Cato Letters’ recalled how Greek general Timoleon replied when the people he had saved from oppression turned and bit him.
In one of their ‘Cato Letters’ (1720-23), John Trenchard MP and Thomas Gordon praised Roman Emperors Nerva and Trajan for dismissing the spies and informers hitherto used to gag critics of State policy; and they recalled how Timoleon, the Greek general who toppled dictators for a living, had never felt more proud than when the Opposition slandered him in Parliament.
Picture: By Giuseppe Patania (1780-1852), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.. Source.
Posted June 19 2022
264
Joseph Addison tells the legend of the great Greek poetess Sappho and the Lover’s Leap.
Sappho was born in about 612 BC on the island of Mytilene (Lesbos), and became one of the great love poets of ancient Greece. She belonged to an intimate sorority dedicated to Aphrodite and the Muses; she had a daughter named Clëis; and she had three brothers. Few other facts are known. Even the tale of her death is a melodramatic legend; but it has furnished us with the ‘lover’s leap’.
Picture: By Alf van Beem, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.. Source.
Posted June 15 2022