1448
Brutus tells Cassius to act while everything is going his way, or be left with nothing but regrets.
Brutus, Caesar’s assassin, is urging Cassius to march on Philippi to meet Octavius (Octavian) and Anthony in the struggle for power in Rome. Cassius is reluctant, but Brutus argues that it must be now or never.
Posted January 3 2016
1449
Persian star-gazers hasten to Israel for the birth of a royal heir, but find that King Herod has had his fill of them.
According to Pliny the Elder (23-79), a Roman contemporary of St Paul, ‘magi’ were believed to be followers of Zoroaster, interpreters of dreams, worshippers of the stars and secret knowledge, not to mention conjurors and charlatans.
Posted January 2 2016
1450
Young Montague Bertie, Lord Willougby, tended his dying father behind enemy lines.
At eight o’clock on the morning of the 23rd of October, 1642, King Charles I gazed down on the field of Edgehill, and the Parliamentarian army that awaited him there. It was the start of the English Civil War, which would all but end with the King’s execution in January 1649.
Posted December 31 2015
1451
Stephen was the first person to lose his life because he was a follower of Jesus Christ.
In about AD 34, St Stephen became the first person to be executed for his belief in Jesus Christ. Most of what is known about him comes from St Luke in his ‘Acts of the Apostles’, though Eastern tradition adds a little more.
Posted December 26 2015
1452
The Greek hero thinks he has paid off more of his debt to the gods, but an unpleasant surprise awaits him.
In a moment of madness induced by Hera, Heracles has killed his own children. Now he is working off his debt by serving his cousin and rival Eurystheus, and has already returned alive from one ‘hopeless errand’...
Posted December 22 2015