William Tarr - Sculpture, 1964

© Nona Limmen {Instagram / Bluesky}

The Adversary!; ‘Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched’ (Joseph Noel Paton, 1876)

Bronze statue fragment uncovered near Geneva, Switzerland.

Roman, 1st century AD

from The Geneva Museum of Art and History

AMG SLC 450 "Rennwagen" (C107) '78

One of my favorite historical tidbits is that Arab traders, for centuries, fooled Europeans into thinking cinnamon came from a rare, vicious and fearsome cinnamon bird.

The belief was so prevalent, in fact, that the mythical cinnamon bird shows up in the writings of Herodotus and Aristotle, all the way into medieval European manuscripts where it’s illustrated in all its fierce, cinnamony glory:

Pliny the Elder expressed skepticism of the bird in his writings, rightly assuming that it was a tale invented to keep control on the trade and prices by reducing competition, but the belief was already so widespread that it persisted in many areas into the early 1300’s.

the transformation of daphne

miniature from a copy of ovid's metamorphoses (middle french translation by clément marot). france, after 1531

source: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Douce 117, fol. 28v