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The ancient name for Aix-en-Provence appears in Pliny the Elder’s encyclopedia, where the Roman scholar, who died during the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 CE, lists it with other Roman towns and colonies : oppida Latina : Aquae Sextiae Salluviorum …The Salluvii were a Liguro-Celtic tribe of the region ; they were one of the peoples against whom the Roman consul Sextius Calvinus (mid 2 nd CE BCE) fought, and for which he claimed a triumph back in Rome. In 122 BCE, he establishe

Near the beginning of Victor Hugo’s epic about the French Revolution, Quatrevingt-Treize , a ship sails to Bretagne, conveying the royalists’ last hope, Marquis de Lantenac, who will lead the uprising of peasants against the French revolutionary army in the royalist stronghold of the Vendée. During the ship’s passage across the Channel, a mooring cable fixing a cannon down to the floor of the between-decks snaps. A literal loose cannon: unmoored on a ship that tosses and pitc

It is a common place that words are a balm for the soul. Here the concept is united with the therapeutic effect of having a good friend...

Ostrakon with Menander's Sentences in Coptic (NY Metropolitan Museum. Public Domain) Menander is not really known for wordplay. But there...

Awnings are everywhere you look here in Aix-en-Provence: small ones extending over apartment windows; medium ones in front of the...