Miscellany
According to his biographer Aelius Lampridius, the Roman emperor Elagabalus would amuse himself at dinner by seating his guests on “air pillows instead of cushions and let the air out while they were dining, so that often the diners were suddenly found under the tables.”
Miscellany
“Kings embodied the whole period of their reign,” wrote Elias Canetti in Crowds and Power. “Their death, whether it came with the decline of their strength or, as later, coincided with their natural span of life, indicated a break in time. They were time. Between one king and the next, time stood still. There was a gap in it—an interregnum—which people sought to keep as short as possible.”
