Return to Amsterdam of the Second Expedition to the East Indies, by Hendrik Cornelisz Vroom, 1599. Rijksmuseum.

Trade

Volume XII, Number 2 | spring 2019

Miscellany

A Byzantine general of “ignoble descent” oversaw the building of Petra, on the Colchian coast, and set up an import monopoly. “They are robbing us of all our gold as well as of the necessities of life, using the fair name of trade,” locals complained, according to Procopius. “There has been set over us as ruler a huckster who has made our destitution a kind of business.”

Honest commerce is the great civilizer. We exchange ideas when we exchange fabrics.

—Robert G. Ingersoll, 1882

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The Colosseum, attributed to Robert Eaton, c. 1855.
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DÉjÀ Vu

Monumental Mistakes

2023:

Fitness instructor carves his girlfriend’s name into the Colosseum.

c. 1850:

Thompson of Sunderland makes his mark on Pompey’s pillar.

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