HAistoric — Histories That Almost Were

— The 66-day reign of Didius Julianus, reconsidered as a failed catering venture. —

— A disastrously literal translation of temple inscriptions plunged Ptolemaic Egypt into a generation-long war against all dung-rollers. —

— 78% of senators, it turns out, taste like garum and regret. The other 22% just taste like regret. —

— That one bill for eighty-six thousand sesterces, two denarii, and three asses for services rendered to one (1) Gaius Julius Caesar. —

— A startling 74% of state revenue was reportedly lost to something called a “beer sponge.” —

— That one time a Babylonian tablet, two shipwrecks, and a very stubborn priest broke the Mayan calendar. —

— The Accidental Sovereignty of the People Who Weren’t There. —

— The time a casting dispute over the role of Hercules led to a sitting senator fielding a private army of very dramatic gladiators. —

— A quartermaster’s clerical error did not, contrary to popular belief, derail the Navigator’s famed African expedition. It made it far, far worse. —

— A tragedy of errors, ornithology, and a truly catastrophic mistranslation of courtly verse. —

— That time a disastrously bad translation of an Etruscan fertility rite saw the Roman Senate replace gladiatorial combat with competitive root-vegetable carving. —

— That one Flavian engineer really, *really* fucked the Cloaca Maxima. —

— Mistranslation of a single Greek adjective plunged the Tiber into a year-long artichoke glut. —

— That one time a Punic astronomer’s misplaced star-charts saddled an empire with 2,000 years of calendar-correction bureaucracy. —

— A 6th-century Nestorian monk’s struggle with stubborn fruit leads to the accidental discovery of gravity, and several new heresies. —