Writerhof

Posca! No, it's not the namesake character from Puccini's opera "Tosca" that is meant, but actually Posca: This is what the Romans called a drink made from diluted wine or vinegar and water. They used it to disinfect the often not-so-clean water that...

This saying - O times! O morals! - was coined by Cicero in his speeches against Catiline, recorded by his freedman Marcus Tullius Tiro in an early form of what we now know as shorthand. After losing the consul election for the year 63 BC, a certain...