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Ave, my friends! I haven't visited here in a long time, but I wanted to tell you all about a new project I started this year. In 2019, I published a novel called PRESIDENT HAMILTON, an alternative history of Hamilton's life had he not died in the duel with Aaron Burr. In 2023, I wrote another novel, yet unpublished, called WITH MALICE TOWARDS NONE, based on the premise of John Wilkes Booth failing to kill Abraham Lincoln, and what Lincoln's second term of office would have looked like. Since I seem to be in a groove now, I decided to take on (and reverse) the most tragic assassination of them all, the murder of Julius Caesar. I had originally wanted the focus to be Caesar's campaign against the Parthians, but I found another author has already written a whole series about that scenario - and the first book, at least, was quite good. So instead, I titled this book THE RETURN OF JULIUS CAESAR. It takes place five years after the Ides of March, with Caesar on his way back to Rome after vanquishing the Parthian Empire, and deals with his political struggle to restore and reform the Republic before stepping down as dictator. It's a monumental undertaking, and right now I am seven chapters in. In case you are wondering how I got Caesar past the Ides of March, I originally wrote that as a short story and have now incorporated it as the prologue of my novel. It is available to read on my blog, and I would love some feedback on it from the learned members of this forum. Here is the link: https://lewisliterarylair.blogspot.com/2025/01/here-is-prologue-for-my-latest-novel.html

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-06-iq-scores-1970s.html. Actually, IQ scores have been falling by 7 pts per generation since 1970. During that time, thanks to the elimination of Pb from gasoline & paint, airborne levels of Pb have fallen to virtually undetectable levels. ....Not to change the subject, but since the Draconian regulations concerning auto exhaust emissions went into effect, despite measurably "cleaner" air in our cities, rates of asthma & COPD have also skyrocketed....Have they done us a favor with their over-reaching regs? Our regulations concerning acceptable Pb levels/exposures are purely arbitrary, there being no systematicallly acquired body of data upon which to make an educated estimate. The only large-scale experience is based on one episode of chemical warfare committed in Iraq about 30 y/a. Pts with very high Pb levels remained asymptomatic. Symptoms only developed in those with levels several hundred (IIRC) times over levels considered "safe." In the famous case of Flint, MI several y/a, they never told us the levels of Pb found in the water. Doing an orders of magnitude estimation, if the levels were 1000x higher than the regulatory acceptable levels, a 30 kg kid (who never got any bigger nor excreted any of the ingested Pb) would have had to drink 5 gal of water a day for 100 yrs to attain blood levels above the levels considered safe....Always do the arithmetic before panicking. Environmental Pb levels probably vary with geographic location. Before becoming known as Cheeseheads, Wisconsinites were known as Badgers because lead miners in the SW corner of the state used to provide shelter for themselves by burrowing caves, like badgers, into the banks of the Miss. R. where Pb veins are very close to the surface. How does this apply to ancient Romans??? Pb pipes do not cause contamination of the water because a biofilm quickly forms inside the pipes so the flowing water does not actually contact the pipes ...Pb cooking utensils? Doubtful, because most Romans were poor, so they didn't have metal vessels, and besides, most plebs in insulae and ate at the many tabernae & popinae, doing little cooking at home.

There were a few posts on this subject in the distant past (see below): The Wikipedia entry on the cursus publicus, the state mandated courier system of the Roman Empire, was pretty good, also. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cursus_publicus A good video by Garrett Ryan that adds insight to your question.

Hello everyone. I' Kevin a Retired Executive Chef here in Las Vegas. And Retire Army Ranger. I worked for years at Caesar's Palace and love every thing about the Roman Empire. Even my House is designed that way.