Painting Fakes

I'm reading Josephus' The Jewish War , as you do.  I love the bizarre intrigues of the Herod family and the hugely inflated numbers of people involved in everything, although the battles and the long list of forgettable names kind of lose me.  Most of all I love this story, about a Roman general called Petronius who has just become my hero of the week. In 37 AD the Roman Emperor Tiberius died and was succeeded by his adopted grandson, Gaius Caligula.  Not much good could be said of Tiberius but at least he was not completely crackers.  Caligula on the other hand was as mad as a cut snake and poor Petronius, as the chief imperial administrator in the Middle East, was now required to do whatever this madman said.  Josephus takes up the story. Gaius Caesar's accession to power so completely turned his head that he wished to be thought of and addressed as a god, stripped his country of its noblest men, and proceeded to lay sacrilegious hands on Judaea.  He ordered Petroni

Apologies for my short absence.  I've been busy with work, it being the end of the financial year and all, and not much spare time to write down the thoughts clattering around my head.  Anyway, in between other things I've been gradually working my way through Eusebius' History of the Church.   Eusebius has been called the "father of church history" and this work, which first appeared early in the 4th century, is the earliest surviving attempt at a comprehensive account of the first three centuries of Christianity. I say "attempt" because the work is hardly comprehensive.  In the first place, it is almost entirely a history of the Greek-speaking church of the Eastern mediterranean, with occasional insertions of events from the West, especially Rome.  Yet for me this was the least puzzling thing about it.  As a 21st century reader it is easy to see what it lacks as a work of history. For a start there is no real sense of development.  We know that