Not much this week ... then again, I was buried in an avalanche of unsorted mail:

From Korea Daily (ultimately):

People in different countries have their own way of alleviating the ennui and fatigue caused by heat. Ancient Romans reportedly ate snow cones and Emperor Elagabalus, known for his decadence, even had a mountain of snow erected in his garden to keep himself cool.

From a piece about road rage in the Pantagraph:

The Greeks called it ``hubris'' and it was a crime in Athens. Aristotle defined hubris as any behavior meant ``to cause shame to the victim, not in order that anything may happen to you, nor because anything has happened to you, but merely for your own gratification. Hubris is not the requital of past injuries; this is revenge. As for the pleasure in hubris, its cause is this: Men think that by ill-treating others they make their own superiority the greater.''

Desicritics brings us another group claiming descent from Alexander's armies:

As an adult I stood in the shade of large Neem trees alongside the Indus River near Sukkur and the water was warm, brown and turbid. Boats were pulled up along the bank to the south side of the Ayub Railway Bridge. I was informed that these belonged to the Mohana boat people, who one man said were probably descendants of soldiers who had accompanied Alexander the Great. (You know, grey eyes, fair skin.)