The Pit and the Pendulum is a tale written by Edgar Allan Poe, whose title has come to embody a sense of helplessness, horror and impending doom. The story’s narrator is confined in a pitch black underground cell, where he is subjected to a variety of tortures, including a blade suspended from a pendulum that [...]

In a previous post, I wrote about the Dog Days, or the hot, feverish period in summertime when the ancients believed that madness gripped the land. The Romans attempted to avert this malevolent influence by sacrificing a brown dog, an action that was also intended to appease a stern agricultural deity. It is truly astonishing [...]