I open the door and I extend good money into ancient night, night prosperous with stars, order heavy in my hand.
Re "Visions of Ancient Night Sky Were Hiding in Plain Sight for Centuries" (Jan . 18: The Farnese Atlas statue hides more than ancient astronomical information.
Yet, even as the title figure revels in the vision of two nymphs, he fears that they were merely a dream, flitting out of the "mass of ancient night".
He invites us into his story and walks us easily along; all is recognizable and reassuringly alive, but then — we've had no warning — we're seized with a flooding fresh knowledge, in the same fashion that sadness or some ancient night remembrance can sometimes take us in its teeth.
Thus Gary Lineker, who could say plenty about the specifics of a game or passage of play, is trapped in the role of smooth presenter and link man, settling us all down for the ancient Saturday night ritual.
The National Trust may take it over: earnest Nicholas le Prevost is utterly persuasive as a Trust representative, giddy with pleasure at decaying delights, which include chamber pots full of ancient celebrity wee.
I was reminded of the way the goddess of magic, Hecate, is sometimes pictured as having three aspects: a youthful maiden in the morning, a matron at midday, a withered, ancient crone in the evening.
Life at Walnut Tree Farm became the subject, in 2004, of a Radio 4 programme, The House, which recorded the creaking of the ancient house at night, with mice scurrying behind the wainscotting, owls hooting in the dark beyond, and the rain beating a tattoo on the barrelled tin roofs of the outhouses.
Another Republican, Cliff Stearns, risked stating the obvious when he asked, "Is Mr. Duncan being made a scapegoat here this morning?" The ancient Greeks believed that by beating a human outcast with rods and shouting, "Out with hunger and in with health and wealth," they could drive their troubles away.
There was, though, some confusion in and around ancient Rome that afternoon.
Coleridge, whom Mary sometimes met in later years, recited his "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" one evening, with Mary "hiding behind a sofa when she should have been in bed".
