Update: More Horrible News

Breaking News: Awful Things Also Happened in Ancient Times
   No matter how old the news, the newscasters always begin their broadcasts with "Breaking News", so I thought I would as well. In an attempt to prove that Canada in 2023 is not the worse place that ever existed, I posted, "Horrible Things Have Happened" for which this is an update. 

    From the New York Times, Dec. 8, 2023 by Elizabeth Povoledo:
   "Life for the Lowest Class in Ancient Pompeii? It Was Awful: Excavations in the Ancient Ruins Have Unearthed a Cramped Space Where Enslaved Workers and Donkeys Performed their Grueling Tasks."

  "Archaeologists excavating parts of the ancient city of Pompeii made public new discoveries on Friday that provide a grim glimpse into the bleak existence of enslaved people two millenniums ago, including the existence of a “bakery-prison.” 

  The newly excavated area consists of a cramped space where donkeys and enslaved people lived, slept and worked together, milling flour to make bread. The single window that was found there provided dim light: it opened not to the outside world but to another room in the house, and was crossed with iron bars...
    With their feet chained, and dressed in rags, Apuleius describes the workers as having “eyes so bleary from the scorching heat of that smoke-filled darkness they could barely see, and like wrestlers sprinkled with dust before a fight, they were coarsely whitened with floury ash.”
   The donkeys were no better off: “Their flanks were cut to the bone from relentless whipping, their hoofs distorted to strange dimensions from the repetitive circling, and their whole hide blotched by mange and hollowed by starvation."

   There is more, but that should be enough. Now it is those Italians who will have to apologize for the horrible things they have done. You may recall that we not only apologized to the Italians, we also provided compensation. See: "Apologizing Again."