You should never talk about your own fingers, and haphazards, to genteel people. You should only talk about agreeable subjects as I do.

Following Back to the Future Day on October 21, the countdown to Halloween has well and truly begun.

Conceiving that he had some solid reason for his refusal, which he could not with propriety disclose in presence of Omar Effendi, I did not urge him to accompany me; but laying aside my white burnous, which I had hitherto worn after the fashion of Cairo, put on a black abba of the Capo Verde which was brought me by as black a Hercules, of whom the interpreter remarked that there was only one person in Jerusalem, and that too a fellow-servant, who was piu diavolo che lui, more devil than he.

The role which the metropoleis developed as administrative centres for their nomes had always been inherent in the Ptolomeic system but the evidence suggests that it was much enhanced under the Romans.