The time has long gone when anyone seriously tried to claim that it was decadence that did for the Roman empire \u2013 all those larks\u2019 tongues and luxury silks \u2013 but in so many ways there\u2019s a \u201clast days of the empire\u201d feel about life today.
\nAnd that\u2019s not just because of two articles I noticed today \u2013 one in the Autun edition of Le Journal de Saone-et-Loire, and the other in an April copy of Macleans, which has just made its way around our village to me. (Can\u2019t say English-language magazines aren\u2019t well used here.)<\/p>\n
Locally, just up the road from us, near the Gallo-Roman citdel at Bibracte, is a new farm, specialising in mare\u2019s milk, mostly, it would seem, for cosmetics. No objection, per say, although I can\u2019t help wondering what they do with the male foals, knowing what happens to dairy calves. Still, one can\u2019t help thinking of Cleopatra and those fabled baths\u2026<\/p>\n
Seriously madder, I learn of a $525-a-jar cosmetic, the no-so-secret ingredient of what is the venom of the temple viper, Tropidolaemus wagleri<\/em>, which \u201cworks in a similar way to Botox, which paralyses the muscles that cause facial wrinkles\u201d. Poison away those wrinkles\u2026<\/p>\n