Japanese folding screen depicting a scene from the Tale of the Heike, seventeenth century. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Mary Griggs Burke Collection, gift of the Mary and Jackson Burke Foundation, 2015.
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Miscellany
“Animals retain the memory of their experiences and have no need of mnemonic systems,” according to the third-century Roman writer Aelian. “A horse, on hearing the clash of curb chain and the clang of bit, and seeing chest plates and frontlets, begins to snort and makes his hoofs ring as he prances, and is in an ecstasy.”
What is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?
—Marcus Tullius Cicero, 46 BC
