Back in middle school, I carried a piece of amethyst with me everywhere. I have no recollection of where I managed to find it, but I always thought of it as a lucky charm. After all, isn’t it the case with gems and pretty things that we tend to think of them as fortune-bringers? However, the (alleged) origins of amethyst aren’t quite as nice as its looks. The inside of an amethyst gemstone Supposedly, there once lived a nymph named Amethyste. Her looks caught the affections o

The Roses of Heliogabalus, a painting by the Dutch artist Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema. "He [Elagabalus] loaded his parasites with violets and other flowers in a banqueting room with a reversible ceiling, in such a way that some of them expired when they could not crawl out to the surface." Marcus Aurelius Antoninus had only turned 14 when his mother staged a coup against Emperor Macrinus in 218 AD and replaced him with her son, who had just barely started developing his prefront