Wonderfully well written piece, summed up with: > And that when, late in life, he made a formal proposal of marriage, the woman he addressed burst out laughing

Wonderfully well written piece, summed up with: > And that when, late in life, he made a formal proposal of marriage, the woman he addressed burst out laughing, then had to summon two servants to help him get off his knees and back on his feet? > Cohen thinks that it should matter, that we cannot read “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” properly unless we know the person who wrote it, scrotal affliction and all.