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No smoke without fire

Dear Spurtle, 
 
The mosaic shown in this month’s Spurtle (Issue 287) …

looks very like the Empress Theodora, in the Ravenna mosaics....

But is she having a sly drag on a fag? Odd, some 1,400 years before Columbus brought tobacco to Europe.
 
Mind you, Procopius tells us what she did do (in The Secret History), and you would not want to publish that in the Spurtle or even the Rodney Street tunnel.
 
Peter Verity


Dear Mr Verity,
 
Interesting. Thank you. Oh yes we would: https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/basis/procop-anec.asp

The Editor