It’s bad enough i see people on Facebook saying the Egyptians didn’t build the pyramids but yesterday I bumped into one commenter insisting the romans had electrical machinery and that anyone who couldn’t tell that by looking at their buildings was a fool.

I had to reply. I said the Romans would tell us in their writings if they did. They wouldn’t bloody shut up about it. Caesar would tell us all about his legions’ awesome sets of power tools, Vitruvius about the virtue of forklift trucks. Ovid would be talking about electric machinery too, providing the romans made electric sex toys (which, you know they would).

He didn’t reply.