I pride myself on my ability to write these up and provide a cartoon illustration. It is a wise thing to take pride in simple pleasures, n'est-ce pas?Pompeia, the wife of the great Roman general Julius Caesar, was well known for her beauty and her matronly virtues. But did you know she was also known far and wide for a remarkable berry she owned that had been passed from generation to generation in her family and was said to have been given to her distant ancestor by Ceres, the Earth Goddess, herself?
Yes, it was an astonishing piece of fruit, a huge, purple, shiny blackberry that pulsated with light. People came from all parts of the Roman Empire just to see Pompeia's berry. To accommodate the crowds, Julius Caesar caused a marble shrine to be built with open sides so that all who came could regard the berry where it sat on its gold and marble pedestal.
Every day people would come to gaze at the magnificent blackberry, and they would shout,
"How beautiful it is!"
"How large it is!"
"Blessings on the honorable house of she who owns the admirable berry!"
One night, long after viewing hours, the priestess who looked after the berry heard a sound of sandals on the marble floor of the shrine that housed Pompeia's berry.
"That is odd,' she thought. "Everyone knows that visiting hours are day time only." She went to accost the trespasser and tell him to come back during the day.
She found a man standing by the berry's pedestal. Ye gods! He had the berry right in the palm of his hand!
The priestess called to the man, "Sir, put down that berry! You may not touch it. Come back during viewing hours. Then you may look at Pompeia's berry all you wish and join in on the clamor of praise for the sacred fruit.."
The man turned to her with an evil gleam in his eye. "Foolish woman! I came to seize her berry, and not to praise it!"
And he put it in a sack and ran away.
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