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The next few, as already mentioned, I had posted over on the ATF forum, each with a little story thingy. So for those who haven't seen it there and who like some fodder for the mind with their pretty pics, I'll post the accompanying text here too. Enjoy!

"Guess it's my turn to contribute something a little more tame this time. :3

In ancient Rome, 31 AD, the prefect of the Praetorian Guard and Emperor Tiberius’ man for his dirty work (and his co-consul in this year), Lucius Aelius Sejanus, was ousted from his position under suspicion or pretense of treachery. A carefully crafted series of letters read aloud in the Senate ended with the emperor’s accusations against him. From the Senate floor, he was brought to the Carcer, a prison mostly reserved for executions, and then executed in the Tullianum, a dark, damp, pit-like dungeon inside the Carcer where the condemned were thrown in through a hole in the ceiling. A carnifex - a Roman of the lowest status, either a slave or a freedman, working as one of Rome’s executioners - strangled him to death. As was custom, his body was thrown onto the Gemonian Stairs, where the mob was then allowed to tear it apart. His eldest son, Lucius Aelius Strabo, met the same fate a week later. Many followers and companions followed in this first wave of the purge; “damnatio memoriae,” as the Romans called it, meant the total destruction of everything related to Sejanus. His name was struck from records, his statues toppled, and his portrait scraped off all coins.​
After learning of her son’s fate, Sejanus’ first wife, Apicata, wrote an infuriated letter to Tiberius, accusing Sejanus of the murder of Drusus, the son of Emperor Tiberius, years earlier. She then committed suicide. Her letter, however, sealed her two remaining children’s fate, sparking another wave of executions; sometime in December, the order came from the island of Capri, where Emperor Tiberius resided for half of his reign. Sejanus’ two young remaining children, Capito Aelianus and Aelia Iunilla (Junilla), were condemned to the same fate as their father: to be strangled in the Tullianum and their bodies thrown onto the Gemonian Stairs. Then the issue of the girl’s virginity was raised; virgins, or rather the concept of virginity, were holy to the Romans, and surely killing a virgin would anger the gods. In cold pragmatism, it was decided that the carnifex would have to rape her before the execution. According to Tacitus and Cassius Dio, the two main Roman historians whose records of these alleged facts have survived to this day, Junilla was raped in the Tullianum with the rope already around her neck, and her dead body, too, was thrown onto the Gemonian Stairs. It must be mentioned, though, that Tacitus wrote about these events almost 70 or 80 years after the fact, Cassius Dio almost 200 years later. Both had reasons to be biased against Tiberius, so it is a matter of interpretation to some degree whether this ever really happened. Some historians, however, speculate that Junilla’s fate set an informal precedent for purges under later emperors, such as Caligula, Nero, Domitian, and Commodus, to name just a few, condemning dozens, if not hundreds, of virgin girls to a similar fate. The girl here must be one of those later victims of that practice, as she can not be Junilla - because I'm still working on illustrating her story... And it's not gonna be tame!... ;)"

(So yeah, that's up next after I'm done with that other mammoth project)
Post number No.9316
Board Artificial Intelligence
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