Nero
Hadrian
Mani
Attila
Aryabhata
Bang Gun
Bank Poo
Nero (37- 68)
I was the grand-nephew of Augustus Caesar who was the grand-nephew of Julius Caesar. I became a Roman Emperor. My father was described as a murderer and a cheat who was charged with treason, adultery, and incest. My mother was Agrippina the Younger, a great-grand-daughter of Augustus Caesar. My father died when I was 2 years old and I was adopted by my uncle Claudius to become his heir and successor. Because my uncle was afflicted with a limp and slight deafness due to sickness at a young age, his family ostracized him and excluded him from public office until he began to rule with his nephew Caligula. My father had been employed as a very high official of Caligula's staff.
Philo of Alexandria described Caligula as an insane emperor who was self-absorbed, angry, killed on a whim, and who indulged in too much spending and sex. He is accused of killing for mere amusement. Once at some games at which he was presiding, he ordered his guards to throw an entire section of the crowd into the arena to be eaten by the lions because there were no more criminals to be prosecuted and he was bored.
When I was 17, my mother killed Claudius with poison mushrooms and I became the youngest Emperor. My early reign was strongly influenced by my mother. One year later, I ordered her to be murdered. During my reign, I focused much of my attention on diplomacy, trade, and enhancing the cultural life of the Empire. I ordered theaters to be built and promoted athletic games. I had very capable generals during my reign.
Over the course of my reign, I often made rulings that pleased the lower class. I was criticized as being obsessed with personal popularity. I began my reign by promising the Senate more autonomy. During this period, I was known for spending my time visiting brothels and taverns. I put restrictions on the amount of bail and fines. Also, fees for lawyers were limited. There was a discussion in the Senate on the misconduct of the freed-men class, and a strong demand was made that patrons should have the right of revoking the freedom of freed slaves. I supported the freed-men and ruled that patrons had no right to revoke the freedom of freed-men. I was however more supportive of slave owners than of their slaves. The Senate tried to pass a law in which the crimes of one slave applied to all slaves within a household. Despite riots from the people, I supported the Senate on their measure, and deployed troops to organize the execution of 400 slaves affected by the law.
After tax collectors were accused of being too harsh to the poor. I arrested, impeached and removed many government officials for extortion and corruption. When further complaints arose that the poor were being overly taxed, I reduced all indirect taxes. The Senate convinced me this action would bankrupt the public treasury. As a compromise, I cut taxes from 4.5% to 2.5%.
In imitation of the Greeks, I built a number of gymnasiums and theaters. Despite the common belief that theater led to immorality, that performers dressed in Greek clothing was old fashioned, and that public expenditure on entertainment was a waste, I established festivals including games, poetry, and theater.
When I was 27, a great fire erupted in Rome. The fire started in shops selling flammable goods. It spread quickly and burned for over 5 days. It destroyed 3 of 14 Roman districts and severely damaged 7. It is uncertain who or what actually caused the fire—whether accident or arson. Popular legend claims that I played the fiddle at the time of the fire, even though there were no fiddles in my time. The truth is that I was not even in Rome. Upon hearing news of the fire, I returned to Rome to organize a relief effort, which I paid for from my own funds. I personally took part in the search for and rescue of victims of the blaze, spending days searching the debris without even my bodyguards. After the fire, I opened my palaces to provide shelter for the homeless, and arranged for food supplies to be delivered in order to prevent starvation among the survivors. In the wake of the fire, I made a new urban development plan. Houses after the fire were spaced out, built of brick, and many sidewalks were covered by roofs. I also built a new palace complex in an area cleared by the fire. This included lush artificial landscapes and a 30m statue of me. The population searched for a scapegoat for the cause of the fire and many blamed me. To deflect blame, I targeted Christians, ordering many to be crucified and burned. The cost to rebuild Rome was immense, requiring funds the state treasury did not have, so I devalued the Roman currency for the first time in the Empire's history. I reduced the weight and purity of the silver coins by 10% and the weight of gold coins by 10%.
I promoted an expedition to discover the sources of the Nile River. It was the first exploration of equatorial Africa from Europe in history. I composed songs that were performed by other entertainers throughout the empire. At first, I only performed for private audiences. I began singing in public in Napoli in order to improve my popularity. I craved attention. I participated in the Olympic Games of 67 in order to improve relations with Greece and display Roman dominance. As a competitor, I raced a 10 horse chariot and nearly died after being thrown from it. I also performed as an actor and a singer. Though I faltered in my racing and acting competitions, I bribed the judges and I won these crowns and was able to parade them when I returned to Rome.
When I was 29, there was a Jewish revolt in Judea stemming from Greek and Jewish religious tension. A year later I dispatched Vespasian to restore order. This revolt was eventually put down 2 years after I died. We were able to breach the walls of Jerusalem and destroy the city and the Temple of Jerusalem. The last Judean stronghold, Masada, was taken 5 years after I died. 10 thousand soldiers including thousands of Jewish prisoners were used to break through the walls of this citadel to find that 960 of the 967 defenders had committed suicide. Many of the Jewish rebels were scattered or sold into slavery. Over 1 million people were killed during the siege. About 10,000 were captured and enslaved and many others fled to areas around the Mediterranean.
When I was 31, there was a rebellion against my tax policies and I was driven from my throne. Many of my army officers openly refused to obey my commands and my palace guards abandoned me. I dispatched messages to my friends to come, but no one came. When I went to them, I found them all gone. I called for a gladiator or anyone else adept with a sword to kill me but no one appeared. I sought for some place where I could hide and collect my thoughts. A freedman offered me his villa 6km outside the city. Traveling in disguise, I and 4 loyal freedmen reached the villa. A courier arrived with a report that the Senate had declared me a public enemy and that it was their intention to execute me by beating me to death. Facing assassination, I decided to commit suicide. But it was not as easy as I thought it would be. No other Roman emperor had ever done that. As I prepared myself for suicide, I lost my nerve. I begged for one of my companions to set an example by killing himself first. Not having any takers I ordered my private secretary to perform the task of killing me.
My death was welcomed by Senators, nobility and the upper class. The lower-class, slaves and frequenters of the arena and the theater on the other hand were upset with the news. Members of the military were said to have mixed feelings, as they had allegiance to me but were bribed to overthrow me. After my death, there was a widespread belief that I was not dead and somehow would return. The legend of my return lasted for hundreds of years. Three impostors emerged leading rebellions who claimed they were me. All were executed. Some even believe that the number and mark of the beast in the Book of Revelation was a code for my name. My name in Greek translated into Hebrew had the numeric value of 666.
My death was followed by 6 months of civil war during which time Rome witnessed the successive rise and fall of 4 emperors until the final accession of Vespasian.
Hadrian (76-138)
I was born to become an architect and I became a Roman Emperor. In Rome, I re-built the Pantheon and built the Temple of Venus and Roma. In Britain I built Hadrian's Wall which marked the northern limit of Roman Britain. I built libraries, aqueducts, baths and theaters.
I was born into a family originally Italian, but which had lived in Spain for many generations. I only had one elder sister. When I was 10 years old my parents died. Trajan, the Emperor adopted me as his heir just before he died. I was 44 years old. Despite my own great reputation as a military administrator, I witnessed very little military conflicts. I preferred securing peace by erection of permanent fortifications along the empire's borders. The most famous of these was the massive Hadrian's Wall in Great Britain and the fortifications along the Danube and Rhine borders. These were a series of mostly wooden forts, outposts and watchtowers. To maintain morale and prevent the troops from becoming restive, I established intensive drill routines, and personally inspected the armies. My policy was peace through strength and threat.
During my reign, I traveled to nearly every province of the Empire. I was an ardent admirer of Greece, and sought to make Athens the cultural capital of the Empire. I ordered the construction of many opulent temples in the city. I spent extensive amounts of his time with the military; usually wearing military attire and even dining and sleeping with the soldiers. I ordered military training and drilling to be more rigorous and even made use of false reports of attack to keep the army alert.
My first military service was as a tribune. As a tribune, as long as I was in Rome, I had the power to convene the legislative assembly through which the commoners could pass laws, elect magistrates, and try judicial cases. I acted as its president and proposed legislation before it. I also had immunity against any charges against me and the power to veto actions taken by magistrates. I could pardon any crimes, including my own. I could also summon the Senate and lay proposals before it. I later became governor of Upper Pannonia in Hungary.
When I was 45, I had an intimate relationship with a 13 year old Greek boy named Antinous. 10 years later he drowned leaving me totally grief-stricken and devastated. I founded the Egyptian city of Antinopolis in his memory and had him deified – an unprecedented honor for one not of the ruling family.
It had been fashionable among the Romans to be clean-shaven. All Roman Emperors before me except for Nero were clean shaven. I changed all of that and made beards fashionable. Most of the emperors after me started to wear beards. This new fashion lasted until the reign of Constantine the Great and was revived again 300 years after Constantine died.
I mitigated but did not abolish slavery. I had the legal code humanized and forbade torture. I traveled a great deal. The main purpose of my journeys was commissioning new structures, projects and settlements. My visits were marked by handouts which often contained instructions for the construction of new public buildings. My intention was to strengthen the Empire from within through improved infrastructure, as opposed to conquering or annexing perceived enemies.
When I was 54, I visited the ruins of Jerusalem destroyed 60 years before. I rebuilt the city. I built a large temple to the goddess Venus on top of what later Christians would come to venerate as the tomb of Christ. I built a new temple dedicated to the worship of Jupiter on the ruins of the old Jewish Second Temple. I abolished circumcision, which was considered by Romans and Greeks as a form of mutilation and hence barbaric. These policies of mine were considered anti-Jewish and triggered in Judaea a massive Jewish uprising. Roman losses were very heavy, and it was believed that an entire legion was destroyed. My army eventually put down the rebellion after 3 years of fighting. 580,000 Jews were killed, 50 fortified towns and 985 villages razed. After the war I continued the persecution of Jews in an attempt to root out Judaism, which I saw as the cause of continuous rebellions. I prohibited the Torah law, the Hebrew calendar and executed Judaic scholars. The sacred scroll was ceremonially burned on the Temple Mount. In an attempt to erase the memory of Judaea, I forbade Jews from entering Jerusalem.
The Pantheon was built as a temple to all the gods of ancient Rome. It burned down 2 times 150 years before I rebuilt it. 2,000 years after I rebuilt it, its dome, almost 50m high, remained as the world's largest reinforced concrete dome. It is one of the best-preserved of all Roman buildings and after 2,000 years continues to be used as a place of worship. It took over 700 construction workers over 3 years to construct the Pantheon. The gray granite columns that were used in the Pantheon were quarried in Egypt. Each was 12m tall and 1.5m wide and weighed 60 tons. These were dragged more than 100km from the quarry to the river on wooden sledges. They were floated by barge down the Nile River when the water level was high during the spring floods. The stresses in the dome were found to be substantially reduced by the use of successively less dense aggregate stones such as pieces of pumice in higher layers of the dome. As the best-preserved example of an Ancient Roman monumental building, the Pantheon has been the most influential in Western architecture.
Hadrian's Wall was a defensive fortification in Roman Britain built to separate the Romans from the barbarians. It was about 120km long. The east part of the wall was made from squared stone and was 3m wide and 6m high. The west part of the wall was made from sod - the grass and the soil beneath it held together by the roots. It was 6m wide and 3.5m high. The entire wall took 6 years to complete and was covered in plaster and then white-washed so that its shining surface reflected the sunlight and made it visible from many kilometers away.
I spent the final years of my life in Rome. I built a new Temple of Venus and Roma on the former site of Nero's large landscaped villa that Nero built in the heart of ancient Rome, after the great fire had cleared away the aristocratic dwellings on the slopes of the hill. It was the largest temple in Ancient Rome. It took 20 years to build and was damaged by fire 160 years after it was built. 700 years later, a severe earthquake destroyed the temple.
About this time, suffering from poor health, I turned to the problem of my succession. My last few years were marked by conflict and unhappiness. The adoption of Aelius Caesar proved unpopular. Fuscus, a very ambitious man, had designs on the imperial power for himself and the year before I died he attempted a coup. His grandfather was implicated and I ordered that both be put to death. They prayed before their execution that I would "long for death but be unable to die". Their prayers were fulfilled. I suffered from my final protracted illness so much that I had to be prevented from committing suicide on several occasions.
Mani (216-276)
I was born to become a prophet in Babylon. I believed that the material world should be shunned and the spiritual world should be embraced. I believed that enlightenment, salvation, and emancipation or 'oneness with God' may be reached by practicing philanthropy to the point of personal poverty, sexual abstinence and by diligently searching for wisdom by helping others. I preached that the struggle between a good spiritual world of light and an evil material world of darkness explained the perplexities and contradictions of life. I claimed that light was gradually removed from the world of matter and returned to the world of light from which it came. I did not contradict Moses, Zoroaster, Buddha or Jesus, but clarified and crowned their imperfect and confused teachings. I proclaimed nothing new. I was crucified for my beliefs and my adherents were persecuted.
Attila (406-453)
"Violence is justified in the service of mankind"
I was frustrated and disappointed at my last life. I chose as my next life a Mongolian boy in a family of rulers. I became king of the Huns. We were a union of nomadic tribes stretching from Mongolia to Turkey along the Siberian plains. We hunted with bows and arrows on horseback. I inherited the throne when my uncle died and shared it with 2 other cousins. We got very powerful and were greatly feared. As we rode into new territories we gained a reputation for plundering and pillaging. We achieved military dominance due to our superior horses and riding skills. We had special bows that we were able to use while we were riding. To overcome high walls we built battering rams and rolling towers. This way we captured many churches and monasteries. We demanded ransom for lives and later we extorted tributes for insurance against further attacks. We expanded to the outskirts of the Roman Empire where we were considered barbarians but hired as mercenaries whenever they needed fearless soldiers to police their outposts.
We were considered barbarians – the Hells Angels of our time. The Romans hired us whenever they needed fearless soldiers to police their outposts. We were like ploughs overturning overgrown choked gardens clearing them of weeds and preparing them for new growth.
Honoria, the sister of the king Valentinian of the Roman Empire was sent to a convent for plotting to kill her king brother. She offered me half her kingdom for her rescue. I liberated her from her abductors by kidnapping her. I kept her as a hostage and forced her to marry me. Valentinian was furious when he found out. I had to use 500,000 soldiers and took 3 years to take my claim of half his kingdom which reached all the way to the Atlantic Ocean.
Honoria seduced me on my victory night celebrations. I was drunk and she was able to easily stab me. It was only later when I died did I realize what a deceiving person Honoria was. She had also seduced one of my more ambitious commanders into a conspiracy to kill me. They planned to marry and to claim title to my newly conquered empire. She killed me and he buried me, then she killed him. She was caught, arrested, and sent back to her brother Valentinian. People have never been able to find my grave. My relatives over many generations grew to be rulers of Europe. Charlemagne was the greatest of them.
Charlemagne who lived 300 years later had 18 children with 10 wives. He became the founding father of all European monarchies. The monarchies would over centuries struggle for power, sometimes conquering with marriage, other times with war. But families grew and their language slowly changed, first by accent, then by dialect, until they could not understand each other anymore. They kept different rituals and customs, and evolved different cultures. The church also competing for power was a unifying and mediating force for these monarchies.
Aryabhata (476-550)
I was a born in India to become a very famous mathematician-astronomer. I wrote and published a few works that turned out to be well remembered many hundreds of years after I died. I was only in my early 20s when I wrote them.
It all started when I tried to find out the relation of the circumference of the circle to its radius. I had a hunch that the size of a circle must have a very direct relationship to the length of its diameter. I experimented with circles from as small as I could to as large that were possible. The magic number I was searching to find was between 3.13 to 3.15. I guessed that it must be exactly in the middle of the 2 values, but I was not sure. So I called the magic number pi. Nature and the universe was made from so many circles that I believed that once I had a value for pi, then an entire new world would open up to me.
I played with very many equations and I called my game "algebra". The equation for calculating circumference from the radius of the circle was not the only equation that I worked at, but it was the most useful. I played with triangles as well and was able to find equations for areas and angles of triangles of any size. I found that the area of any triangle is proportional to its base and its height. I could also calculate any angle in any triangles if I knew the length of any 2 sides. To do this I used cyclic functions I called "sines", "cosines" and "tangents". The only practical application to playing with these kinds of equations called "trigonometry" was for studying the motion of the heavenly bodies.
Many of my colleagues who also studied the motion of heavenly bodies started to play with my equations. We were called "astronomers". We were more poets than mathematicians. We did not use numbers at all. We used the letters of the alphabet and symbols as well as numbers. With the mathematics that I developed, I was able to calculate not only the sizes of forms like circles and triangles, but also the areas they contained. I was able to calculate the motion of stars and planets and the moon and predict eclipses.
I used knowledge from Greek mathematicians and astronomers that was 800 years old. 800 years before, Aristarchus of Samos presented the first known model that placed the Sun at the center of the known universe with the Earth revolving around it and put the other planets in their correct order of distance around the Sun. He suspected that the stars were just other bodies like the Sun. His astronomical ideas were often rejected in favor of the geocentric theories of Aristotle and Ptolemy that were accepted by the Christian popes.
650 years before, Hipparchus of Nicaea developed “trigonometry”, an application of “geometry” that studied the relationships involving lengths and angles of triangles. He became most famous for his discovery that as the earth rotated about is north-south axis; the axis wobbled like a spinning top making one wobble cycle every 20,000 years. He was considered to be the greatest ancient astronomical observer. He made quantitative and accurate models for the motion of the Sun and Moon. He used the observations and the mathematical techniques accumulated over centuries by the Babylonians and other people from Mesopotamia. With his solar and lunar theories and his trigonometry, he was one of the first to develop a reliable method to predict solar eclipses.
To calculate the distance of the earth to the sun, the speed it orbits around the sun and the earth's diameter, all you needed was some geometry and some trigonometry. Using trigonometry, you could calculate all the dimensions of any triangle as long as you knew the length of at least one of its sides and 2 of its other dimensions- either an angle or a side.
To calculate the distance from the earth to the sun, I first formed a triangle made from the points made by 2 observers and the sun. Then I measured the distance between the 2 observers and measured the angles formed by this triangle. Then using trigonometry I could calculate the distance from one of the observers to the sun. I calculated that the earth was about 150 million km from the sun. Many hundreds of years later, that distance was measured to be 149.6 million km.
Once the distance between the observer and the sun was calculated, then the circumference of the earths orbit could be calculated. Since the earth takes a year to orbit around the sun, then the speed of the earth around the sun could be calculated. Using the value of pi that I was able to find, I calculated that the earth's orbital speed was about 30 km/sec. Many hundreds of years later, that speed was measured to be exactly what I calculated.
To calculate the diameter of the earth, I first formed a triangle made from the points of 2 observers and the center point of the earth. Then I measured the distance between the 2 points, and measured the angle made between the 2 observers and the center of the earth by measuring the length of the shadows the 2 objects cast at a particular time. Using trigonometry, I could calculate the distance from one of the observers to the center of the earth. I calculated that the earth's diameter was about 13,000km. Many hundreds of years later, that distance was measured to be 12,742km.
To prove that the earth rotates about the sun, I assumed that our sun was just a star that was so close to the earth, that it appeared to be so much larger. I proved that the earth rotates about the sun by observing that the relative positions of the stars changed with respect to each other and that these changes in position were cyclic, repeating once a year. Looking at 2 stars over a span of one year, I noticed that the first star moved with respect to the second star. At one point in time they would be aligned in a straight line, and then they would move apart for 3 months so that the first star would be to the right of the second star. The first star would then reverse its direction and move back to be aligned in a straight line again with the second star just like they were 6 months before. In the second half of the yearly cycle, the stars would move apart again but in the opposite direction until the first star would be to the left of the second star. It then reversed directions and moved back to be aligned again. This cycle repeated once a year and every year. The first star swung back and forth around the second star as if they were in a dance.
I argued that if the earth was at the center of the universe, then the first star would appear to be stationary with respect to the second star. To demonstrate this, I had the person I was trying to explain this to stand in the middle of a field and pretend that he was the earth. I then placed 3 people -my daughter, my son and my wife, aligned in a straight line from him. I placed my daughter 30 paces away from him to pretend she was the first star. I placed my son 20 paces away from him to pretend he was the second star. I placed my wife 10 paces away from him to pretend she was the sun. As he turned around remaining in his center position, he saw that my daughter, my son and my wife all remained stationary relative to each other. I then had him change position with my wife. As he walked around my wife in a circle, he saw that my daughter appeared to be moving with respect to my son in the same way that the 2 stars that I was observing appeared to be moving.
50 years after I died, I was born as Brahmagupta the great Indian mathematician and astronomer who wrote many important works on mathematics and astronomy. He devised a number that was not really a number. It was a symbol called "zero" that gave values to other numbers, depending on their positions. "Zero" was a very special symbol we used with numbers and we wrote it as "0". This symbol used in numbers of any size allowed numbers to be added, subtracted, multiplied and divided without having to use an abacus. It was just like an abacus, except in written form. Column of the abacus were represented by written numbers instead of colored wooden balls. The numbers in any large number made up of many numbers displayed the number of balls in each column and their positions represented the colors of the balls.
300 years after I died, my works were translated into Arabic and soon after, the Arabs became the best mathematicians in the world.
Han Bang Gun (815-970)
I was born to be a soap maker who made soap for the Chinese Emperor and Empress who were obsessed with cleanliness. They asked me to make them a soap that would keep them beautiful and young forever. They had heard that such a product, called "the elixir of immortality", existed. They wanted me to make for them a soap that would keep them alive and young forever. I hated their arrogance and ignorance.
So instead of using the fats that I normally used for my soaps, I used extremely old bat shit. I immersed the deposits of accumulated bat shit from cave walls and soaked them in water for a day. I then filtered and harvested the crystals from the filtered water. I called these crystals "saltpeter" and much later other people called them potassium nitrate. I mixed saltpeter with yellow rock called "sulfur" that I found near hot springs and volcanoes. Then I mixed in charcoal obtained by the very slow burning of wood under piles of ash. Whenever I could not find enough bat shit, I mixed normal shit with wood ashes, earth and straw and kept it moist with urine for an entire year to make my saltpeter.
The mixture turned out to be deadly. When heated, it exploded with a great deal of heat and force, killing anyone unlucky enough to be near it. It was called "gunpowder" in honor of my name.
For many hundreds of years, my powder was used to make very impressive shows in the skies. They appeared to be like very loud and colorful exploding stars that suddenly filled the sky with fire. I called them "fireworks". To make fireworks, gunpowder was mixed with colorful materials and packed into a cylinder with a wick, just like a candle. This special candle was then tied to a stick and the wick was lit. When the wick burned down, the candle ignited and propelled the stick high up into the air. They were called "rockets". When the entire candle exploded in a big bang, it gave off very colorful sparks that looked especially beautiful with a dark night sky background. These shows were performed on special nights of celebration, like the Emperor's birthday.
500 years later, someone had an idea of packing gunpowder in long and straight metal cylinders that were closed in one end and open at the other end. Then they put small balls made of lead called "bullets" and bigger stones called "cannon balls" into the metal cylinders and lighted the gunpowder behind the balls. When the gunpowder exploded, it propelled the projectiles out of the cylinder at very high speeds, to very high heights and over very long distances. The smaller metal cylinders were called "guns" and the larger cylinders were called "cannons".
1,000 years later, a man named Mr. Alfred Nobel discovered a much more powerful explosive called "dynamite". Mr. Nobel started out as an iron and steel producer but he change to the more lucrative business of manufacturing cannon and other armaments. He produced the highly explosive and dangerous to handle shock-sensitive liquid called "nitroglycerin" by treating the sweet alcohol glycerol with nitric acid. He then very carefully poured the nitroglycerin into an inert absorbent material such as clay with a wick, just like a candle. And when this special candle was lit, and the wick was allowed to burn down to the clay, it exploded with such a force that it was able to split apart very hard rocks and stones.
Han Bank Poo (971-1047)
I was born the son of a paper manufacturer. My father made a soft but strong and resilient paper from the bark of the mulberry tree for the Chinese Emperor to wipe his bum with. The Emperor bought a lot of it and gave a lot to his friends and family. He always paid my father "on delivery" but once he was not able to do that because he did not have enough gold left in his vaults. I suggested that because he was the most trusted person in the land, all he had to do was to put his seal of trust on one of the sheets of paper as a method of documenting the promise of payment with gold at a later time.
The Emperor was very thankful for my idea. It allowed him to continue to buy things he wanted and needed to buy even when he was out of gold. He bought 5,000 sheets from my father and I printed all of the sheets with his face that he signed as promissory notes of future payment to all his clients. We called the printed sheets of our paper "paper money".
People started to accept the emperor's paper money notes as payment for their products and services because they were so much easier to carry and hide than gold. To discourage people from printing their own counterfeit copies, the emperor promised anyone who disclosed a counterfeiter a very large reward. They would receive all of the counterfeiter's wealth and property. To prevent any reprisal for whistle-blowing, the counterfeiter and anyone who helped him would be executed. I became very wealthy and was able to marry a very wealthy lady. We opened up a store to sell the Emperor's money. We called our store "The Emperor's Bank".
The paper money we issued did not last very many years. The Emperor got greedy and printed more paper money than he could backup with his gold reserves. In effect, he was counterfeiting his own money. People lost confidence in our money and soon no one would accept it as payment and it became as worthless as shit. People, especially those who hated the Emperor began to use the money with his picture on it to wipe their bums with.
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1000AD->2049AD Henry I, Genghis Khan, William Wallace, John Wycliffe, Johannes Gutenberg, Martin Luther, Galileo Galilei, Adam Smith, Accountant for Rothschild, Karl Marx, Adolph Hitler, Andrew Vecsey
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