The thing about being ancient and trying to study

Is that the whole process is futile. I spent most of the weekend reading and jotting down pertient bits for class discussion (since us fourth years are supposed to be facilitating discussion with groups of third years), like "Why was the decree frequens so important?" - which no doubt made sense at the time, but now that I have forgotten what it was, who issued it, and when, seems somewhat ... less useful.

I will say, though, that the forteenth and fifteenth centuries in Europe seem quite exciting. All this proto-democracy sort of bubbling away, people dissecting bodies to find out about anatomy. Philosophy and so forth. Concepts of law and justice. Unless you were, you know, a woman, or a serf.