The Roman Age Optimum is a period of warming in Europe and Western Asia roughly coeval with the rise of the Roman Empire and the collapse of its Western section.
"{Readers} take infinitely more pleasure in knowing the variety of incidents that are contained in them, without ever thinking of imitating them, believing the imitation not only difficult, but impossible: as if heaven, the sun, the elements, and men should have changed the order of their motions and power, from what they were anciently"