Greetings, writers—
Did people in 16th-century France really wipe their butts with geese?
No no no, they did not. But François Rabelais said they did, and plenty of people believed him, even though he was a renowned satirist.
What about the elaborate funeral Virgil supposedly held for his beloved pet fly? This I read about in a poem by Aimee Nezhukumatathil (though there are tales all over the interwebs). Here’s the relevant excerpt:
the Roman
poet Virgil gave his pet fly
the most lavish funeral, complete
with meat feast and barrels
of oaky wine.
I read that last line as “okay” wine, which I thought was kind of funny, and then I turned to google.
It turns out that this lavish funeral probably never happened. Yes, the Roman government was confiscating private property and passing it on to war veterans, unless the estate contained a burial plot on its grounds. So yes, a fly mausoleum might’ve protected Virgil’s property. But none of the poet’s contemporaries wrote about the poet having a pet fly, or throwing it (or anyone/anything) a wildly expensive funeral.
Oh well, plenty of stories are too good to be true. Which is why we have fiction, amiright?
Today write about something that is too good to be true.
Or else write about a rumor.
Or borrow the first line of Nezhukumatathil’s poem and use it as the first line of something new: “I am worried about tentacles.”
Happy writing—
Emily