this post was submitted on 08 Dec 2025
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Explanation: The Romans were very fond of omens, and wise merchants could take advantage of that fact. When the Emperor Augustus returned from one of his harder-fought battles, he was met by a man who had a raven - which immediately greeted Augustus with 'Hail Caesar, victorious commander!' Augustus was tickled pink by this, and probably regarded it, as any upstanding Roman would, as a good omen to be greeted by such a trained bird (Romans LOVED taking any odd occurrence as an omen), and paid 5,000 denarii for the bird - the equivalent of over 20 years' pay for a common soldier! (one might compare it to $400,000 in the modern day)
Obviously this was a VERY CIVILIZED BIRD! AVE CAESAR!
Business idea ... train a dozen ravens to say ... 'Heil Hitler!' ... sell them for $50,000 each to neo-nazis
If these idiots are this dumb ... it's an easy way to make money
I was going to say "You'll have to first train the neo-nazis to have a superstitious veneration for coincidence resembling pre-modern societies that don't understand weather patterns", but then I remembered they're neonazis, and that's probably a checkbox they already have filled.