"No, it's just that my personal trainer said I had to spit blood doing the new flat bench exercise

"No, it's just that my personal trainer said I had to spit blood doing the new flat bench exercise."

Today's splatter miniature features the hetera Leena of Athens also included in Boccaccio's encyclopedia of illustrious women - despite the fact that he considered her a lascivious person as a courtesan - because she sacrificed herself for an ideal.

When Harmodius and Aristogitone killed the tyrant Hipparchus, having had a relationship with both and aware of the organization of the conspiracy, she was tortured with extreme cruelty by Hippias, brother of Hipparchus, to reveal what she knew about the accomplices murderers. At the end of her strength, in order not to feel obliged to speak, she bit her tongue amputating it with her teeth.

According to some sources she was freed but died shortly after, according to Pausanias instead Hippias mistreated her to the point of killing her, as he believed that she could not be extraneous to the conspiracy.

Giovanni Boccaccio, De mulieribus claris, France, c. 1460, The Morgan Library, ms. M.381, fol. 26v.

Torture reached its peak with the Holy Inquisition, but for centuries it was considered a normal method of obtaining information, even now it continues to be used, we are not as civilized as we think we are, just think of the CIA in Guantanamo, or that what the South American tyrants did on their antagonists, rebels and communists with the full support of the much "civilized" USA, which considers itself the "bearer of true civilization", precisely those who consider ancient history as an example of how we are changing

All What's You Should Know— where you'll discover the most interesting things that you Should know