You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast.

Hi everyone, this is Scott.

If you want to learn about the world's oldest civilizations,

find out how they were rediscovered. Follow the story of Mark Antony and Cleopatra's descendants

over 10 generations or take a deep dive into the Iron Age or the Hellenistic era, then check out the

ancient world podcast. Available on all podcasting platforms or go to

ancient world podcast.com.

That's the ancient world podcast.

The Mask of the Red Death

by Edgar Allan Poe, published 1842.

The Red Death had long devastated the country.

No pestilons had ever been so fatal or so hideous.

Blood was its avatar and its seal,

the madness and the horror of blood.

There were sharp pains. and the horror of blood.

There were sharp pains and sudden dizziness and then profuse bleeding at the pores with

dissolution.

The scarlet stains upon the body and especially upon the victim's face,

where the pest ban would shut him out from the aid and from the sympathy of his fellow man.

And the whole seizure, progress, and termination of the disease were incidents of half an hour.

But Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious.

When his dominions were half depopulated, he summoned to his presence a thousand hail and light-hearted friends from among the knights and dames of his court,

...