this most illustrious and noble city.one other is more famous for the immensity of its glory, the wisdom of its government, the long duration of its rule, or for other features worthy of praise-- the matchless convenience of its admirable buildings, the wealth of incredible riches, its numberless subjects, the industry of excellent men, the infinite variety of its possessions, the divine institutions of the republic, the immortal value of its nobles. "you venetians are wrong "to disturb the peace of italy

nobles. they would raid a neighboring city to capture a few high-level people for public sacrifice. the higher the rank of the captives -- other rulers are best -- the more prestige the king would accrue back home. but this kind of warfare may well have had another function. when you have fairly constant episodes of warfare between a lot of closely juxtaposed independent centers, one of the functions of these warfare episodes is clearly to test for the resolve and military organization of your opponents. and so you may have a lot of almost ritualized looking fighting which might result in some capture of sacrificial victims. but the main function of it might be sort of boundary maintenance, display -- expressing to your enemies that you have a lot of allies, that you can muster warriors, that your elites are powerful men, and that they should not fool around with you. keach: despite the fact that maya kings were often at each other's throats, they still managed to carry on enduring social and diplomatic relationships. like the royal families of europe, maya kings shared a common cul

toulouse-lautrec came from a noble and distinguished family-- count raymond of toulouse had helped capture jerusalem in the first crusade. henri's branch of the family came from the red-brick city albi in the south of france. henri grew up in a world of chateaus and privilege in a family living on the fruits of its noble past. but a france governed by the middle class was losing its taste for nobility. like many aristocrats, his father alphonse retreated into rural pastimes-- riding and hunting. an eccentric, he looked wistfully back to the family's glorious past. alphonse had married his first cousin adele, a common practice in a class anxious to preserve the purity of its bloodlines. but the results of inbreeding for henri were uncommonly cruel. his legs were short and weak. he broke each of them in early adolescence and stopped growing when he was 14. he was just under five feet tall. his head, hands and torso continued to develop. but his stunted legs made walking painful for the rest of his life. denied the aristocratic pleasures of riding and hunting, henri turned to sketching and painting rural scenes. he had a flair for it and in 1882, at the age of 18, he moved to pari

noble heart. there was applause, if not universal, when pope benedict, former right hand man thanked him for what he called a brilliant papacy. tonight the eternal city really felt that way. a swollen crowd agog for nothing more than a puff of holy smoke. >> sreenivasan: the cardinals' schedule >> sreenivasan: the cardinals' schedule each day calls for two rounds of voting in the morning, and two more in the afternoon. a colorado judge today entered a plea of "not guilty" for james holmes, the man accused in the mass shooting at a movie theater last july. that came after his lawyers said holmes was not yet ready to enter a plea of his own. the accused gunman sat silently next to his defense team in court. he is charged with multiple counts of murder and attempted murder in the attack that left 12 people dead and 70 injured. holmes may yet choose to plead not guilty by reason of insanity. a sharply divided u.s. senate committee has voted to expanded mandatory federal background checks to nearly all gun purchases. the tally in the judiciary committee today was 10-8, with all democrats for it and every republican against it. a vote on a separate plan by