Flavius Inismeus

It's rather my inelegant phrasing, I should've said 'an excerpt from Aelius Marcianus on the subject of Cornelian Law of Assassins and Poisoners in the Digest', the Digest here being https://droitromain.univ-grenoble-alpes.fr/Anglica/digest_Scott.htm

The Far East, as in China? Pliny the Elder has a description here http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0137%3Abook%3D20%3Achapter%3D76, "opium" is a good Latin word. The only Roman list of controlled substances I can think of right away is an excerpt from Aelius Marcianus in the Digest on the Cornelian Law of Assassins and Poisoners. No opium there, I suppose it was openly sold for medical use.

In a nine-part (!) 1997 article in Substance Use & Misuse, which was enticingly entitled "The Rules of Drug Taking: Wine and Poppy Derivatives in the Ancient World," Paolo Nencini came to a downer conclusion: Speaking of ritual use: Given that "[t]o defend the old faith the high aristocracy, not content with Roman tradition and the Latin classics, fell back in retreat on 'haruspicina', on portents and prophecy, on the folly of magic and theosophy" (Syme), I think an author can have a couple of late 4th century pagan senators up in smoke.

Where would be the money in that? She'll write another book on another subject. And yep, I wouldn't have read Nixey's book had I seen O'Neill's review first, at no great loss. This reader doesn't really need emotional polemicizing against Christianity to convince himself that it's intolerant etc., the basic tenets of three Abrahamic faiths repel him anyway. Reading Momigliano, both A. Camerons, David Potter, and Peter Brown on the period has much to be recommended over Nixey's own vitriol.

I think I've found it, it must've been Symmachus. From Peter Heather's Fall of the Roman Empire, p. 21:

Certainly; I omitted Commodus from my list because the poor I-am-Iron-Man was likely done in by a vast right-wing African conspiracy, "caught up in the machinations of others," i.e. Aemilius Laetus first and foremost. However, Laetus appears to have fixed his own fate in masterminding the plot. Perhaps he expected to betray Pertinax to Septimius Severus, but Pertinax got himself killed too early, and Laetus had to face Didius Julianus anxious to secure himself. That was unfortunate.

Quite a few of the 'bad' emperors could've stayed alive if they had cared about, or at least had not messed with, their guards and personal staff. Caligula, Domitian, most likely Caracalla, several barracks emperors.

A crucifixion of three provincial troublemakers seems to me the very model of a Roman non-event. It's four scholars, and it's better than nothing.

Aren't Ancient Aliens pretty much enthusiasm-only?

Seems quite unlikely, Minns and Parvis comment in the 2009 edition of Apologies (the note to IA 35.9 that

The matters of strict monotheism, circumcision and insistence on no pork in the dining room pretty much forced the Romans to distinguish the Jews, Jesus and his followers included, from run-of-the-mill devotees of Isis, Cybele, or the Rider God. The Empire had a serious beef with Druidism, and the effort to destroy it was successful. Yes, Jesus arrested and executed as an anti-Roman seditionist seems most likely, at least to me.

Kyle Harper presents a strong case for "Antonine smallpox" in last year's Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire, but in the end we'll have to wait for scientific discovery (Walter Scheidel in the introduction to The Science of Roman History, 2018). Hard to argue with that. Incidentally, Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi was proposed as the causal agent of the Plague of Athens. https://www.ijidonline.com/article/S1201-9712(05)00178-5/fulltext Which proved controversial. https://www.ijidonline.com/article/S1201-9712(06)00053-1/fulltext

With most of his beard broken off, Marcus Aurelius looks like a 17th century European noble.

I think I've read something about such a disappointment in an ancient author, but I'm far from sure it was the crocodiles who died.

http://www.strachan.dk is always a great place to start researching; Christian C. Strachan has done a lot of hard work collating the stemmata from the plethora of prosopographical studies. Women have their uses for historians. They offer relief from warfare, legislation, and the history of ideas; and they enrich the central theme of social history, if and when enough evidence is available. Ladies of rank under the first imperial dynasty are a seductive topic. Ronald Syme, The Augustan Aristocracy (1986) To continue from the thread on interests on the Rubellii: http://www.strachan.dk/family/rubellius.htm presents a stemma - with a small mistake, it should be "or dt of R109" for Rubellia Bassa. Hence it is far from clear that Bassa truly was a member of the first dynasty.