Out of the misty Mongolian steppes emerge 5,000 snarling, scimitar-wielding horsemen in 13th-century battledress. Who said the BBC was strapped for cash? In fact, this cast of thousands was lent to the producers of STORM FROM THE EAST (9.45pm BBC2), a four-part documentary on the Mongol empire, by the Mongolian Ministry for Arts, which was making a feature film about Genghis Khan. The break-up of the Soviet Union has seen the resurgence of Genghis Khan as a symbol of Mongolian nationalism (as well as facilitating the shooting of this series in a previously inaccessible area). Birth of an Empire, the first part of Robert Marshall's thorough series, charts the rise of the Mongols from an anonymous tribe of nomadic shepherds to rulers of a region twice the size of the Roman Empire. Under the leadership of Genghis Khan, the Mongols were ferociously hardy (even today the tribesmen survive unforgiving winters on the steppes using dried animal dung as fuel). But the key to their success lay in terror tactics; such was the Mongols' reputation for ravaging, nations surrendered virtually at the mention of Genghis's name. Eat your heart out, 'Chelsea Headhunters'.

The gruesome remains of prisoners slaughtered almost 2,000 years ago in the Roman Britain equivalent of the Colosseum have been discovered by archaeologists in central London.

PERSUADING children that history is interesting - or at least as interesting as level three of Sonic the Hedgehog - can be a little difficult.

THEY did not teach us English at my traditional grammar school. Or at least, not in the sense that it is now prescribed in the national curriculum, as 'knowledge about language', nor in the style of the national curriculum proposals for English, with their greater emphasis on spelling, punctuation and syntax. Our English lessons were spent almost entirely on literature and creative writing. Learning about English took place in Latin lessons, and what a sound basis it was.

FOR MOST of us Julius Caesar lives, as a schoolroom memory of Shakespeare, in the moment of his dying as he slumps in slow motion beneath the daggers of his assassins. Allan Massie's achievement in Caesar (as in Augustus, in particular, and in Tiberius), is to infuse the mythical emperor with blood, to press succulent marrow into the hollow of his bones.

TEN PLURAL nouns that you never see used in the singular:

STATE of the art office technology changes so fast it could be said to be frightening. Literally so, as a survey published last year by the Institute of Management showed that the majority of managers continue to be scared of computers.

TRANSLATORS belong to a class of professionals whom the world takes pleasure in reviling. Like estate agents, solicitors and accountants, they enjoy a function similar to that performed by the 'sin-eaters' of certain primitive communities, whose job was to absorb others' sense of blame for wrongdoing through the consumption of a ritual meal. Should we fail to enjoy, let alone understand, a novel or a poem, we can always lay the guilt on a faulty rendering, with a swipe or two at syntax and vocabulary for good measure. Even the classic interpretations, Dryden's Virgil, Pope's Homer, North's Plutarch (itself a translation translated) are commended with a nudging indulgence normally reserved for the kind of eccentric concert pianist who manages a brilliant performance with only half the right notes.

YOUR map illustrates quite clearly the northernmost extent of the Roman Empire as Hadrian's Wall ('Civilisations', Review, 24 January). I live some 50 metres from the line of the wall of Antoninus Pius. To quote from the first chapter of Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: 'This wall of Antoninus, at a small distance beyond the modern cities of Edinburgh and Glasgow, was fixed as the limit of the Roman province.' This wall was occupied intermittently for most of the second century AD.

POMPEII (Reuter) - Thieves making off with huge pieces of marble from the ancient Roman city of Pompeii were thwarted when their overloaded getaway car ended up in a ditch, Italian police said.

Sir: It seems a great pity that so much attention should be paid to 30 January as the date of Hitler's rise to power in 1933, rather than as the date of the Roman Emperor Augustus's consecration of the Altar of Peace (Ara Pacis) in 9BC. The altar marked the establishment of peace over a large area of the civilised world, including the land that used to be Yugoslavia and the whole of the Middle East. The peace lasted, virtually unbroken, for something like 200 years. Would this not be a better anniversary to celebrate?

A YOUNG man saunters up to me, a large watch on a chain dangling from his tweed jacket. We are in Boisdale's, a small wine bar in central London. 'We always kick off from Boisdale's,' he announces. 'It's the tradition.'

'Fax your way to heaven' is Israel's new answer to modern prayer, writes Sarah Helm.

WHICH is the best view of Rome? The cognoscenti cannot agree. From the Janiculum hill, which lies to the west of the city, says one school of thought, and by preference first thing in the morning. Then, says G M Trevelyan, you can look down on 'the city spread beneath our feet in all its mellow tints of white and red and brown, broken here and there by masses of dark green pine and cypress and by shining cupolas raised to the sun', and behind it the 'grander dome' of the Alban mount, from which, some time before 753BC, the first Romans came down to found the City.