de arte natandi (11. 670)

Via tmn, we are directed towards a survey of aquatic skills and refinements classically considered as a mark of functional literacy on par with being un-lettered by Plato as a sign of miseducation with the entrée of a water ballet performed by Benjamin Franklin in early summer of 1726 on the Thames, bucking the contemporary mindset that despite maritime adventuring that staying afloat was somehow taboo for a man overboard. Without managing to change conventional education, Cambridge theologian and avid swimmer Everard Digby (better known as a conspirator in the Gunpowder Plot) had propagated the embrace of swimming and lifeguarding in his late fifteen-hundreds treatise, though either centuries ahead of or millennia behind the times, as thermæ we condemned by Christian society, whether for healing, hygienic or hedonistic purposes, and was something to shun and fear with even buoyancy enough to earn the judgment of witchcraft.