“Life is not an easy matter…. You cannot live through it without falling into frustration and cynicism unless you have before you a great idea which raises you above personal misery, above weakness, above all kinds of perfidy and baseness.” –Leon Trotsky “Diary in Exile” For Cicero, the Roman statesman who was beset by sorrows and troubles in his old age (death of his beloved daughter, his political exile and […]
Read moreCategory: Classics
Greco-Roman and Eastern Classics: Mythology, Philosophy, Literature.
“The Bacchae” by Euripides
“The Bacchae” won the first prize in the City Dionysia festival in Athens in 405 BC, for good reason I suppose. The structure, plot, and character development are among the best of Euripides. William Arrowsmith, the translator, compared it to “Oedipus the King”, “Agamemnon” and “King Lear”, as one of the greatest tragedies. Truth be told, I’m not quite sure what to make of it. For example, is there anything […]
Read more“The Phoenician Women” by Euripides
“Imagine there’s no countries It isn’t hard to do Nothing to kill or die for … Imagine no possessions I wonder if you can No need for greed or hunger A brotherhood of man Imagine all the people Sharing all the world” I wonder if John Lennon would still have imagined “brotherhood of man” if he had read this play: Two sons of Oedipus, Eteocles and Polynices, two brothers killed […]
Read more“The Clouds” by Aristophanes
A passage in Plato’s “Apology” is a very good summary of this comedy: “What do the slanderers say? They shall be my prosecutors, and I will sum up their words in an affidavit: ‘Socrates is an evil-doer, and a curious person, who searches into things under the earth and in heaven, and he makes the worse appear the better cause; and he teaches the aforesaid doctrines to others.’ Such is […]
Read more“On Divination” by Cicero
[Original Latin Title: De Divinatione] Dreams When, therefore, the soul has been withdrawn by sleep from contact with sensual ties, then does it recall the past, comprehend the present, and foresee the future. For though the sleeping body then lies as if it were dead, yet the soul is alive and strong, and will be much more so after death when it is wholly free of the body. Hence its […]
Read more“Sophocles I” by Sophocles
The Theban Plays by Sophocles (aka the Oedipus Cycle) consist of three plays: Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus and Antigone. Oedipus was a King of Thebes in Greek mythology who was prophesied by Apollo to kill his father and marry his mother unwittingly, based on whose story Freud developed the concept “Oedipus Complex”. The main theme of Sophocles’ plays, however, is not patricide nor incest, but the tragic lack […]
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“The Republic and The Laws” by Cicero
[Original Latin Titles: De Republica; De Legibus] A lawyer by trade, statesman by calling and philosopher by hobby, Cicero was the ideal candidate to draw from the political philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, combine it with an examination of the constitution and civic laws of his own country Rome, the most powerful state of his time, and propose a political theory both philosophically grounded and legitimately sound. Like the ancient […]
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