classics digests, reflections and reviews
Confessions of a Despot I assure you that despots are worse off than private citizens in the matter of pleasure and delights. Marriage It is commonly held that a marriage into a family of greater wealth and influence is most honourable, and is a source of pride and pleasure to the bridegroom. Next to that comes a marriage with equals. A marriage with inferiors is considered positively degrading and useless. […]
Read moreA horse adapted to parade and state processions, a high stepper and a showy animal, must have high spirit and a stalwart body. Not a horse with flexible legs, but one with short, supple and strong loins. If when he is planting his hind-legs under him you pull him up with the bit, he bends the hind-legs on the hocks and raises the fore-part of his body, so that anyone […]
Read moreFor no living man feeds upon another living creature ; nay, we put to death the animate creatures and destroy these things that grow in the ground, which also are partakers in life, in that they absorb food, and increase in size ; and herein we do wrong. For anything that is changed from what it was by nature into something else is destroyed, and it undergoes utter corruption that […]
Read moreExcellent marriage advice from Plutarch. Fishers of Men Fishing with poison is a quick and easy way to catch fish, but it makes the fish inedible and bad. In the same way women who employ love-potions and magic spells upon their husbands, and gain the mastery over them through pleasure, find themselves consorts of dull-witted, degenerate fools. The men bewitched by Circe were of no service to her, after they […]
Read moreThe Stream of Time What is there cruel or so very distressing in being dead? For what wonder if the separable be separated, if the combustible be consumed, and the corruptible be corrupted? For at what time is death not existent in our very selves? As Heraclitus says: “Living and dead are potentially the same thing, and so too waking and sleeping, and young and old. For the latter revert […]
Read moreRelaxation and Labour In my time I have seen fathers in whom excessive affection had become the cause of no affection: in their eagerness that their children may the sooner rank first in everything, they lay upon them unreasonable tasks, which the children find themselves unable to perform, and so come to grief; besides, being depressed by their unfortunate experiences, they do not respond to the instruction which they receive. […]
Read moreLa Mamma Morta They have killed my mother at the door of my room She died and saved me. Later, at dead of night, I was with Bersi, when suddenly a bright glow flickers and lights were ahead of me the dark street! I looked – My childhood home was on fire! I was alone! surrounded by nothingness! Hunger and misery deprivation, danger! I fell ill, and Bersi, so good […]
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