classics digests, reflections and reviews
The Stoic Ideal Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, as well as works by Cicero which extol stoic virtues, put me in a state of awe and shame. I’m awed by the loftiness of their ideal character: purposefulness of life, clarity of vision, purity in dedication, fortitude, temperance, magnanimity, freedom and equanimity; I’m ashamed as if looking in a mirror and recognizing my own character contemptible in contrast. The Stoic Tenets As I […]
Read more[Original Latin Title: De Oratore] Eloquence Forms a Unity For since all discourse is made up of content and words, the words cannot have any basis if you withdraw the content, and the content will remain in the dark if you remove the words. All the universe above and below us is a unity and is bound together by a single, natural force and harmony. For there is nothing in […]
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Eclogue I So in old age, you happy man, your fields will still be yours, and ample for your need! Though, with bare stones o’erspread, the pastures all be choked with rushy mire, your ewes with young by no strange fodder will be tried, nor hurt through taint contagious of a neighbouring flock. Happy old man, who ‘mid familiar streams and hallowed springs, will court the cooling shade! Here, as […]
Read morePrometheus In the beginning, though [humans] had eyes to see, they saw to no avail; they had ears, but they did not understand; but, just as shapes in dreams, throughout their length of days, without purpose they wrought all things in confusion. They had neither knowledge of houses built of bricks and turned to face the sun nor yet of work in wood; but dwelt beneath the ground like swarming […]
Read moreAeschylus’ Zeus The desire of Zeus is not easy to hunt out: the paths of his mind stretch tangled and shadowy, impossible to perceive or see clearly. It falls safe, not on its back, when an action is ordained by the nod of Zeus. It blazes everywhere, even in darkness, with black [obscure] fortune for mortal folk. He casts human down from lofty, towering hopes to utter destruction without deploying […]
Read moreTwo sons of Oedipus, Eteocles and Polynices, killed each other in battle, because they were not willing to share their father’s kingdom. They perished in a manner appropriate to their names –with “true glory”(Eteocles) and “much strife”(Polynices). Aeschylus attributed the mutual destruction of the two brothers to the sins of their grandfather, the curse of their father and the wrath of the gods, whereas Euripides attributed it to their own […]
Read moreAeschylus’ dramatic account of the immediate aftermath of Xerxes’ invasion of Greece and disastrous defeat in the Battle of Salamis. Like Herodotus, Aeschylus depicts Xerxes I of Persia as a presumptuous figure, blinded by his inherited wealth and power, driven mad and punished by god for his hubris. I wonder what the poets and historians would have said if Xerxes had succeeded in conquering Greece. He wasn’t the only one […]
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