classics digests, reflections and reviews
[Volume X of Loeb Classical Library’s 28-volume series] What times! What crisis! What drama! A masterpiece of oratory! A fine specimen of human being! These orations by Cicero, especially “In Catilinam” and “Pro Murena”, showcase his exceptional skills as a lawyer and supreme orator, political foresight and vision as an eminent statesmen, erudition in law, politics, history and philosophy, and, above all, his “masterful urbanity” as a fine specimen of […]
Read more“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 […]
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“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“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“To commit one’s reflections to writing, without being able to arrange or express them clearly or attract the reader by some sort of charm, indicates a man who makes an unpardonable misuse of leisure and his pen.” –Cicero “Tusculan Disputations” My dear Cicero, why do you have to be so cruel? How many people can match your eloquence and erudition? A handful in more than two thousand years. Should the […]
Read moreA 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[Original Latin Title: De Officiis] The Roman Book of Proverbs Cicero, in this letter to his son Marcus, discourses on the four cardinal virtues, wisdom (prudence), justice (beneficence), courage (greatness of the soul), and temperance (concept of the fitting). He reflects on Roman politics and history, draws on the writings of philosophers and poets, as well as personal experience, and stipulates how an individual should conduct himself in his private […]
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