classics digests, reflections and reviews
In a previous post, I wrote about how a person would draw lessons on faith from nature, as shown in Prince Andrew’s encounter with the Oak Tree in Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Similar encounters are scattered throughout the novel. Tolstoy believes that communion with nature is necessary if man is to live with integrity, not just to survive. He could not have written about such communion so vividly, if he […]
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Augustine had great respect for the Roman statesman and orator Cicero, whose writings inspired him to pursue philosophy, especially Platonism. What Augustine writes about the death of Cicero and Fall of the Roman Republic (Bk III, 30) is a sobering historical lesson for all idealists who aspire to and engage in politics. After Gaius Julius Caesar had conquered Pompey, he was suspected of aiming at royalty, and was assassinated by […]
Read moreIf the human race passed through the world as a ship through the sea or the wind through the desert, a thoughtless and fruitless whim, if an eternal oblivion always lurked angrily for its prey and there were no power strong enough to wrest it from its clutches — how empty and devoid of comfort would life be! –Søren Kierkegaard Although Kierkegaard died four years before the publication of Origin […]
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This Roman play by Shakespeare is based on Plutarch’s Lives of Caesar and Marcus Brutus. One might call it an adapted stage play, since the majority of the plot and dialogues derive from Plutarch. There is a significant difference between the two renditions. For Shakespeare failed to capture the complexity, magnificence, and more importantly, the moral and political philosophy of the noble Romans. Depiction of Characters Julius Caesar, the title […]
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 […]
Read more“As reason is the glory of man, so the lamp of reason is eloquence.” The Origin and History of Oratory In “Brutus“, Cicero traces the origin and history of oratory in ancient Greece and Rome, and provides a concise and astute critique of various classes of individual orators, ranking their achievements in the five components of rhetoric (invention, arrangement, diction/expression, action/delivery and memory). Demosthenes is considered the greatest among the […]
Read more[Volume XV of Loeb Classical Library’s 28-volume series] Peace, Slavery and War The name of peace is sweet, and the thing itself wholesome, but between peace and servitude the difference is great. Peace is tranquil liberty, servitude the last of all evils, one to be repelled, not only by war but even by death. Although all decent men desire peace, especially peace between fellow countrymen, I have desired more than […]
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