On the Wizard-of-Oz-like Chosroes, king of Persia: Now Chosroes used to sit in his audience chamber which contained his crown. According to reports his crown was like a huge grain-measure with rubies, pearls, and topazes set in gold and silver, suspended by a golden chain from the top of the dome in his hall of [...]
Category Archives: Ancient History
Ibn Ishaq, Herodotus of Early Arabia.
25-Oct-12Cord Jefferson looks at some great Pompeian graffiti (where can we get the Latin for this, short of having a copy of the CIL in one’s study?) and comes to the (inescapable) conclusion that people are just as dumb, sex-obsessed, filthy-minded, and lowbrow as the worst television or rap music or brainless teenagers you can [...]
The Appian Way, by Bob Kaster.
28-Jun-12Robert Kaster’s The Appian Way, Ghost Road, Queen of Roads was my companion for a day here in the woods, in between spurts of gardening and writing. The book is short – 120 pages – and generally delightful. It consists of some scattered historical anecdotes and observations coupled with a few bursts of travel writing. [...]
Lucretius, Poggio, Greenblatt, Grafton.
03-May-12A nice review, intelligently written as always, by Tony Grafton of Stephen Greenblatt’s book on the discovery of Lucretius by my favorite humanist Poggio Bracciolini. Poggio struck me from the first time I encountered him in the form of his deeply sympathetic and humane letter describing the sadistic and dishonorable burning of Jerome of Prague [...]
Plutarch on Lycurgus.
05-Dec-11Human life used to be significantly more varied than it is now, as this little snapshot from Sparta shows. Lycurgus was the lawgiver who gave Sparta its distinct character, which it maintained for centuries. Now this is a truly radical program of reform: After the creation of the Senate, his next task, and indeed, the [...]
Just before the Battle of Actium: Of Caesar they relate that, leaving his tent and going round, while it was yet dark, to visit the ships, he met a man driving an ass, and asked him his name. He answered him that his own name was Fortunatus, “and my ass,” he said, “is called Conqueror.” [...]
Plutarch on Timon of Athens.
22-Nov-11From the Life of Antony. Antony, at the end of his life, his hopes shattered, said that he just wanted to end his days living the life of Timon of Athens. Plutarch thus digresses: This Timon was a citizen of Athens, and lived much about the Peloponnesian War, as may be seen by the comedies [...]
The name of Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq has recently come to my attention, and now I’m very curious to lay my hands on a real copy of the Epistulae Turcicae in Latin. Apparently, while de Busbecq was in Turkey he transcribed the famous Monumentum Ancyranum, which contains the text in Greek and Latin of Augustus’s [...]
Demosthenes Talking to a King.
19-Nov-11Philip, King of Macedon, in this case, who would shortly conquer Greece: It was evident, even in time of peace, what cause Demosthenes would steer in the commonwealth; for whatever was done by the Macedonian, he criticized and found fault with, and upon all occasions was stirring up the people of Athens, and inflaming them [...]
Varro on Beyonce.
04-Feb-13I’ve been reading Varro’s De Re Rustica in the midst of my daily labors (mostly cutting and carrying wood), and seeing new mother Beyonce looking rather fit at the Superbowl last night minded me of this passage: “Ut te audii dicere,” inquit, “cum in Liburniam venisses, te vidisse matres familias eorum affere ligna et simul pueros, [...]