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The Landmark Arrian: The Campaigns of Alexander Edited by James Romm, Series Editor Robert B. Strassler, Translation by Pamela Mensch, Introduction by Paul CartledgeIf you haven’t noticed by now, I am a huge fan of the Landmark series, created by Robert B. Strassler. If you haven’t picked up a volume in the series, check out […]
Though I have myself had occasion to find fault with some of Alexander’s deeds in the course of my history of them, I am not ashamed to admire Alexander himself. If I have condemned certain acts of his, I did so out of my own regard for truth and also for the benefit of mankind. […]
Anyone who reproaches Alexander should not simply cite those deeds that deserve to be reproached. Instead, after collecting in one place all of Alexander’s qualities, let his critic then consider who he is and what sort of fortune he has had that he reproaches Alexander, a man who became so great and attained such a […]
”I was now going to send back those of you who are unfit for war, to be envied by those at home. But since you all wish to go, be gone, all of you, and report, when you get home, that Alexander, your king, who conquered the Persians, Medes, Bactrians, and Sacae, who subjugated the […]
Alexander’s return from IndiaIn an attempt to get back on track with Arrian and the Reading Odyssey book group I’ll do a post for Book Six on Arrian’s The Campaigns of Alexander. With so much material, one post obviously won’t cover everything but I’ll highlight a few things I found interesting. The first topic occurs […]
Ghost on the Throne: The Death of Alexander the Great and the War for Crown and Empire by James Romm Knopf, 341 pp., $28.95 This book covers in gripping detail the events that began on June 1, 323 B.C., when Alexander the Great became ill with what would be a fatal fever, and ended seven […]
Thanks again to The Neglected Books Page for last year’s mention of the release of two of William Gaddis’ works, J R and The Recognitions, on audiobook. I have just started listening to J R and I’m captivated by Nick Sullivan’s performance. Oh yes, the book, too. I can’t recommend both of these performances by […]
In the colonists’ use of classical literature, for example, “their detailed knowledge and engaged interest covered only one era and one small group of writers”: Plutarch, Livy, Cicero, Sallust, and Tacitus—those who “had hated and feared the trends of their own time, and in their writing had contrasted the present with a better past, which […]
I saw the unflinching force of the idea of public good, born in my country. I saw it first in the universal collectivization. I saw it in [the purges of] 1937. I saw how, in the name of an ideal as beautiful and humane as that of Christianity, people were annihilated. I have seen villages […]
But an invisible force was crushing him. He could feel its weight, its hypnotic power; it was forcing him to think as it wanted, to write as it dictated. This force was inside him; it could dissolve his will and cause his heart to stop beating; it came between him and his family; it insinuated […]