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Picture of the 1986 first edition dust jacket for A Summons to MemphisPicture source The courtship and remarriage of an old widower is always made more difficult when middle-aged children are involved—especially when there are unmarried daughters. This seemed particularly true in the landlocked, backwater city of Memphis some forty-odd years ago. … Almost immediately […]
Harold Bloom calls Hadji Murad “my personal touchstone for the sublime of prose fiction, to me the best story in the world, or at least the best that I have ever read.” Bloom argues throughout his book “that originality, in the sense of strangeness, is the quality that, more than any other, makes a work […]
Conspiracy theories and hidden codes rarely do anything for me. So I’m a little skeptical that, even if true, Cracking the “Plato Code” will truly “transform the early history of Western thought, and especially the histories of ancient science, mathematics, music, and philosophy.” Regardless, since I’m planning on reading the dialogues in the next year, […]
Two presentations on the story of Gyges from The Histories. First is Kristen Scott Thomas in The English Patient (link, in case the video doesn’t display): Next is a fun little parody by Mike using scenes from various Star Wars movies (I can’t find the link anymore…if anyone knows of a site hosting it, please […]
I have wanted to mention The Classics Circuit‘s current focus on imperial Russian literature, so I’ll do that now. Having recently read and enjoyed some of the books that will be reviewed I look forward to seeing others’ comments on them as well as adding more books to my “To Be Read” stack. I will […]
Phaidymie feeling for Smerdis’s Ears Picture source Never hath a painless life Been cast on mortals by the power supreme Of the All-disposer, Cronos’ son. But joy And sorrow visit in perpetual round All mortals, even as circleth still on high The constellation of the Northern sky. What lasteth in the world? Not starry night, […]
The inscription of Darius I, the Great on Mount Behistun Picture sourceFrom Livius.org: In Antiquity, Bagastâna, which means ‘place where the gods dwell’, was the name of a village and a remarkable, isolated rock along the road that connected the capitals of Babylonia and Media, Babylon and Ecbatana (modern Hamadan). Many travellers passed along this […]
I have given a rather lengthy account of the Samians because they achieved the three greatest engineering works of all the Hellenes. First, they dug a tunnel through a 900-foot-high mountain; it is 4,080 feet long and 8 feet high and wide. Another channel, 30 feet deep and 3 feet wide, was dug along the […]
Map of ancient EgyptAfter the Persian king Cyrus dies and before the narrative follows Cambyses’ reign, Herodotus pauses and relays his inquiries and research on Egypt. While still wealthy, Egypt had declined markedly over the previous few centuries. Despite the decline, the wonders and achievements he sees in that land provide material for an entire […]
Published in 1965, the scans from The Recently Deflowered Girl at Bitten Nails Design & Illustration brought back memories of several upscale, tongue-in-cheek “racy” books from the ’60s. Not that I was old enough to understand the few I saw, of course. For a fun diversion, check out Mel Juffee’s….I mean Hyacinthe Phypps’ advice and […]
The Lost Books of the Odyssey by Zachary Mason Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 240 pages, $24.00 ISBN: 9780374192150Steven Riddle at A Momentary Taste of Being gave this book a high recommendation and since I re-read The Odyssey lately (or so it seems to me) I thought I would check this book out from the library […]
Work has been overwhelming lately (just finished a round of funding and an audit starts next week), which has meant almost no time to read. Hopefully things will slow down in a few weeks. In the meantime and to mark his passing, here are a couple of scans from Art Linkletter’s book. My favorite moments […]
“Herodotus sometimes writes for children and sometimes for philosophers” – Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Herodotus has generated responses, positive and negative, over the years. Here is the opening of “Herodotus” by Lucian of Samosata (translated by H. W. Fowler and F. G. Fowler): I devoutly wish […]
Candaules, King of Lydia, Shews his Wife by Stealth to Gyges, One of his Ministers, as She Goes to Bed by William Etty 1787-1849 Herodotus of Halicarnassus here presents his research so that human events do not fade with time. May the great and wonderful deeds—some brought forth by the Hellenes, others by the barbarians—not […]
(I expect this post to be updated as I find more helpful links—there are more resources on the web for this work than I thought possible.) For someone that loved books, my reading habits have always been very random and I realized I could not remember important details of works I read. Understanding that I […]
The Rocky Mountains, Lander’s Peakby Albert Bierstadt (1863)Picture source Trevor at The Mookse and the Gripes recently reviewed John Williams’ Butcher’s Crossing, prodding me to look for the book in our library system. Fortunately they had one copy available and it is everything he claims. Trevor covers many of the parts I wanted to address […]
Someone put this up at a bus stop near where I work. I hope they know it causes a smile every day: Bus StopSanta Clara, California
Last month I linked to Pushkin’s Scene from Faust translated by Alan Shaw. He was kind enough to send me a link to his YouTube page that has From the 1979 TV film, Malenkie tragedii (Little Tragedies–Mozart and Salieri). dir. Mikhail Shveitser. Salieri: Innokenty Smoktunovsky. Mozart: Valery Zolotukhin. Subtitles adapted from A. Shaw’s translation of […]
Thanks to The Little Professor‘s post At the dawn of time…(I can’t find the link now, although the blog is still active), I went back to check out my first order in 1998 at Amazon. Has it been that long since I read these? Over thirteen years ago I received in the mail Paris in […]
This may be old news for some, but I’ve only started to explore what’s available at YouTube and CSPAN Video. Here is a two parter of Vladimir Nabokov and Lionel Trilling discussing Lolita on the Canadian television show “Close Up”. Part 1 Part 2