Please note: I was trying out different themes for the site and a few recent comments got deleted. My apologies for this mistake.
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
Picture source This, Tietjens thought, is England! A man and a maid walk through Kentish grass-fields: the grass ripe for the scythe. The man honourable, clean, upright; the maid virtuous, clean, vigorous: he of good birth; she of birth quite as good; each filled with a too good breakfast that each could yet capably digest. […]
Last Post bugle callPicture source Sadly they whispered awayAs I played the last post on the bugleI heard them sayOh that boy’s no different todayExcept in every single way — from “Last Post on the Bugle” by The Libertines It had been obvious to her for a long time that God would one day step […]
Note: see the update for partial clarification The name of Christopher Tietjens’ son in Parade’s End isa) Tommieb) Michaelc) Mark juniord) All of the above The correct answer is D, all of the above. Or at least I think it is. Through Part One, Chapter Four of The Last Post I have seen all three […]
I browsed through the Ford Madox Ford Society’s last online newsletter and noticed in Newsletter 15 (30 March 2009) that “Max Saunders, Joseph Wiesenfarth, Sara Haslam and Paul Skinner are working on an annotated critical edition of Parade’s End (Carcanet)”. It is a work that definitely would benefit the reader. The Last Post seems to […]
Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? by James Shapiro Simon & Schuster, 352 pages, $26.00 ISBN: 1416541624I enjoyed James Shapiro’s A Year in the Life of Shakespeare: 1599 and wanted to read his latest book on Shakespeare as soon as I could. I didn’t realize Wikipedia had a long article on the Shakespeare authorship question as […]
I wanted to take a brief look at some quotes from poems by George Herbert (1593 – 1633) in A Man Could Stand Up: He hoped McKechnie, with his mad eyes and his pestilential accent, would like that fellow. That fellow spread seventeenth-century atmosphere across the landscape over which the sun’s rays were beginning to […]