Thoughts on Antiquity, Patristics, putting things online, freedom of speech, information access, and more
A quotation from Paley’s collection of Greek Wit, p.42: Philip, King of Macedon, thanked the Athenian demagogues for their abuse, and said that his morals were much improved by it, for his constant endeavour was both by his words and his deeds to prove them liars. – Plutarch, Philip c. 7.
Summer is upon us. I can’t really be bothered to sit at the computer. Mild air, soft rains, hot sun and dusty blue skies … the time for indoor activities is the winter. All I can think of, this evening, is that I intend to go out tomorrow to a farm near my home, and [...]
The second century writer Arrian is our best source for the life of Alexander the Great, using impeccable sources then extant but now lost. A number of his other works are extant, and indeed his work On hunting even exists in English, and can be found on Archive.org. But equally interesting to us is his [...]
I have gone through my page of literary testimonies to Mithras and added references to Cumont.
Galen’s Peri Alupias, (On the Avoidance of Grief), contains many interesting statements about the destruction of libraries in the fire. The following excerpts are from the translation by Clare K. Rothschild and Trevor W. Thompson 1, of the fire and its aftermath. 6. Likewise, it is no (longer possible to have) the books – corrected versions, [...]
It is a salutary experience to read through Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the eminent philosophers. I have just completed volume 1, and in the process have gained quite an insight into the running of the Greek states, just from the way in which they interacted with various individuals. The wills of some of them are [...]
In Contra Apionem book 1, 50, (p.183 of the Loeb) we find the following interesting statement about how Josephus worked on the Jewish War: Then, in the leisure that Rome afforded me, with all my materials in readiness, and with the aid of some assistants for the sake of the Greek, at last I committed [...]
From Aulus Gellius’ Attic Nights, book 4, chapter 11, we find this curious tale about Pythagoras, the philosopher well-known for his vegetarianism and opposition to eating beans. It is, perhaps, from an anti-Pythagoras source. 11. The nature of the information which Aristoxenus has handed down about Pythagoras on the ground that it was more authoritative; [...]
In the Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius, in book 4, chapter 2, there is an interesting passage on the buying and selling of slaves. Here it is: 2. On the difference between a disease and a defect, and the force of those terms in the aediles’ edict; also whether eunuchs and barren women can be returned, and [...]
Readers of Lindsay Davis’ ”Falco” detective novels, set in Vespasian’s Rome, will remember One Virgin too many. This novel was the last good one in the series, after which they deteriorated. It featured murders in the family of the Flamen Dialis, the priest of Jupiter in the state cults. Much is made of the restrictions on the holder [...]