In this first draft of the Roman section, I am only going to list a few indispensable works with a few suggestions on translations. As the weeks and months go by, I’ll be updating this and other sections that are posted.
Good grammar is said to be all the rage on dating sites. This story would be good news, had it been reported anywhere but in the Wall Street Journal, whose columnists and editors do not appear to know the difference between grammar and spelling. They lead the story with a young man who was put off by a potential date who wrote him a confirmation of their first meeting: “I’ll see you their.” Poor Mr. Cohen—a chump more interested in spelling than romance. The young lady has made a fortunate escape. One is almost tempted to agree with the Columbia University...
Part One: The Greeks Pre-Classical Homer The Iliad and the Odyssey There are many translations and imitations. For plain prose by good scholars, there is Lang, Leaf, and Myers for the Iliad and Butcher and Lang for the Odyssey. George Chapman’s translations and Alexander Pope’s Iliad are important works of English verse. T.E. Lawrence’s Odyssey is a readable narrative. Iliad I: Iliad II There are several Autodidact essays and podcasts on Homer, e.g. https://fleming.foundation/2022/01/the-autodidact-homer/ and https://fleming.foundation/2016/12/boethius-book-club-episode-10-the-odyssey/. You can find many others simply by searching “Homer.” Many are free podcasts, and other, more polished lectures, are for sale. The Homeric...
Jocaste once again reassures Oedipus that religion is bunk. Even if the servant changes his story about the number of Laius’s killers, “he will never prove that the killing of Laius was as predicted, namely that he would be killed by my son as Apollo prophesied.” Thus the second witness is not crucial to the story. Oedipus here also makes an important slip: It is not just oracle-mongers who are not to be trusted, but the god himself.
Oedipus issues an edict against the killer and the blind seer Teiresias is brought in to assist the case and, as members of the audience might suppose, to reprise his role in the Antigone. It is Teireisias’ fortune, though (unlike Cassandra) not his destiny, to speak plain truth to unbelieving ears.
In an earlier piece of internet graffiti, I subjected the name Trump to a somewhat whimsical analysis in which I stuck in this obiter dictum: “Like so many good old American names, Trump’s grandfather’s name was actually Drumpf—a really significant piece of evidence for leftists who found nothing odd in a name like Barack Obama.” Now that Trump is being attacked for refusing to deny that Mr. Obama is a Muslim, it is time to look more closely at the President’s name. Trump’s problem flared up when a questioner in Rochester asked him one of those leading questions most politicians...
The United States government has decided at long last to use the term “sexual rights” when discussing global development and human rights. However, this is a less radical move than it might appear. According to a statement made by Richard Erdman, “deputy ambassador to the UN,”sexual rights are not human rights, and they are not enshrined in human rights law.” At first sight, then, this change in language is only a meaningless gesture, an accommodation to the leftist rhetoric of the administration. On second thought, however, this little change does signal a shift with long-term consequences. It was not...
Prof. Bassani, there was a mass demonstration in Barcelona on Friday. Hundreds of thousands took to the streets to proclaim their desire for independence. Why, with all the crises in Europe—Syrian migrants, EU economic woes, and the Greek bailout, to name just two—are people in northern Spain agitating for independence? First of all, it is not people in northern Spain, it is the Catalans that are making a bid for their own independence from Spain. Now, the Catalans are not easily defined as a specific ethnic group, as half of the people in Barcelona do not even have Catalan parents,...
About a decade after the Antigone Sophocles took up the story of Antigone’s doomed father Oedipus. The basic story would have been familiar to his readers and to anyone who had gone to see Antigone, but Sophocles also takes a broad perspective on the entire House of Cadmus the Phoenician, their sins and their sufferings.
Up late this morning (7:30) after being up late last night, I was washing the rest of the dinner dishes—the kitchen looked as if we had fed an army—and making coffee, when I made the mistake of turning on NPR. The local station was playing one of their guest-commentators, a self-declared writer who was droning on about the tedium of going to dinner at a friend’s house, where the whole point was to show off their house and their hospitality and force the guests to make charming chitchat. What selfish b-stards, these people are, who invite friends into their homes! I...
