Americans seem divided on the British Royal Family. Hollywood adores Mr. and Mrs. Markle, while many populist conservatives complain that their antics should remind us why we rebelled in 1776. Looking for sanity in such a debate may be a futile exercise, but….
Greeks were not squeamish about discussing sexual matters, though their degree of frankness depended upon circumstance and genre: What could be said in a comedy or put on a vase was not the same as the treatment of sex in tragedy or religious sculpture.
A Brief Chronology of later Roman History with a few quotations and citations added as the weeks go by….
In preparation for the Summer Seminar on the age of Boethius, Stephen and Dr. Fleming discuss the beginning of the end of the Roman Empire. This podcast is available to Gold and Charter subscribers. For the chronology, please see Chronology post on the website.
A podcast discussion of the most vexed line in the Lord’s Prayer–and in all the Gospels.
The period of the Persian Wars and the aftermath were a period of intense political activity at Athens. In one generation, Athenians had expelled the tyrants, completely reorganized their commonwealth, and beaten back two Persian invasions. Such success was bound to inspire confidence in the Athenian commonwealth, a confidence that would lead first to to the hybris of the Athenian Empire and then to the ruin Athens suffered in the war with Sparta and her allies.
Yesterday evening (Thursday, April Fools Day) I rushed home from a long day of pub-crawling in Southern Wisconsin to keep my promised appointment with “Dissident Mama,” a blogger and podcaster I met last Fall in Charleston.
In their terror, the maidens imagine all the horrors of a city taken by storm, and while the audience would have sympathized with their agitation, Eteocles is right to crack down, but his reaction is extreme, calling them immediately “unendurable” before declaring that neither in good times nor bad would he share a house with womankind.
A young man in social media has posted a complaint, which has been going around. His girl friend wanted to go out with her female friends to visit a place the man thought unsafe and unsuitable. He made her promise not to go, and the next day he learned she had gone, with the predictable result of rape and battery. How should the boyfriend respond?
A FB friend posted a good quotation from Jefferson about the importance of the family. Since this aroused some mild skepticism, I posted this answer, one that has been strongly influenced by my reading of Jefferson’s own words, the biography by Dumas Malone, and, above all, by the admonitions of my friend Prof. Clyde Wilson. It is a trivial observation and overstated, but perhaps it will help parents of children who are being taught the old Classical Liberal bilge. One way of looking at our third President is to see him as a split personality. There is the typical Enlightened...
