Author: Thomas Fleming

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Autodidact

11 Nov, 2020

Sophocles’ Ajax: The Prologue

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The prologue is rather more dramatic than in many plays, where a god or mortal steps forth (as in Euripides so often) and gives us a brief sketch of the situation and hints at development.  In this scene, Athena surprises Ajax in the act of trailing Ajax to discover if he is the author of the insane night-attack on the animals.  She gives him more knowledge than he bargained for, and, depending on our view of the play and its characters, the ethical point of  the play may be anticipated in this first scene.

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Autodidact / Feature

9 Nov, 2020

Sophocles’ Ajax, Introduction Part II: Principal Characters and the Form

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Aias (Ajax) is a prominent character in the Iliad.  He is the cousin of Achilles and half-brother of Teucer.  He is most conspicuous for his athletic strength and unremitting valor in defense.  Sometimes thought of by readers as a bit of a dumb ox, he is praised for his prudence by Hector and is among the small group chosen to take part in the embassy to persuade Achilles to return to the battle.

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Autodidact / Fleming

6 Nov, 2020

Sophocles’ Ajax I: Preliminary

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I hardly ever read introductions to classic works of English or American fiction; however, the farther removed we are a literary tradition, the more we may feel the need of a little preliminary exposition.  The Athenian poet Sophocles was born a few years after 500 B.C. and would have been about thirteen years old when Xerxes led the Persian army into Greece and burned the temples on the Athenian acropolis.  

15

Free Content

5 Nov, 2020

Announcement: Sophocles Lives!

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I’ve just started rereading Sophocles’ Ajax.  I’m not sure why, apart from the need to keep reading Greek, but there is something that has always attracted me in the portrait of the staunch reactionary who goes mad, after being dishonored, and of his glib enemy, Odysseus, who learns humanity.  (I have a strong hunch that in his depictions of Odysseus–as in his Oedipus–Sophocles is dealing with the Athenian mentality of his own day, and that scholars who see the poet’s friend Cimon in Ajax are on the right track.) If five people promise to start reading it, I’ll start a...

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Feature / Fleming

2 Nov, 2020

Fiddling While Rome Burns, Part Three

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The Household is not just a “castle” but a little commonwealth.  When Cain was expelled from his father’s polity of hearth and home, he realized that exile from the community of kinfolks was a fate at least as bad as death.  ”My punishment” he declared,  “is greater than I can bear….I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth; and it shall come to pass that every one that findeth me shall slay me.” The family is primarily an expression of blood-ties and the affections they engender.  In a broader sense, however, the household is a model for...

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Feature / Fleming

30 Oct, 2020

Fiddling While Rome Burns, Part Two

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Leftists who claim to deplore consumerism, can only offer more government, while Libertarians and Classical Liberals, whose ideology of individualism began the process that culminates in Marxist-feminist-transgenderist consumerism, can promise only more servility and the degradation of the human person into an object for twisted scientific experimentation.