Cicero: The Writer
Cicero was one of the most important men of the Roman world. Although he ultimately failed as a statesman, as virtually every statesman does, but he only increased in stature as the years went on.
Category: Fleming
Cicero IV: An End and a Beginning
Cicero played an ambiguous role in the final years of the republic. He loyally supported Pompey in the vain hope that he would uphold the old order, but he also allowed himself to be courted by Caesar.
Meditations of a Dog: Getting Ready for Greece
We used to have a dog named Robert or, to be more precise Robert the Bruce. Robert was a Scottish Terrier of a particularly independent mind. Though he obeyed me, loved my life, and loyally guarded the family, it would be misleading to say we owned him. The reverse was closer to the truth. If previous Scotties in the family had been “jaunty,” as almost all of them are, Robert went them one better in being cocky or, rather, arrogant. Although each of us was of two minds about Robert, we all agreed at his funeral, as we drank the ...
Huis Clos (No Exit) from Terrorism
If you listen to the official press or even look at comments on news websites, Islamic terrorism is some sort of natural disaster caused by sun spots, global warming, or the political equivalent of fracking. One comment on the Washington Post summed up the popular despair. The commenter wanted to know why our government could not stop these attacks, but added he had no idea of how it could be done. On leftist news sites, a favorite talking point is to blame religion in general. Yes, those vicious Buddhists, Confucianists, and Neo-Platonists, for centuries they have been waging war on...
Cicero III: Great Caesar’s Ghost
Although Julius Caesar comes down through history as a great conqueror, he did not gain a military reputation until late in life. He was better known a reckless spendthrift, a political adventurer involved in every plot against the Senate.
More Second Thoughts, Round Three
At first glance, President Obama’s selection of this years’s winners of “The Presidential Medal of Freedom” seems bizarre. Lee Hamilton, Willie Mays, Yogi Berra, Shirley Chisholm and Barbara Mikulski, music entrepreneur Emilio Estefan, Gloria Estefan, Indian activist Billy Frank, Stephen Sondheim and Stephen Spielberg, Barbara Streisand, James Taylor, and Jap rights activist Minoru Yasui. Gee, what is warhawk Lee Hamilton doing with these freaks? The only other straight white male with a name ending in a consonant, James Taylor, is a drug-using mental patient. On second thought, perhaps it is perfect. This is the face of the new America–‘athaletes,’ entertainers,...
Rumors
President Obama has informed African American voters that he will take it as a personal affront to his “legacy” if they do not rush out to support Hillary Clinton. Rumor has it that he has also threatened to declare himself officially “White” and to produce his authentic Kenyan birth certificate to prove that while he may be African, he is decidedly not American. Stay tuned for this developing story.
The Art of Degradation, Part I
It is a good thing that rhetoric is a lost art, because anyone with the most elementary knowledge of rhetoric would be sticking blunt objects into his ears to keep from hearing not just the politicians’ speeches but, even more, the pundit’s comments and questions. I am not referring to the bad grammar and mispronunciation of NPR newsreaders who cannot pronounce words like “tour” but invariably say “tore” or even to the effeminate and uncontrolled sing-song chanting of the announcers. Delivery is a part of oratory but only a part. From the rhetor’s perspective of 2500 years or so, political...
Rome, Year 16 AMT
I left Rockford with the best intentions. I was going to write and post a diary of our six weeks (plus a few days) in Italy, even including the boring details of transatlantic travel post -911 or, as I prefer to call it, in the Age of Muslim Terrorism, as in “we left home on January 7, AMT 16. Our brief escape from the Midwestern Winter and presidential politicking seemed doomed from the start. Jim Easton was kind enough to take us to the Van Galder bus station, where we soon learned that the departure schedule had recently been changed,...
The Plagues of Greece, an Interview with Nikolaos Hidiroglou
First, the one homework submission. Vince Cornell sends in: t is inevitable what we face. What we did once treasure we must now break. But first must we state our causes plainly. That this divide did arise from just cause Be assured, for we declare with one voice That our lives, our liberty, and our joy Are those goods which we must of our own secure. Britain, it was you that did bar our way, Cruelly depriving us of our base rights. Destructive became your rule over us, And we now do form our own government Building it upon...
