The Fleming Foundation Cultural Commentary
Herodotus: The Ionian Revolt
Miletus came to terms with the Persians and installed a pro-Persian regime that was headed, some 25 years later, by Histiaeus. When Darius the Great was retreating in disarray from Scythia, the Greeks were protecting the bridge, which made the retreat possible. As Herodotus tells the story, the Scythians approached the Greeks and advised them to burn the bridge. Miltiades the Athenian, who had become a wealthy potentate in Thrace, was all in favor, but Histiaeus of Miletus dissuaded the other Ionians from following this advice.
Not Just a Number, Episode 3, A, B, and C.
A B and C: The Prisoner’s encounter with The Dream Police.
World’s Worst Generals
“People say the Pentagon does not have a strategy They are wrong. The Pentagon does have a strategy; it is: ‘Don’t interrupt the money flow, add to it.’”
– Col. John R. Boyd (U.S. Air Force, ret.)
Summer Seminar: Chronology, Bibliography, Information
This is the second draft of the Chronology–from Rome to Mussolini. I have also included prose translations of several poems of Agathias Scholasticus, the historian who completed Procopius’ unfinished history of Justinian’s wars. I hope also to post translations of Sidonius Apollinaris and Venantius Fortunatus.
Who’ll Stop the Rain?
As politicians go, the governor of Florida is one of the best we have, but he is not an educated man and does not at all understand the evils that have been perpetrated by American public education, and, since he does not understand the causes of the problem, he is incapable of devising a workable solution.
Wednesday’s Child: How Much Food a Man Needs
“How Much Land a Man Needs” is a story by Tolstoy wherein the grim graybeard hints that a man needs but six feet of it for his grave, and there I take my inspiration this Wednesday. My son was visiting here last week, and for a lark we set off to Polizzi Generosa, a town of some 3000 inhabitants in the verdant hills of the Madonie.
From Abraham to Napoleon: Revival
The empire of the Babylonians was not fated to last, and Cyrus the Persian, after entering the city in triumph in 539, promulgated an edict authorizing the rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem. It has been conjectured that the Persians were rewarding Babylonian Jews for their covert assistance in the defeat of Nabonidus, the last Babylonian king, but, there is no need to posit such a special relationship. Cyrus’s general policy was to reverse the forced resettlement of inflicted on subject nations by Babylonian and Assyrian rulers, whose strategy of divide et impera would be emulated by later tyrants.
Poems by Patrick Kavanagh
Born in rural Ireland (the town of Inniskeen) in 1904, Patrick Kavanagh was a poet, novelist, goalkeeper, and film critic. In my not so humble opinon, he was by far the best Irish poet since Yeats. There is more truth in “Epic” than an in hundred literary articles on Homer.
Not Just a Number, Episode 2, The Chimes of Big Ben
Stephen and Dr. Fleming talk about “The Chimes of Big Ben,” the one episode with Leo McKern.
