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" + "Classics in the News" + "

" + "A Homeric Scholar in Polite Company" + "

" + "Royall Tyler, The Algerine Captive; or, The Life and Adventures of Doctor Updike Underhill, chapter 7:Fatigued with the vexations of my school, I one evening repaired to the tavern, and mixed with some of the young men of the town. Their conversation I could not relish; mine they could not comprehen..." + "

" + "John Burroughs, The Grist of the Gods:But let not care and humdrum deaden us to the wonders and the mysteries amid which we live, nor to the splendors and the glories. We need not translate ourselves in imagination to some other sphere or state of being to find the marvelous, the divine, the transce..." + "

" + "George Gissing, The Unclassed, chapter 9 (The Cousins):\"Work? What work?\" asked Harriet, with the suspicious look which came into her grey eyes whenever she heard something she could not understand. \"Some writing. I\'ve written a play.\" \"A play? Will it be acted?\" \"Oh no, it isn\'t meant for acting.\"" + "

" + "I read (with a smile) that youngsters reading the books by Rick Riordan that form the basis for the movie, Percy Jackson and the Olympians, are absorbing the Greek myths gladly and effortlessly. Without having seen the movie -- because it opens later this week -- I can only speculate that it actuall..." + "

" + "Excerpts from Christopher Smart, \"A Letter from Mrs. Mary Midnight, to the Society of Antiquarians, giving them an Account of a very curious Petrifaction found near Penzance, in the County of Cornwall,\" The Midwife 1 (1751) 151-154, quoted by Min Wild, Christopher Smart and Satire: \'Mary Midnight\' a..." + "

" + "George Gissing, New Grub Street, I.VI:If I had had the means, I should have devoted myself to the life of a scholar. That, I quite believe, is my natural life.George Gissing, The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft, XVII:I had in me the making of a scholar. With leisure and tranquillity of mind, I shou..." + "

" + "In A.D. 457 the Roman Emperor Marcian died. Marcian had been born in 392, probably in Illyria, and began a career as a solider. He appears to have been captured by Vandals in the 430s and then emerged from obscurity to be made emperor when the preceding one, Theodosius II, died without leaving an he..." + "

" + "George Gissing, By the Ionian Sea: Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy, chapter 10 (Children of the Soil):In every country and every age those talk most who have least to say that is worth saying." + "

" + "W.H. Auden, Ode to the Medieval Poets:Chaucer, Langland, Douglas, Dunbar, with all your brother Anons, how on earth did you ever manage, without anaesthetics or plumbing, in daily peril from witches, warlocks, lepers, The Holy Office, foreign mercenaries burning as they came, to write so cheerfully," + "

" + "Xenophon, Anabasis 1.3.6 (tr. Carleton L. Brownson):For I consider that you are to me both fatherland and friends and allies; with you I think I shall be honoured wherever I may be, bereft of you I do not think I shall be able either to aid a friend or ward off a foe. νομίζω γὰρ ὑμᾶς ἐμοὶ εἶναι καὶ ..." + "

" + "Aelian, Historical Miscellany 14.32 (tr. N.G. Wilson):A man from Sparta called Timandridas went abroad and left his son in charge at home. When he returned later and found the son had made the family property more substantial than it had been at his departure, he declared that injustice was being do..." + "

" + "Stendhal, Life of Rossini, tr. Richard N. Coe, rev. ed. (New York: Riverrun Press, 1985), p. 357:No one but a fool opens a book when he is feeling cheerful. Il n\'y a qu\'un sot qui ouvre un livre quand il est heureux." + "

" + "Augustus. St Petersburg - Hermitage.CC Flickr User thisisbossi.In 2 B.C., the first Roman emperor, whom we call Augustus, received the title Pater patriae \'father of the country\'. This title was a great honor given for outstanding service. The famous orator and Roman statesman Cicero had earned the ..." + "

" + "Last night\'s Roman History book chat was the second on Tacitus\' Histories, with a focus on the year of four emperors. A topic that came up that we couldn\'t answer was how (and even whether) the soldiers were paid amid the chaos, especially if they were on the losing side. If you know the answer, ple..." + "

" + "Online Etymology Dictionary, s.v. Teton:member of a western Sioux people, 1806, from Dakota titonwan, lit. \"dwellers on the prairie,\" from thi + huwa. Not related to the Grand Teton mountain range.The Teton in Grand Teton is usually thought to be derived from French téton = woman\'s breast. Cf. Greek..." + "

" + "Victor Davis Hanson and John Heath, Who Killed Homer? The Demise of Classical Education and the Recovery of Greek Wisdom (New York: The Free Press, 1998), p. 166:After the first three weeks of the beginning Greek class, 20 percent of the students are unfortunately conked, casualties of the masculine..." + "

" + "Will you be watching the Percy Jackson movie when it opens on February 12, 2010? I hadn\'t heard much about it, other than that it was created by the makers of Harry Potter (a strong plus in my book) and that it had to do with the Greek gods. Watching the clip (linked to above), I see it features str..." + "

" + "CC Flickr User Alun Salt. Need a clue? Byron left his mark there. Give up? Click on the image or photo credit. Guess Where originally appeared on About.com Ancient / Classical History on Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010 at 06:55:10.Permalink | Comment | Email this" + "

" + "Palladas (Greek Anthology 10.77, tr. W.R. Paton):Why dost thou labour in vain, O man, and disturb everything, being, as thou art, the slave of the lot that fell to thee at birth? Resign thyself to this, and struggle not against Fate, but content with thy fortune, love tranquillity. Yet strive thou r..." + "

" + "Excerpts from Eduard Fraenkel, review of E. K. Rand et al., edd., Servianorum in Vergilii Carmina Commentariorum Editionis Harvardianae Volumen II, quod in Aeneidos Libros I et II Explanationes Continet (Lancaster: American Philological Society, 1946), in Journal of Roman Studies 38 (1948) 131-143 a..." + "

" + "The other day, I watched Constantine and the Cross (Costantino il Grande), a 1962 Italian screen version of the story of Constantine...Hmm...what to say about it? As you might guess from the era, it\'s similar in some ways to the overdubbed, dime-a-dozen sword & sandal films about Hercules etc., but..." + "

" + "The old man ... prayed apart to King Apollo whom lovely Leto had borne. \"Hear me,\" he cried, \"O god of the silver bow, that protectest Chryse and holy Cilla and rulest Tenedos with thy might, hear me oh thou of Sminthe. If I have ever decked your temple with garlands, or burned your thigh-bones in f..." + "

" + "Giacomo Leopardi, Elogio degli uccelli (In Praise of Birds), from Operette Morali, tr. Giovanni Cecchetti:And this is indeed something to marvel at: that man, who is the most afflicted and the most miserable of all creatures, should possess the faculty of laughter, which is alien to every other anim..." + "

" + "This post supplements Travels of a Leaf, about a little poem that struck my fancy, Antoine-Vincent Arnault\'s Fable XVI (La Feuille). Sainte-Beuve (Causeries du Lundi, March 21, 1853) called the poem \"cette épigramme vraiment digne de l\'antique, cette légère et douce élégie,\" and Alexandre Dumas in h..." + "

" + "These are some notes to myself after reading the second book of Vergil\'s Aeneid with the commentary of R.G. Austin (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964). Quotations from Vergil: 65-66 (a common, if usually unfair, type of generalization): crimine ab uno / disce omnis 130-131 (the impulse to find a scapego..." + "

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