[Socrates] said that he often heard it stated that of all possessions the most precious is a good and sincere friend. “And yet,” he said, “there is no transaction most men are so careless about as the acquisition of friends. For I find that they are careful about getting houses and lands and slaves and cattle and furniture, and anxious to keep what they have; but though they tell one… Read more
We were pleased to welcome Luke Hollis for an Open House discussion about digital classical imagination. The event took place on Thursday, February 28 at 11:00 a.m. EST and was recorded. You might like to consider the following before the event: Find a classical text or artifact in a digital archive online (one such archive, among many others, is the Acropolis Museum at Google Arts and Culture). How does the digital… Read more
This time our Core Vocab exploration, taken from terms listed in H24H[1] and tracked in the associated Sourcebook[2], is about ainos [αἶνος] ‘authoritative utterance for and by a social group; praise; fable’; and the related word ainigma [αἴνιγμα] ‘riddle’. In H24H 2§60, Gregory Nagy says: Here is my working definition of this word: an ainos is a performance of ambivalent wording that becomes clarified once it is correctly understood and then… Read more
We were pleased to welcome Armand D’Angour, Associate Professor of Classics at Oxford and Fellow and Tutor at Jesus College, Oxford, for a discussion about Socrates and Aspasia of Miletus, which is the subject of his forthcoming book. The event took place on Thursday, February 14 2019 at 11 a.m. EST, and was recorded. Focus passages for this discussion are available in this PDF handout: Socrates in Love Passages and… Read more
Note also these inscriptions here, ‘Know thyself’ and ‘Avoid extremes,’ how many philosophic inquiries have they set on foot, and what a horde of discourses has sprung up from each, as from a seed ! And no less productive of discourse than any one of them, as I think, is the present subject of inquiry. This month the Book Club readings are by Plutarch. According to the Oxford Classical Dictionary[1]… Read more