Book Club

Book Club

Book Club | August 2024: Ovid’s Metamorphoses Books 5 & 6

A screen of foliage filters out the sun. Boughs keep it shaded, and the dewy ground puts forth assorted blooms. It’s always spring. Inside this grove, Proserpina is playing as she picks violets or bright white lilies. With girlish eagerness she fills her baskets and skirt, eager to beat her friends at picking. Almost at once, Dis sees her, wants her, steals her. So quick is love. The terror-stricken goddess calls sadly for her mother and her friends — her… Read more

Book Club

Book Club | July 2024: Ovid’s Metamorphoses Books 3 & 4

He flees through places where he’d often chasedHe flees from his own pets! He yearned to shout,“I am Actaeon‒recognize your master!”The longed–for words won’t come. Barks fill the air.Blackfur is first to gash his back with wounds,Beast–tamer next. Highlander bites his shoulder;he’s set out last but took a mountain shortcutand got there first. As they hold down their master,the whole pack gathers round and bites his fleshuntil there’s no room… Read more

Book Club

Book Club | June 2024: Bring Your Own Book

It’s June, so the choice is over to you. As in previous years, you can bring your own selection, one book that you like, or dislike, and share your thoughts about it. You can read any book (or part of a book) you like related to the ancient Greeks, whether a primary or secondary source. Depending on how many attend the live discussion you will be allocated some time to… Read more

Book Club

Book Club | May 2024: Heron of Byzantium Siegecraft

Everything about siege machines is difficult and hard to understand, either because of the intricacy and inscrutability of their depiction, or because of the difficulty of comprehending the concepts, or, to say it better, because of their incomprehensibility to most men… The most competent military commander, kept safe by Providence above because of his piety, and obedient to the command and judgment and good counsel of our most divine emperors,… Read more

Book Club

Book Club | April 2024: Juvenal Satires

“Yet what state did Xerxes return in, on relinquishing Salamis? He vented his savage rage by lashing the winds, Caurus, Eurus, Who’d never experienced the like even in their Aeolian prison, He bound Poseidon, the Earthshaker himself, with chains, (That was lenient. What? Didn’t he think him worth branding Too? What god would have chosen to be that man’s slave?) What state was he in? In a single ship, of course, sailing the Bloodstained waves, his prow slowly pushing… Read more