This month’s selection is Plato’s Symposium, a discussion or series of speeches that takes place at a feast or banquet, in which the participants discuss Eros, or Love/Desire. In his “Introduction to the Symposium,” W.R.M. Lamb says: The Symposium of Plato holds an acknowledged place among those few masterpieces of human art which unveil and interpret something of the central mystery of life. It has been a source of light… Read more
Our Book Club selection for January is Pausanias Description of Greece, Book 1. In this work we possess a plain, unvarnished account by an eye-witness of the state of Greece in the second century of our era. … Pausanias, a contemporary of Hadrian … wrote his description of Greece. He came in time, but just in time. … Again and again he notices shrunken or ruined cities, deserted villages, roofless… Read more
We’ve had some great discussions in the Book Club over the past year, both on Zoom and in the Forum. As always, it’s been a voyage of discovery, enriched and enlivened by comparing thoughts and ideas! Due to the holiday season there will be no Book Club selection for December, but here is a preview of what is coming up in the first part of 2022. January: Pausanias Description of… Read more
Our Book Club selection for November is The Lives of the Caesars by C. Suetonius Tranquillus. Suetonius was born towards the end of Vespasian’s reign, probably around 69 or 70 CE. He was educated in Rome, and became a friend of Pliny the Younger, whose assistance and support led him to work as a librarian for the emperor Trajan. He then became secretary to Hadrian. However, in around 121 CE… Read more
For October, we will be reading Andrew Porter’s 2019 book Agamemnon, the Pathetic Despot: Reading Characterization in Homer, available at the Center for Hellenic Studies website. That page provides an overview of his approach to the subject: Agamemnon led a ten-year-long struggle at Troy only to return home and die a pathetic death at his wife’s hands. Yet while Agamemnon’s story exerts an outsize influence—rivaled by few epic personalities—on the… Read more