The Book Club selection for May is a drama: Seneca the Younger’s Oedipus. The discussion will start and continue in the forum, with a live conversation on Tuesday May 28th at 11 a.m. EDT. There will also be a community reading on Tuesday May 21st at 11 a.m. EDT; estimated duration 2–3 hours. We are familiar with the treatment of the myth by Sophocles from The Ancient Greek Hero in… Read more
The Book Club readings for this month are from Casey Dué’s recent book, Achilles Unbound: Multiformity and Tradition in the Homeric Epics, which is available to read for free on the CHS website. https://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.ebook:CHS_Due.Achilles_Unbound.2018 We will all read the Introduction, and Chapter 1: ‘”Winged Words”: How We Came to Have Our Iliad‘. You can then also read as many other chapters as you wish. Discussion will start and continue in… Read more
Discussion is continuing in the Forum about Xenophon Memorabilia ahead of the Book Club hangout(s) on Tuesday March 26. Meanwhile here is a foretaste of the Spring/Summer selections. As in previous years, we will tackle a longer work in its entirety during June, July, and August, although those who are taking vacations over that period will be able to join in whichever sections you can. Further details will be posted… Read more
[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
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