Our Book Club readings for this month are selections from the poetry of Catullus. We will start the discussion in the Forum, and there will be a Google Hangout on Tuesday, June 26 at 11 a.m. EDT—the link will be posted in the Forum at that time. Gaius Valerius Catullus was a renowned Roman poet. He had a short life: he was born around 84 BCE or 87 BCE, and he… Read more
And so I’ll go to the bathing waters by the sea shore and wash off my defilement. I will deflect the weighty anger of the goddess there. When I leave, I’ll find some isolated place and then inter my sword, of all my weapons the one I most despise. I’ll dig the earth where no one else will see. Then let Night and Hades keep it there below the ground.… Read more
In an epic text, how were poets able to represent emotion? How can we understand today their way of speaking? Did Achilles “copy” the behavior of warriors from those distant times? Or might it be the reverse: did the epic influence certain real behaviors? Our Book Club selection for April is taken from Hélène Monsacré: The Tears of Achilles, available online at CHS. This book, originally published in French as… Read more
Thanks to all who have participated in the forum and via hangouts in the Kosmos Society Book Club discussions so far this year. You can still post in the forums if you missed the live sessions, have anything further to add, or if you have read additional parts of the selected works. Here is a foretaste of what is to come during Spring 2018 at the Book Club, in which… Read more
Our next Book Club selection is the The Natural History of Pliny the Elder. We will be focusing on Book 7: “Man” although you can read others as well if you wish. Pliny the Elder (23–79 CE) is a Roman author. His most famous work is The Natural History which consists of thirty seven books on geography, anthropology, zoology and many other different topics. He died during the eruption of Vesuvius… Read more