The architect should be equipped with knowledge of many branches of study and varied kinds of learning, for it is by his judgement that all work done by the other arts is put to test. This knowledge is the child of practice and theory. Vitruvius 1.1.1, translated by Morris Hicky Morgan For November’s Book Club we will be reading selections from Vitruvius’ On Architecture. Vitruvius (Marcus Vitruvius Pollio) was writing… Read more
Silence is no ornament for a successful man. With remembrance of fine deeds a man will also sing the gracious recompense made by the honey-voiced Cean nightingale. Bacchylides Epinician Ode 3, translated by Diane Arnson Svarlien This month we are reading poems of Bacchylides. According to the General Introduction to Jebb’s edition, Bacchylides was born in Ioulis (Khora) on the Cycladian island of Ceos (Kea), probably around 512–505 BCE, and… Read more
Regarding the virtues [aretē] of women, Clea, I do not hold the same opinion as Thucydides. For he declares that the best woman is she about whom there is the least talk among persons … But to my mind Gorgias appears to display better taste in advising that not the form but the fame of a woman should be known to many. . … I would have said …that man’s… Read more
At libations to Zeus what else should rather be sung than the god himself, mighty for ever, king for evermore, router of the Pelagonians, dealer of justice to the sons of Heaven? For August we will be reading the Hymns of Callimachus. There are six surviving hymns: 1. to Zeus 2. to Apollo 3. to Artemis 4. to Delos 5. The Bath of Pallas 6. to Demeter According to the… Read more
It occurred to me one day that Sparta, though among the most thinly populated of states, was evidently the most powerful and most celebrated city in Greece; and I fell to wondering how this could have happened. But when I considered the institutions of the Spartans, I wondered no longer. Lycurgus, who gave them the laws that they obey, and to which they owe their prosperity, I do regard with… Read more