Back by popular demand! For June 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 primary or secondary source, and depending on how many are in the session you will be allotted some time to convince us to read (or not) the… 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
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
I was harnessed to what seemed the largest wheel of the mill: my head was covered with a sack and I was at once given a shove along the curving track of its circular bed. In a circumscribed orbit, ever retracing my steps, I travelled on that fixed path, however I’d not completely lost my intellect and cunning, and made it look as though, as an apprentice to the trade,… Read more
Now! I’d like to string together various tales in the Milesian style, and charm your kindly ear with seductive murmurs, so long as you’re ready to be amazed at human forms and fortunes changed radically and then restored in turn in mutual exchange, and don’t object to reading Egyptian papyri, inscribed by a sly reed from the Nile. From Book I:1 Apuleius’ address to the reader, translated by A.S. Kline… Read more