Book Club

Book Club

Book Club | October 2021: Agamemnon, the Pathetic Despot

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

Book Club

Book Club | August 2021: Apuleius Metamorphoses VII–XI

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

Book Club

Book Club | July 2021: Apuleius Metamorphoses I–VI

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

Book Club

Book Club | June 2021: Bring Your Own

Our next Book Club selection is different this month. You can bring your own selection, one book that you like or dislike, and share your thoughts about it. You can read any book you like, 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 book. We will start and continue discussion… Read more

Book Club

Book Club | May 2021: Lysias Orations

If I believed it possible, friends who are attending this burial, to set forth in speech the valor of the men who lie here, I should have reproved those who gave me but a few days’ notice of having to speak over them. But as all mankind would find all time insufficient for preparing a speech to match their deeds, the city itself therefore, as I think, taking forethought for… Read more