In April 2023 the Kosmos Society Book Club read Theophrastus’ Characters[1]. Wikipedia says that Theophrastus lived in Athens from 371–280 BCE, and was a pupil of Aristotle. Diogenes Laertius[2] gives us a description of Theophrastus’ life, and also a copy of his will. There is also a bibliography of his writings, although very little has survived. One of the surviving texts is Characters, which consists of thirty descriptions of behaviours… Read more
Often before now have I applied my thoughts to the puzzling question — one, probably, which will puzzle me for ever — why it is that, while all Greece lies under the same sky and all the Greeks are educated alike, it has befallen us to have characters so variously constituted. Proem of Theophrastus Characters, translated by R.C. Jebb For April, our Book Club selection is the Characters of Theophrastus. Theophrastus,… 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