My trip to Naples—planned months ago—had not been cancelled; I could hardly believe it. Up to the last minute I was not sure whether the Foreign Office would advise against trips to Italy or not. But there I was in the Parthenopean city, and thinking of how to get from Naples to Paestum (pronounced [pestum] in Italian), which I had not visited before. On the appointed day, Domenico, my driver,… Read more
Note also these inscriptions here, ‘Know thyself’ and ‘Avoid extremes,’ how many philosophic inquiries have they set on foot, and what a horde of discourses has sprung up from each, as from a seed ! And no less productive of discourse than any one of them, as I think, is the present subject of inquiry. This month the Book Club readings are by Plutarch. According to the Oxford Classical Dictionary[1]… Read more
We were pleased to welcome John C. Franklin who joined us for an Open House discussion on “Kinyras: The Divine Lyre” on Thursday, September 15 2016. Kinyras was a mythical priest-king of pre-Greek Cyprus, and John C. Franklin’s research draws on Greco-Roman material and Near Eastern evidence for the divinization of temple lyres, and seeks to illustrate the cultural interactions in the eastern Mediterranean. To prepare for this event, you… Read more