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
The occasion was a horse race at the great Panathenaic festival. Callias, the son of Hipponicus, being a friend and lover of the boy Autolycus, had brought the lad, himself the winner of the pankration, to see the spectacle. As soon as the horse race was over, Callias proceeded to escort Autolycus and his father, Lycon, to his house in the Piraeus, being attended also by Niceratus. But catching sight… Read more
In part 1, we looked at dreams as represented in Homeric epic. In part 2, we continue our exploration with some passages from other texts. Starting with tragedy, we learn from Jean Alaux Lectures Tragiques d’Homère that “According to Jacques Jouanna, there are two types of dreams: the vision-dream which offers the sleeper a symbol to decipher … and the visitation–dream where a god or a messenger or a ghost… Read more
[Socrates] said that he often heard it stated that of all possessions the most precious is a good and sincere friend. “And yet,” he said, “there is no transaction most men are so careless about as the acquisition of friends. For I find that they are careful about getting houses and lands and slaves and cattle and furniture, and anxious to keep what they have; but though they tell one… Read more
Members of the Kosmos Society have been reading sections of Xenophon’s Anabasis, and this post provides a brief historical context to that work. The text is available on Perseus, both in Greek and in an English translation by Carleton L. Brownson (1922). Historical context The Anabasis by the Athenian soldier, historian and philosopher Xenophon, also known as The Anabasis of Cyrus, The March of the Ten Thousand and The March… Read more