God on the Starting Line

Again, a quick note without quotes that I finished God on the Starting Line.

It was rather eerie to read an account in the same state of my senior year of high school cross country. In fact, I even ran the same races as those kids, but in the public, rather than private, school divisions.

The Myth of Hitler's Pope

I could not find a paragraph that stuck out, though I was glad to have read The Myth of Hitler's Pope.

Romantic Romans

I often wonder at those who say the Romantics first waxed poetic on the beauties of nature and that nature's beauty was all background to the Romans. Here is a bit of clunky Latin from Tiberianus:

caerulas superne laurus et virecta myrtea
leniter motabat aura blandiente sibilo.

The breeze gently stirs with pleasing hush
The dark laurels and green myrtles above.

We can find like passages in other authors, but the entire little poem (20 verses total) consists of the description of a stream and its surroundings.

Sherlock Holmes & Textual Criticism

From A Study in Scarlet:

(Holmes to Dr. Watson) "In the everyday affairs of life it is more useful to reason forward, and so the other comes to be neglected. There are fifty who can reason synthetically for one who can reason analytically...Most people, if you describe a train of events to them, will tell you what the result would be. They can put those events together in their minds, and argue from them that something will come to pass. There are few people, however, who, if you told them a result, would be able to evolve from their own inner consciousness what the steps were which led them up to that result. This power is what I mean when I talk of reasoning backward, or analytically." (p.100)

As I am completing a chapter of the dissertation that reconstructs the textual history of certain Greek scholia, I found this a very good explanation of the type of work that I am trying (successfully or not) to do.

Cross Country, Sports' Stats, and Greek Races

From Finding Their Stride:

He praised the boys' soccer and the girls' field hockey teams as the heart of Moravian Academy athletics...I caught the administrator's eye. He stuttered out, "And cross country." But he didn't mean it. His desire was to praise the more measurable sports–those with plays, ties, over-time, and numbers on the lit-up scoreboard–the sports more easily watched. (p.222) 

I must confess my own prejudice in favor of cross country, having run it both in high school and college. Few other sports come close to the ancient athletic ideal where statistics do not matter as much as who wins and who loses in that particular moment (καιρός) of grace (χάρις) and glory (κλέος).

For reference, here are the Pindaric odes in praise of runners by event:

• Stadion (180m): Olympian 13 & 14, Pythian 11
• Diaulos (360m): Pythian 10, Nemean 8
• Dolichos (4.8k): Olympian 12
• Race in Armor (360m): Pythian 9

The dolichos, you'll note, was remarkably close to the length of today's 5k. Though in the interest of full disclosure, I should note that the dolichos could be much shorter (as short as a mile at times).

Equality & Other Goods

From Twilight of Authority by Robert Nisbet:

Equality has a built-in revolutionary force lacking in such ideas as justice or liberty. For once the ideal of equality becomes uppermost it can become insatiable in its demands. It is possible to conceive of human beings conceding that they have enough freedom or justice in a social order; it is not possible to imagine them ever declaring they have enough equality–once, that is, equality becomes a cornerstone of national policy. (p.184) 

If only...

From The Faculty Lounges:

[Discussing corporate corruption of medical faculty...] If the price is right, they are happy to give it up. (One could imagine that humanities professors might feel the same, if only someone were willing to pay so much for a study of Chaucer.)

Loss and Gain

Just a note to say that I picked up and finished Matt Logelin's Two Kisses for Maddie at the library this week. He also has a website/blog (which reminds me to figure out enough HTML/CSS to move this blog on to Wordpress or something better in the future, when the dissertation is done).

Rather than repeat the story, I would direct you to his website and then also recommend the Liz Logelin Foundation. I am reminded that as the boys grow up, I need to do more service projects with them. I also need to earn enough to travel with them. But with one at two years and another at two months I have a couple years at least before travel memories and camping trips can be made.

The Roman Equivalent of the Dive Bar

Continuing the project of going through minor poets, Greek and Latin, I ran finished off those few other poems attributed to Hadrian. Most are familiar with the lines addressed to his dying soul, but I was never bothered to read these others. I cannot say that I missed much, but I did run into the very useful vocabulary word popīna (a dive, or low-class eatery) in a retort to a poem by Florus.

Florus' poem reads:

Ego nolo Caesar esse,
ambulare per Britannos
...
Scythicas pati pruinas

I wouldn't be Caesar,
ambling among the Britons...
exposed to Scythian frosts

Hadrian answered thus:

Ego nolo Florus esse,
ambulare per tabernas,
latitare per popinas
culices pati rotundos.

I wouldn't be Florus,
ambling among the pubs,
holed up in his dives,
exposed to fat mosquitoes.

(A taberna in Ostia)

Homer's Trojan Theater

I wish Jenny Strauss Clay's Homer's Trojan Theater had come about earlier in my graduate career, at least before I taught my Greek course on Homer. The argument is as follows:

Critical to our understanding of the Iliad’s action is the realization that its orientation of right and left remains constant throughout and is always seen from the perspective of a narrator situated in the center of the Greek camp facing the Trojan plain. (p.45)

There is a companion website that visualizes this for various passages. I will certainly be using this in future courses I teach as a very useful tool.

Only a Cough and Spit

From My Name Escapes Me:

Wednesday 7 June (1995)

...It seems a pity that the good old phrase 'living in sin' is likely to be dropped by the C of E. So many friends, happily living in sin, will feel very ordinary and humdrum when they become merely partners; or, as the Americans say, 'an item'. Living in sin has always sounded daring and exotic...

p.s. He includes on March 28th, 1995 this citation of Canon Liddon that "The applause of all but very good men is no more than the precise measure of their possible hostility." I find this a much more pleasant way to express what Pericles did in the opening of his funeral oration.

p.p.s. The title of this post is a phrase, new to me, but old to actors, for a small dramatic role and employed to dismiss a lack of opportunity.