I was in Pittsburgh for the past few days, and shall likely have more to say soon, but I thought I should mention that through Eric's recommendation of the late David Stove I was led to Keith Windschuttle's The Killing of History, which I finished on the train today.

And I highly recommend it. As much as I recommend John Vanderslice's Cellar Door. Up Above the Sea is my early favorite for jam of the year.

legally blonde is the best movie EVER

according to le glay et al., the emperor claudius was quite the writer--a history of rome in over 40 volumes, one of etruria in 20, and one of carthage in 8--and the last two were in greek!

surely, gil prose would be duly impressed.

i'm wearing the same sweater i wore yesterday

there is something i forgot to mention. remember yesterday, when i mentioned the song 'eric's trip' by sonic youth?

well: today i was going through the tower of myriad boxes in my parents' basement full of stuff from my yesteryears. in one box i FOUND MY COPY OF SONIC YOUTH'S 'DAYDREAM NATION', which includes that very song.

if you think that is SWEET, you are correct.

livy-ing it up in my parents' house

i was delighted to come across a future passive infinitive tonight while reading book 1 of livy. yes, this all-too-rare form in 'iri' always brings joy to the heart of american youth. tonight's gem was 'dicatum iri', 'would be dedicated'.

if it's been a while since you've read livy's account of the hercules/cacus episode...well, perhaps you should turn off 'friends' and check it out.

i will feed dennis's obsession

today while reading a general history of rome, i came across a reference to dennis's dude, philodemus. it comes in a section on epicurean teaching concerning the avoidance of involvement in public affairs in the context of the emergence of the empire. i quote:

'Several testimonies to that proposition have come down to us. One of the most striking consists of fragments of a political treatise, 'The Good King according to Homer', written by Philodemus of Gadara, possibly in 45 BC, demonstrating that good kings could exist. Enlightened by wise counselors, it is the duty of the good king to be moderate, to make sure that his personal conduct conforms to the rules of morality, to show himself to be just toward men and pious toward the gods, and to see that unity and peace exist between his subjects.'

(Le Glay, Voisin, Le Bohec and Cherry [tr. Nevill])

there, their and they're

the title of this post is neither here nor there.

still--i have have a hunch (though i am not certain) that one j. rawnsley might rather enjoy this article (which, alas!, i haven't finished reading yet).

i saw aaron kook wearing a wittgenstein costume

there are several reasons why dennis's last post is sweeter than you can shake a stick at.

the first is that the quote in the title mentions a stove, which can be both a late australian philosopher and something in which to burn wood or cook dead animals.

the second is that the band whence the quote comes is called 'eric's trip', and my name is eric.

the third is that sonic youth has a song called eric's trip.

thank you.

now i must go back to doing to doritos what the romans did to carthage in the third punic war.

tomorrow i hope to learn more about romulus and remus and why homer is more interesting than the intellectual sum of the last 200 years.

"Used to wonder if you understood the way I felt about the Stove..." - Eric's Trip

For some reason I couldn't add this as a comment to Eric's blog, but it's equally appropriate here at the Campvs. It's a quote about the late Australian philosopher David Stove, by Roger Kimball at the New Criterion:

With a combination of dazzling philosophical acumen and scarifying wit, Stove does for irrationalism in Karl Popper’s philosophy of science (and that of such illustrious heirs as Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend) what the Romans did for Carthage in the Third Punic War: he assaults and destroys it utterly.

That'll pique your curiosity.

Man ... I love these BluBloggers

I hope our loyal fans appreciate the new look of the blog. It took me like 15 minutes of hard work.

(And be sure to check the link up there on the post title if you didn't get the brilliant joke therein contained.)

karate chops for everyone but us

Father Homer, thee,
Thee also I forgive thy sandy wastes
Of prose and catalogue, thy drear harangues
That tease the patience of the centuries,
Thy sleazy scrap of story,--but a rogue's
Rape of a light-o'-love,--too soiled a patch
To broider with the gods.

Thee, Socrates,
Thou dear and very strong one, I forgive
Thy year-worn cloak, thine iron stringencies
That were but dandy upside-down, they words
Of truth that, mildlier spoke had mainlier wrought.

--Sidney Lanier, from 'The Crystal'

Everybody must(n't) get stoned ...

Back on the campus again (as well as the Campus, which I guess is pretty obvious) to take care of a few chores and find out why my final paper was "both stimulating and infuriating."

Wasting time between chores I stumbled upon the following from a review of Perseus written by the Rip:

"Perseus offers two features not otherwise available: a database of Greek texts in English; a morphological analysis program. For either of these to be research tools, we must imagine scholars not able to read Greek, a prospect that turns my heart to stone."

Which supports my decision to spend much of the summer on Hesiod and Thucydides. Wish me luck.

She blinded me with science!

I'm crashing at my parents' house untill I find a place to live and I've finally got my desktop PC back on the internet after nearly a year. I've been struggling to get the thing updated, with no luck. But I didn't happen to stumble onto this beaut on some web page's Word of the Day feature and thought I'd share:

CONVOLUTED
Definition:
intricate and complicated
Example:
Although many people bought A Brief History of Time, few could follow its CONVOLUTED ideas and theories.
Synonyms:
snaky, tortuous

Today is that day ... the suicide talk is coming.

The good news is that I've finished my work for the semester. The bad news is that today I get to tell the profs how I think I did, and then get their take.

I've got $10 that says I need to work on presentations.

More to come ... I've been saving up a juicy one from Housman, but now I've got to run.

when you're stuck in the rain in juarez...

speaking of bob dylan, i think i just found the source for the tag-line of 'shelter from the storm' ('come in, she said, i'll give you shelter from the storm'). it is in pindar, isthmian 7, lines 37-39: 'but now poseidon has bestowed on me tranquillity from the storm'. who knew dylan read pindar? i mean, i guess i should have assumed he loved ancient choral lyric as much as the next guy, but to be honest, i wouldn't have guessed his penchants for our dear boeotian. do you think he likes hesiod, too? i could definitely see him digging the old man. and, now that i think about it, i could definitely see bob road-tripping to boeotia and then throwing a reference about it into one of his songs--sort of like his mention of ashtabula.

are you SURE you want to study classics?

'The traditional charges against Classics are as old as Greek culture itself. You all know the litany: "Why would anyone want to borrow money to study that?" "Greek and Latin won't get you a job." The study of Greek is difficult, irrelevant to the modern world, impractical, it is said, and almost unhealthy. Television, the corporations, videos, the economy did it to us, Classicists explain. After all, when a mere B.A. can cost a hundred-thousdand dollars, who can blame today's students--or their tuition-borrowing parents--for confusing educations with job training, for scouring college catalogues for something that looks "practical"? Accounting, hotel management, recreation superivision, and Radio and Sports Reporting...do radiate an unexpected charm. "The Theory of Walking" and "Star Trek and the Humanities"...ensure higher grades with less work than Introductory Greek. As the school loans grow, so does an Aristophanic vision of the Classics graduate as an unemployable couch potato who wields his newly acquired Socratic dialectic to convince his father that money is virtue, virtue is knowledge, and knowledge comes from Star Trek reruns.' (Hanson and Heath, from 'Who killed Homer?')

waiting for dennis to turn over a new page...

is anybody else sad that dennis hasn't posted in a while?

good. i am too. i need my housman fix.

the western way of mawr

i thought dennis would appreciate the fact that a.e. housman is quoted at the beginning of chapter 2 of victor davis hanson's 'the western way of war':

Therefore, though the best is bad,
Stand and do the best, my lad;
Stand and fight and see your slain,
And take the bullet in your brain.

do YOU know what time it is?

well, neither do i. but do you know who manlius theodorus was? well, he was the dedicatee of augustine's dialogue 'de beata vita', written in 386 during a bit of otium liberale. manlius had set a precedent for such a retirement, according to peter brown in 'augustine of hippo', in 383, when he withdrew from public life for a time to write books on philosophy and a treatise on classical meter. he was an admirer of plotinus and a catholic. moreover, the discussions on which the 'de beata vita' is based may have taken place in his house!

what's that you say, han solon?

and now for today's bit of pithy solonic wisdom (as quoted by plato): 'happy the man who has loving sons, horses with uncloven hoof, hunting dogs and a guest from abroad' (fr. 23, as translated in the cambridge history of classical literature).

A.E., I.O.U.

This is the first installment of our newest effort: the not so random A.E. Housman quote.

I'd trade three Nisbets and an M.L. West for his rookie card ...

"Stand on a barrel in the streets of Bagdad, and say in a loud voice, ”Twice two is four, and ginger is hot in the mouth, therefore Mohammed is the prophet of God,” and your logic will probably escape criticism; or, if anyone by chance should criticise it, you could easily silence him by calling him a Christian dog."