It’s almost impossible to put down the Aeneid once you’ve picked it up. Whether you’re starting the epic all over…
Archive
The Marvel and Mystery of Hadrian’s Wall: a review of Adrian Goldsworthy’s new book
Ancient historian Adrian Goldsworthy is the author of many memorable books, including Pax Romana and How Rome Fell. In a…
Review of King of Spies: The Dark Reign of America’s Spymaster in Korea
Review of Catullus’ Bedspread: The Life of Rome’s Most Erotic Poet
By the end of the 1st century BC, the civil strife that had characterized the Roman world in previous decades…
Review of Hannibal by Patrick Hunt
Even those who aren’t particularly familiar with ancient history know of Hannibal. It was Hannibal who crossed the Alps —…
Holbein: Eye of the Tudors documentary
The imposing figure — wide-framed, feet spread, powerful authority beaming from the eyes — of Henry VIII that many of…
Review of A World Ablaze: The Rise of Martin Luther and the Birth of the Reformation
Review of Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities
Review of Collecting the World: Hans Sloane and the Origins of the British Museum
Review of The Classical Debt: Greek Antiquity in an Era of Austerity
Review of Civil Wars: A History In Ideas
Review of Istanbul: City of Majesty at the Crossroads of the World
Review of Variety: The Life of a Roman Concept
James Angelos’ The Full Catastrophe
This lively and revealing book counts as my first foray into the world of the Greek debt crisis. I vaguely…
Review of Pax Romana: War, Peace and Conquest in the Roman World
The great poet Virgil wrote his epic Aeneid in the Age of Augustus. Centered on the founding of Rome via…
Some passages from Lucan’s Civil War
After reading David Armitage’s Civil Wars: A History in Ideas, I read Lucan’s Bellum Civile. Armitage gives it close attention…
Review of The Gustav Sonata
Thoughts on Looking for The Stranger: Albert Camus and the Life of a Literary Classic
In a post a couple of months ago, I wrote about the wild and often elusive journey that a piece…
Review of Paul Auster’s 4 3 2 1
It’s the allure of wondering how one’s life might have turned out, might have transpired, had things been just a…
C.S. Lewis’s lost Aeneid: Arms and the Exile
As A.T. Reyes relates the story in his introduction to C.S. Lewis’s Lost Aeneid: Arms and the Exile, Lewis’s unfinished…
Review of Ancient Greece: Everyday Life
It’s never an easy task, I imagine, writing a book that surveys a broad period and a multitude of topics.…
Review of The Man Who Invented Fiction: How Cervantes Ushered in the Modern World
Don Quixote is a novel which will never cease to be discussed, written about, or presented through art. Its protagonist…
Review of Marathon: How One Battle Changed Western Civilization
The Battle of Marathon, fought in 490 BC, has just about everything you could want: an underdog against a powerful,…
Time
If there’s one nagging worry that permeates our lives more than any other I’d bet it’s the passage of time.…
Yates’ The Art of Memory
After years of wanting to read Yates’ The Art of Memory but never getting down to it, I finally did…
Art and Its Journey
It’s hardly a revelation or insight to point out that a text (or any piece of art) doesn’t always have…
Review of The Sea of Trees
The tangled, gloomy forest of Aokigahara, which sits near the base of Mt. Fuji, serves as the main setting for…
Review of Where Shall Wisdom Be Found?
I don’t remember the precise circumstances of first encountering Harold Bloom, but I can recall with much fondness my positive…
Review of Elena
Elena begins with a shot of a lone sparrow, soon joined by another, perched on a tree branch outside an…
The Good, the Bad, and the Horrific in Eliduc
The first time I read Marie de France’s lais I had no idea how I was supposed to respond. Was…
Random musings on different kinds of loss
Long before he wrote Part V of his Ethics, in which he culminates his geometrical treatise by discussing human freedom,…
Present Ills and Past Pleasures
Forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit. This beautiful Latin line was written by Virgil, put into the mouth of Aeneas…
Review of Zero K
A few years ago I went through a relatively brief, but intense, phase of reading Don DeLillo’s novels. I think…
Encountering Poetry through Gerard Manley Hopkins
There’s an intimidation factor to poetry that I think we all feel – or at least have felt – at…
Review of SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome
As Mary Beard points out in her prologue to SPRQ: A History of Ancient Rome, there are so many vestiges…
Review of Knight of Cups
It should be said upfront that if any of Terrence Malick’s films have turned you off— especially due to those…
Review of Dante in Love
To approach any classical work — and Dante’s Commedia is no doubt one of the classical works of all Western…
Spectatio 