Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Lycurgus

    Indeed, whosoever shall look at the sedition and misgovernment which befell these bordering nations to whom they were as near related in blood as in situation, will find in them the best reason to admire the wisdom of Lycurgus.  For these three states, in their first rise, were equal, or, if there were any odds, they lay on the side of the Messenians and Argives, who, in the first allotment, were thought to have been luckier than the Spartans; yet was their happiness of but small continuance, partly the tyrannical temper of their kings and partly the ungovernableness of the people quickly bringing upon them such disorders, and so complete an overthrow of all existing institutions, as clearly to show how truly divine a blessing the Spartans had had in that wise lawgiver who gave their government its happy balance and temper.  But of this I shall say more in its due place.

Thersites

  [183]  Ulysses knew the voice as that of the goddess: he flung his cloak off of him as set off to run.  His servant Eurybates, a man of Ithaca, who waited on him, took charge of the cloak, whereon Ulysses went straight up to Agamemnon and received from him his ancestral, imperishable staff.  With this he went about among the ships of the Achaeans.

  [184]  Whenever he met a king or chieftain, he stood by him and spoke him fairly.  "Sir," said he, "this flight is cowardly and unworthy.  Stand your post, and bid your people also keep their places.  You do not yet not know the full mind of Agamemnon; he was sounding us, and ere long will visit the Achaeans with his displeasure.  We were not all of us at the council to hear what he then said; see to it lest he be angry and do us a mischief; for the pride of kings is great, and the hand of Jove is with them."

Saturday, January 12, 2013

Don Quixote's Discourse



“Putting this, however, aside, for it is a puzzling question for

 which it is difficult to find a solution, let us return to the 

superiority of arms over letters, a matter still undecided, so 

many are the arguments put forward on each side; for 

besides those I have mentioned, letters say that without them 

arms cannot maintain themselves, for war, too, has its laws 

and is governed by them, and laws belong to the domain of 

letters and men of letters. To this arms make answer that 

without them laws cannot be maintained, for by arms states 

are defended, kingdoms preserved, cities protected, roads 

made safe, seas cleared of pirates; and, in short, if it were not 

for them, states, kingdoms, monarchies, cities, ways by sea 

and land would be exposed to the violence and confusion 

which war brings with it, so long as it lasts and is free to make 

use of its privileges and powers. And then it is plain that 

whatever costs most is valued and deserves to be valued 

most. To attain to eminence in letters costs a man time, 

watching, hunger, nakedness, headaches, indigestions, and 

other things of the sort, some of which I have already 

referred to. But for a man to come in the ordinary course of 

things to be a good soldier costs him all the student suffers, 

and in an incomparably higher degree, for at every step he 

runs the risk of losing his life.”

"Don Quixote’s discourse on arms and letters"

The History of Don Quixote de la Mancha by 

Miguel de Cervantes — trans. John Ormsby — 

Part 1 Chp. 38

Friday, January 11, 2013

THE JUNE-BUG



"It is a discovery of no small importance in your eyes, my young friends, when you find the first June-bug of the season on the young foliage.  In the evening you get together in a corner and talk about it, you make plans for the morrow, and all your conversation is about the June-bug that has just arrived.  You arrange to get up early the next day and shake the trees in order to bring down the sleeping insects; you get ready a box, pierced with holes, to receive the captives, and put in a handful of fresh leaves for them to feed on.  "At the first streak of dawn you are up; you visit the willows, the poplars, the hawthorne hedges wet with dew.  It is a fruitful hunt: the June-bugs, benumbed by the chill of night, fall like hail when you shake the branches.  Soon you will have a half a score of them, then a dozen, then twenty.  It is enough.  You go back to the house with you prisoners fluttering and struggling in the foot of an old stocking, in your handkerchief, or in your cap.  You bring a supply of green leaves.


    "And now for your experiments!

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

The First Of Three Attempts To Become A Great Man

This man who returned could not remember any time in his life when he had not been fired with the will to become a great man; it was a desire Ulrich seemed to be born with.  Such a dream may of course betray vanity and stupidity, but it is no less true that it is a fine and proper ambition without which there  probably would not be very many great men in the world.

Thursday, January 3, 2013

Plutarch's Morals

We ought, at all hazards, to keep our boys also from association with bad men, for they will catch some of their villainy.

http://criticamagazine.blogspot.com.ar/p/plutarchs-morals.html

The Evolution Of The Aryan

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE

RESEARCH into the history of the Indo-European race -- a missing link between the latest Sanskrit and the earliest Babylonian records -- has always had a great fascination for me, and, I think, for most students and lovers of history.
     When, therefore, a few years ago a copy of von Ihering's Vorgeschichte der Indo-Europaer was put into my hands, I hastened to read it, although I rather feared that it might be another of the numerous attempts which have been made to establish the descent of the Aryan by linguistical methods. To my surprise and delight, I found that von Ihering had based his hypotheses far more often upon facts and upon customs than on mere words and expressions. For whatever philology may have, and has, done for our knowledge of hitherto unknown phases in the existence of nations, sometimes, unless strongly corroborated by extraneous evidence, it cannot be denied that errors have been made.


http://criticamagazine.blogspot.com.ar/p/the-evolution-of-aryan.html