Friday, July 04, 2008

Ancient Wisdom for the Fourth of July

To mark the fifth Fourth of July since we invaded Iraq, here's a fragment from the Greek poet Philemon:

What is the real Good?
It is Peace!
How loving is that goddess, and how kind!
Marriages, festivals, kin, children, friends,
Food, wine, health, riches, happiness she gives.
And if of all these things we are deprived,
Dead is the life of men, while they yet live!

- Philemon (368 BC - AD 264) (excerpted from "Peace is Happiness")

Joy, Joy, Joy.

Ingrid Betancourt, at last back home in France after being held hostage in the Colombian jungle for six years.


One of the many stories: After Six Years, Family Reunions for Ex-Hostage
Updated to add: The New York Times also has video, guaranteed to reduce sensitive persons to blubbering wrecks, of her calling her mom on a soldier's cell phone just after she was rescued to tell her, "Mom! I'm free! I'm free!"

Thursday, July 03, 2008

Wow, Socrates Was Really Smart!

And so was Plato. Such is my articulate and original conclusion upon reading part of The Glory That Was Greece, which is Vol. II in this fantastic 80-year-old eighteen-volume set that I dug up at a used bookstore. The set is called the Columbia University Course in Literature, originally published in 1896, with my edition--in its forest-green leather covers embossed with classical artwork, the titles printed in gold--dating from 1928. Vol. I is The Wisdom of the East; the other volumes present more of the Western canon than you ever knew existed--not just obvious topics like Romance and Realism in Modern France, but also The German Mind, Scandinavian and Slavonic Literature, The Voice of Italy, The Great Literature of Small Nations (Spain, Portugal, Latin America, Holland, Switzerland, Romania, Ireland(!), Finland, Yiddish lit and more), and of course, eight solid volumes on English (5 volumes) and American (3) literature.

And so, yeah, wow: Plato and Socrates, smart dudes indeed! This discussion of evil people seems especially timely, in a political season during a war:

"...And most of those fearful examples, as I believe, are taken from the class of tyrants and kings and potentates and public men; for they are the authors of the greatest and most impious crimes, because they have the power.... Yes, Callicles, the very bad men come from the class of those who have power. And yet, in that very class there may arise good men, and worthy of all admiration they are; for where there is great power to do wrong, to live and die justly is a hard thing, and greatly to be praised, and few there are who attain this."

Wow! So on target, so elevated (and moderately convoluted) in his syntax--it's like listening to Yoda!