Friday ‘Book Shelf’ Café
How do we organize our knowledge? Actually, no, not “how do we organize our knowledge?” That question would get us into matters such as school of medicine vs. school of law vs. school of arts and sciences. And I don’t mean to ask about education. Or, it could get us into how knowledge is […] Read more…
An interview with Dr. Filippos Tsimpoglou, Director General, National Library of Greece
The National Library of Greece relocation project does not involve the mere transfer of books, but the full transition of the institution itself to a new era. Thanks to the Stavros Niarchos Foundation generous donation and the support of the Greek State, the National Library, under the direction of Dr. Filippos Tsimpoglou, is seeking to achieve a modern and exemplary modus operandi. Read more…
Friday ‘Classics Newbie’ Café
There was a first time for everyone to encounter the Classics, by which I mean mostly the Greeks: Homer, Hesiod, Plato, Aeschylus, Sophocles, etc. Do you remember yours? Was it in school, and how did you react? Or did you come—or return–to them later in life? Had your appreciation/understanding of them changed? Read more…
Book Club | July 2017: Virgil Aeneid Books 9&10
While thus in distant region moves the war,
down to bold Turnus Saturn’s daughter sends
celestial Iris. In a sacred vale,
the seat of worship at his grandsire’s tomb,
Pilumnus, Faunus’ son, the hero mused.
And thus the wonder-child of Thaumas called
with lips of rose Read more…
Visiting Malta
These islands have been inhabited for millennia. In 5200 BCE they were organized in villages and by 3600 BCE, they already had megalith temples, that is 1000 years before the Egyptian pyramids were built. And 2000 years before the Mycenae Palace of Agamemnon.
It seems to me that its history has been put at the service of war. It has been coveted, influenced and dominated by the Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Greeks, Romans, Spanish, Normans, Knights of St John’s, French and British. Read more…
Friday ‘Salads and Soups’ Café
The English writer, Alan Bennett, once made a character say that after the British began to take foreign holidays, we came home with strange ideas about what goes in a salad. I recall the salads of my 1950s childhood: lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber and spring onions, and, for variety, perhaps pickled beetroot or a sliced hard boiled egg. Read more…
The Homer Multitext Update
This summer, as we do every summer, we’ll remove the bindings so to speak from the medieval manuscripts and fully examine their contents, study surviving papyrus fragments in all their multiform messiness, and try to visualize without judgment the Iliad known to Plato and Aeschines. The attested multiforms of the Iliad give us an opportunity to know and appreciate a wider range of performance traditions for this remarkable poem than most of us have been taught to do. Read more…
Friday ‘Beholding Beauty’ Café
Beauty is all around us, and some of it is extraordinary. It takes many forms, and many of us define it in different ways. Saint Thomas Aquinas defined beauty as that which pleases upon being seen.
But Philosopher Mortimer Adler took a wider view.
Your definition of beauty might differ from that of Saint Thomas of Aquinas or Mortimer Adler, and that’s OK. This week on the Friday Café let’s talk about what you find beautiful.
