Friday, July 03, 2026
A Rhetorical Question
Mimnermus, fragment 1, line 1 (tr. Douglas E. Gerber):
What life is there, what pleasure without golden Aphrodite?Horace, Epistles 1.6.65-66 (tr. Colin Macleod):
τίς δὲ βίος, τί δὲ τερπνὸν ἄτερ χρυσέης Ἀφροδίτης;
If, as Mimnermus holds, without love and play
there's no enjoyment, live for love and play.
si, Mimnermus uti censet, sine amore iocisque
nil est iucundum, vivas in amore iocisque.
Thursday, July 02, 2026
Bookshelves
"Show Us Your Shelf: Library Special," Antigone (June, 2026), including Elon Musk's bookshelf.
What to Do?
George Bancroft, letter to Francis Lieber (October 29, 1862), quoted by Bruce Catton, Never Call Retreat (Garden City: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1965), p. 25 (our President = Abraham Lincoln):
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How can we reach our President with advice? He is ignorant, self-willed, and is surrounded by men some of whom are almost as ignorant as himself. So we have the dilemma put to us, What to do, when his power must continue two years longer and when the existence of our country may be endangered before he can be replaced by a man of sense. How hard, in order to save the country, to sustain a man who is incompetent.
