Sir Charles Wager served as Britain’s First Lord of the Admiralty from 1733 to 1742. He had a long and distinguished naval career, both at sea and ashore; and it will be useful for us to relate an anecdote from his early life that discloses much about his character and fortitude. The story that follows is found in the 1840 volume The Book of Shipwrecks and Narratives of Maritime Discoveries and the Most Popular Voyages.
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The tale of the Persian nobleman Zopyrus appears in the third book of Herodotus, from chapter 150 to 160. We will relate it here, with no justification beyond the insight it may provide on human nature.
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Recent events have encouraged, or should have encouraged, some reflection on general principles of conflict. In this podcast, we propose ten of them.
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We have previously reviewed the best movies of the 1970s, 80s, 90s, and the first two decades of the new millennium. Until now I have hesitated to go further back in time; it did not seem to me that the 1960s was a particularly grand decade for film, at least not when compared to the remarkable artistic efflorescence that the 1970s represented. I have now realized how wrong I was. The 1960s laid the cinematic foundation for the 70s and 80s, and its influence is still felt today. Counterculture was only one aspect of the 1960s, perhaps not even its most important aspect. Conventions were being tested and revised, boundaries were being pushed and exceeded, and a new mood began to descend on the culture. It would take years for this new mood to find its full fruition. If we appreciate the movies of the 1970s and 1980s, we must thank the filmmakers of the 1960s for pointing the way to a new ethos.
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I had the privilege of doing a recent interview with Ms. Anya Leonard of Classical Wisdom, a publication that focuses on classical learning and education. The interview can be seen here:
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In this podcast we discuss love, sloth, and free will in the context of Canto 18 of Dante’s Purgatorio. What is the nature of love, and how does it affect our souls? What is the true meaning of sloth? What place does free will have in our lives? We explore these questions.
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The following crime story is found in an issue of William Evans Burton’s The Gentleman’s Magazine from 1839 (Vol. IV, January—July). It appears under the title “Unpublished Passages in the Life of Vidocq, the French Minister of Police. No. V: The Strange Discovery.” “Vidocq” refers to Eugène-François Vidocq (1775—1857), the French criminalist and investigator who is considered the father of the the Sûreté Nationale, France’s first criminal investigative agency.
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If someone were to ask me why I read history, my reply would be in three words: solace, advice, and examples for our edification. Let me explain further.
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Poetry is not the “draw” it once was. In the nineteenth century, it was relatively common for poetic works to be taught in schools, to be memorized in whole or in part, and to be the subject of public readings. No longer. One would today be hard-pressed to name any modern poets who have achieved the same level of notoriety that successful writers of prose have attained. We no longer hear of poets commemorating notable events or celebrating public figures; school children are not required to memorize verses; and a general air of archaism seems to hover over the literary form. What is produced seems bereft of recognizable meter, allure, or skill in creation.
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In the thirty-fourth canto of Dante’s Inferno, our intrepid tourists Dante and Virgil find themselves at the very bottom of Hell’s ninth circle, known as Judecca, a name derived from Judas Iscariot. With his enthusiasm for classification and categories, Dante has given us names for the different parts of the ninth circle, in which are housed particular types of traitors: Caina (for traitors to family), Antenora (for traitors to country), Ptolomaea (for betrayers of guests), and Judecca (for traitors to benefactors).
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Quintus Curtius 
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