Plutarch’s lives of Phocion and Cato the Younger can be read as case studies on the contrasting features of moderation and extremism.
The successful, rational leader will know when to compromise and seek settlements; the extremist will not, and thereby brings himself and others to ruin.
Men take their masculinity too lightly. That is, they do not value that which makes them men. They are too eager to minimize its power, to dull its sheen, and to snuff out its distinct phosphorescence.
What one does not value, is not safeguarded from outside attack.
[A reader of Stoic Paradoxes contacted me recently and shared some of his experiences and adventures gained from many years of translating. I told him that his ideas would make for a great guest post here.
His language is expertise is Japanese, a language that I am not proficient in. But it is interesting that translators all face the same challenges, more or less, regardless of the language they are working in.
His comments highlight one of the things I mentioned in a recent article about translating. It is the idea that you sometimes need to set things aside, and come back to them later, with a new and refreshed perspective.
His article appears below.]
I was having a chat with some friends recently about some aspects of life. It gave me the opportunity to express my thoughts on one or two subjects. Let me tell you more about it.
Continue readingHere is a morsel to chew on.
I was reading a bit of Plutarch this morning and came across a passage that is worth sharing. It is from the Life of Timoleon (6):
We take so much for granted today about printed books. The wisdom of the ages can be captured and preserved for costs that are so low as to almost negligible. Save for the surfeit of information that currently exists, the modern man has no excuse not to be reasonably acquainted with his heritage.
It was not always so. Before the advent of the printing press, books circulated in manuscript form. They had to be copied by hand, and this was laborious and costly. In the ancient world, manuscript books were relatively cheap and plentiful; but papyrus became unavailable from Egypt during the Middle Ages, leaving expensive vellum as the only available medium for “mass” writing.
My third book, Stoic Paradoxes, is now available on Amazon.
It is offered in both Kindle edition and in paperback. Click on the cover image above.
I wanted to use this post to explain what the book is about, and why it is an important addition to the literature on Stoicism.
I have a close friend who knows a great deal about the game of baseball. I always defer to his knowledge in discussions of the sport. We were recently talking about the relative merits of modern ball players when compared to the great figures of earlier generations. It is a debate that has no end, of course, but it is still entertaining.
Readers no doubt are familiar with Jack London. One of the great 20th century American novelists and short-story writers, he is justly famous for his harrowing tales of survival and courage, often set in exotic locales like the Klondike, the South Seas, and the abysses of urban squalor.
He lived a life that was as adventurous as one of the characters in his stories. Before becoming a full-time writer, he had knocked about as a vagrant, an oyster pirate, a seaman, a gold prospector, and most bitterly as an industrial slave-laborer.
I have recently finished reading Simon Murray’s memoir of his life in the French Foreign Legion, which is titled simply Legionnaire: Five Years in the French Foreign Legion. First published in 1978, it was recently reissued in 2006 as a mass market paperback.
Quintus Curtius 
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