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Some Life Advice From Ibn Zafar Al-Siqilli (“The Sicilian”)
In this podcast we discuss some life advice offered by the medieval Arabic political theorist and philosopher Ibn Zafar in his treatise, Consolation of the Ruler Amid the Hostility of His Subjects. I’ve written several articles before about him that can be found on this site (use the search box in the upper right corner),…
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The Travels Of Dr. Thomas Shaw
He remains one of the most impressive of the forgotten European explorers of the Middle East. He was born in Westmoreland in 1692, and entered Queen’s College at Oxford in 1711. Graduating in 1716, he accepted a position with a British commercial post in Algiers; this gave him the opportunity for a meandering journey through…
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Scipio Puts Down A Mutiny In His Army
There are times in life for calm reflection, and there are also times for ruthless and decisive action. When a man is faced with external danger and is being pressed by a crisis, he must act with speed and decision. The following anecdote, described in Appian’s Spanish Wars (VI.7), demonstrates why Scipio Africanus is eminently…
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Vanity Brings Waste And Ruin
According to his biographer Ibn Khallikan, a Christian physician of Baghdad named Ibn al-Talmid who practiced there around the year 1100 spoke the following words of advice:
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The Five Protecting Companions
Our trusted friend Ibn Muqaffa provides us with the following advice which I have committed to memory:
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The Reality Of The G Manifesto
In this podcast we answer some of the most common questions I’ve received about the G Manifesto. “Who is he?” “What does he do?” “Is he really doing the things he says he’s doing?” We discuss some of the take-away lessons, and then go into some recent tweet readings.
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Coming In 2019: A New Translation Of Cornelius Nepos’s “Lives Of The Great Commanders”
Fortress of the Mind Publications is pleased to announce that 2019 will see the release of the first illustrated, annotated translation of Cornelius Nepos’s Lives of the Great Commanders to appear in modern English.
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Victory On Ice: The US vs. The USSR In The 1980 Winter Olympics
If you’re feeling down and have two hours to spare watching an old sporting event, here is something guaranteed to lift your spirits. It is the hockey game played between the United States and the Soviet Union at the 1980 Olympic Games in Lake Placid, New York. I wanted to post this game for several…
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On Living Near The Ocean
Although I do not live near the ocean now, I grew up in a small town that was close to it. The spirit of place enters imperceptibly into one’s bloodstream; and one gets used to the tang of rotting seaweed, the early morning salt mist, the relentlessly shifting dunes, and the omnipresent screams of the…
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Erasmus Loses All His Money, And Still Triumphs
We have observed many times before in these pages that disaster can often serve as an impetus to growth and eventual victory. This point was reinforced in an interesting story that I recently came across in a biography of the famous humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam.
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The Sword Of Mars
The humanist Poggio Bracciolini wrote a long letter to his friend Niccolo Niccoli in November of 1430. The letter contained the following words:
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People Want To Be Left Alone (Podcast)
In this podcast we talk about how the media deliberately tries to foment discord for its own self-serving purposes, and how this aligns with the purposes of the plutocracy. We compare this ethic to an interesting anecdote related by the Roman historian Priscus that occurred while he was traveling to the court of Attila the…
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Coming Full Circle
As a man hopefully grows in experience and knowledge, he will begin to notice a curious thing. The knowledge that he continues to acquire, and the sights that he continues to see here and there, subtly redirect him back to where he first departed. It is almost as if some grand cosmic joke is at…
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Whether A Man Can Change, And How He May Change
Can a man change, or are his personality traits so fixed that external circumstances are incapable of adjusting them in any significant way? This is a question that finds enthusiastic advocates for both answers. The cynics–or as they prefer to be called, the “realists”–tell us that personality does not change. Our knowledge contracts and expands,…
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The Eloquence of Ali Ibn Al-Athir
Ali Ibn Al-Athir (علي عز الدین بن الاثیر الجزري) was an Arabic historian, poet, and scholar who served for a time under Saladin. Born in 1160 in the city of Jazeera Ibn Omar (the modern Turkish town of Cizre), he received his education there and in Mosul, Iraq. From an early age, he showed an…
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A Humanist Visits The German Baths
The Renaissance humanist Poggio Bracciolini wrote a fascinating letter to his close friend Niccolo Niccoli in May of 1416 while on one of his book-hunting expeditions to remote monasteries Germany. While in Germany he had an opportunity to visit the baths near Kaiserstuhl, and he has left us a detailed description of the experience.
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A G Manifesto Tweet Reading
Who the hell needs poetry readings when we can read the G Manifesto on Twitter (@MichaelPorfirio)?
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Augustine’s “Misericorditer”: Benevolent Severity In Correcting One’s Enemies
I have recently learned of an interesting doctrine articulated by St. Augustine in one of his letters. The letter in question is Epistula 138, and I should describe briefly its context. One of Augustine’s friends was a pagan senator in Rome named Volusian; his mother happened to be a Christian, but he was not. The…
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Age Of Spectacle: Chariot Races, The Hippodrome, And The Four Factions
To understand fully the social environment in which the eastern Roman empire operated, we must have some grasp of the unique culture surrounding Constantinople’s Hippodrome in the centuries that followed the disappearance of the Roman empire in the west. In Byzantium, sport and politics achieved a strange admixture that has no exact historical parallel anywhere…
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The Fragility And Perishability Of Knowledge (Podcast)
In this podcast we discuss how fragile and perishable knowledge can be. We comment on the loss of Latin literature in the West, and the dissipation of the holdings of the Alexandrian library of the Ptolemies. It is clear that even a short period of neglect can result in the loss of a catastrophic quantity…
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Preserving Something For Time To Make Better
Before I explore the main subject of this essay, I wanted to relate a tale about Alexander the Great’s leadership acumen. The historian Arrian relates an event that he believes best distills Alexander’s genius for command. It can be found in VI.26 of his History of Alexander. When Alexander and his army were passing through the…
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Friedrich Schlegel, The Sanskrit Language, And The Beginnings Of Comparative Philology
The great antiquity and depth of Indian civilization had been known to Europe and the Middle East for many centuries; yet the precise contours of Indian advances in mathematics, literature, and philosophy were hidden behind the veils of preconception and confusion. We know that the caliph Harun Al-Rashid, in Baghdad in the 9th century A.D.,…
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Antonio De Ulloa’s Explorations In South America
Antonio de Ulloa y de la Torre-Giral may have been Spain’s greatest explorer of the eighteenth century. The hardships he endured certainly merit his inclusion on any list of that century’s great cultivators of geographic knowledge. He was born in Seville on January 12, 1716; and like many accomplished travelers, he received a thorough education…
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Treachery Ensnares Some, But Is Defeated By Others
Every man who goes about his business must be attuned to the realities of his surroundings. He should not close his eyes to what lies within his field of vision; and he must not delude himself by rationalizing the treacherous intentions of others. The prudent man will not see plots and conspiracies everywhere, for this…
Original copy of Cicero’s De Officiis (On Duties) published in Holland in 1642. From the collection of Fortress of the Mind.
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