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Baklushin’s Story
In 1849, the young Fyodor Dostoyevsky was arrested for anti-tsarist activities and sentenced to death. His sentence was commuted by the tsar at the last instant, and he was instead given a four-year term in a prison camp in Siberia. From this shattering experience came his semi-autobiographical novel The House of the Dead, which was…
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When A Neighbor’s House Burns, Neglected Fires Tend To Gain Strength (Podcast)
In this podcast, we discuss the real meaning of a few verses from the poet Horace (Epistles I.18.84-85). The quote is: “When a neighbor’s house burns, neglected fires are in the habit of gaining in strength.” These lines are important, and merit comment. We are all connected, and the evil that happens to one man…
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How To Have Willpower (Book Review)
August of 2025 will see the publication of Michael Fontaine’s How to Have Willpower: An Ancient Guide To Not Giving In. The volume is a modern translation and interpretation of two classical texts: Plutarch’s essay On Dysopia and Prudentius’s poem Psychomachia. Very roughly speaking, these works discuss how to manage our emotional states and overcome…
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The Tyranny Of Time
The dystopian science fiction film In Time (2011) offers a fascinating and morbid premise. In the future, we are told, time is the ultimate commodity. Everyone is genetically engineered so that the aging process stops at the twenty-fifth year; after this, each person has only one more year of life. A numeric counter is visible…
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The Role Of Chance In Human Affairs: The Loss Of The “Kent”
We will relate the terrible loss of the ship Kent, which sailed from the Downs on February 19, 1825. As a so-called East Indiaman (a merchant vessel trading with the East Indies), the Kent was bound for Bengal in India, and then China. She was a ship of 1,350 tons, and aboard her were 344…
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The Life Of This One, Is As The Death Of That One
The pages of the medieval biographer Ibn Khallikan (II.301) contain the following moral anecdotes related to an obscure poet named Abu Al-Hasan Ibn Bassam (?–A.D. 914), who was known by the surname Al-Bassami.
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Do Not Buy At Such A Price, Only To Regret It
What may at first consideration be an enticing course of action, may take on a much more negative hue after further scrutiny. This was the point of an anecdote related by the Roman writer Aulus Gellius in his Attic Nights (I.8). Although the story is essentially a humorous one, the idea it conveys is one…
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The Colt Night Cobra (Video)
In this video we discuss the Colt Night Cobra. Those of you who are revolver enthusiasts may enjoy it.
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Without Good Leadership, Valor Is Wasted
One of the rules of the nineteenth-century whaling industry was that if a captured whale carcass were lost by its owner, it thereafter became the property of the first ship to recover it. After being killed, a whale had to be secured to the side of the whale ship, or towed with ropes; and it…
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The Tale Of Paches The Athenian
In the 1998 film Fallen, one of the characters intones an ominous motto: “What goes around, really goes around.” This is a more emphatic version of the old adage, “What comes around, goes around.” In both cases the meaning is the same: he who spreads iniquity and evil, will eventually be himself visited by iniquities…
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The Man Of Virtue Is A Quiet Insurgent
It is tempting to believe that our current social problems are uniquely modern, and that they have no analogues to conditions of previous ages. A review of the thoughtful writings of the past shows that this belief is far from the truth. Consider, for example, this comment from the Latin dialogue Antonius, which was composed…
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The Greatest Movies Of 2010 To 2020
I’ve been straining my memory for the past week in an attempt to articulate a dominant ethos of the 2010s. Does one exist? It was a decidedly elusive decade. Our initial impression was that it blended seamlessly with the first decade of the new millennium, and never really emerged with its own distinctive palette.
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The Greatest Movies Of 2000 To 2010
In previous articles here, I’ve submitted my candidates for the best films of the 1970s, the 1980s, and the 1990s. So the laws of natural progression compel me to move forward with the next decade. Few would argue that the 70s, 80s, and 90s had their own distinctive flavor. But can the same be said…
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The 2024 Blued Colt Python And The Smith & Wesson Model 27: Impressions And Opinion
For a change of pace, in this video I discuss my impressions of the new blued Colt Python and the classic Smith & Wesson Model 27.
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The Palomares Incident
We often underestimate the ease with which terrible disasters can accompany our efforts and enterprises. Vigilance tends to lapse with routine; and with time, even the most dangerous cargoes may begin to look benign. Any nation wishing to handle nuclear materials enters a kind of pact with the devil: in return for power and prestige,…
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To The Man Of Virtue, All Soil Is Native
There is a line in Statius’s Thebiad (VIII.320) which reads, Omne homini natale solum. This means, “All soil is native to man.” I think it is appropriate to interpret soil in an abstract form, and understand it as signifying land. He does not mean just any land, but terra incognita: the vast expense of the…
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Sometimes Winning Is Not Enough (Podcast)
Sometimes even a decisive victory is not enough. The victory may create entirely new landscapes, obstacles, and challenges that test you to the ultimate limit. There is no such thing as reaching a safe “end zone.” We discuss the Battle of Cunaxa in 401 B.C., where the Greek mercenaries of Cyrus won the battle, but…
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The Books Of Numa Pompilius
The defilement of a nation’s cultural heritage is among the most odious of crimes. But the offense is especially noxious, and finally unforgivable, when committed by national leaders for their own personal aggrandizement. The past is always vulnerable to the malicious exigencies of the present. An illustrative example is found in the pages of Roman…
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Decius Iubellius Has His Appointment With Fate
Philosophers and theologians have often pondered whether, or to what extent, wicked deeds are punished within the lifetime of a malefactor. Some maintain that the consequences of evil actions can never be avoided, and that, sooner or later, divine retribution will be visited upon him who offends the gods of justice. Others take a different…
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Coming In Late 2025: A New, Annotated Translation Of Frontinus’s “Stratagems”
I expect to publish a new, annotated translation of the Roman military classic Stratagems. It will contain a detailed explanatory introduction, hundreds of footnotes, a commentary on the text, a bibliography, and an extensive index.
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Two Amusing Anecdotes From The Siege Of Charleston In 1780
In 1822, Alexander Garden, an aide-de-camp of Major General Nathanael Greene, published a fascinating work titled Anecdotes of the Revolutionary War in America, With Sketches in Character. Some of the stories contained in the volume are based on Garden’s own experiences, or were conveyed to him personally by veterans of the conflict. Out of a…
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A Tale Of Chivalry From The Revolutionary War
A touching example of battlefield chivalry is found in the august pages of Alexander Garden’s Anecdotes of the Revolutionary War in America. This forgotten work, through interviews with veterans and knowledgeable parties, was published in 1822, and compiles a great number of stories connected with the war and its combatants. One of them we will…
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The Enmity Of Poets Is The Worst Of Acquisitions
Buried in the learned and fecund pages of Ibn Khallikan (IV.43) is an amusing tale of an impoverished poet of medieval Sicily. Who will object to its retelling?
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The Musa Brothers Confirm The Measurement Of The Earth’s Circumference
Enthusiasts of the history of science are familiar with the ingenious method used by the ancient Greek scientist Eratosthenes to measure the Earth’s circumference. Briefly described, he measured the angle of a shadow cast by a stake driven into the ground at midday in the Egyptian city of Alexandria. He compared this to the fact…
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Purgation
The Roman writer Aulus Gellius (X.8) relates an interesting anecdote about his country’s military punishments in olden times. He says that if a soldier committed some offense, he would be “bled”: that is, he would be subjected to a ritualistic opening of a vein and be forced to lose some blood.
Original copy of Cicero’s De Officiis (On Duties) published in Holland in 1642. From the collection of Fortress of the Mind.
Quintus Curtius 
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