ARTICLES ARCHIVE

 

You can find a complete listing of all the articles on this site here. They are listed in reverse chronological order, and are all clickable links. Twenty-five articles are displayed per page, with the publication date included. To find older articles, click on the page numbers at the bottom.

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  • In The Same Meadow (Podcast)

    In this podcast we take a quote from Seneca, discuss its meaning, and apply it to some modern life lessons.

  • When The Sleeper Wakes

    We are told that the word dystopia first entered the lexicon in 1868, when John Stuart Mill used it in a parliamentary speech.  The first dystopian novel is somewhat open to debate, but many consider H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine, first published in 1895, to be a strong candidate.

  • The Millennium Challenge Of 2002

    In 2000, the U.S. Congress proposed a detailed joint-service war game that came to be called “Millenium Challenge 2002,” or, in military parlance, MC02.  The idea was a sound one.  Rapid technological and doctrinal changes in the preceding decades had generated uncertainty about the U.S. military’s ability to respond to a sudden crisis. 

  • A Miraculous Escape From Certain Death, And Retribution

    This incredible story is found in the pages of The Book of Shipwrecks, Narratives of Maritime Discoveries, and the Most Popular Voyages, which was published in Boston in 1840.  I relate it as it is described therein.  Specific dates and names have been omitted, not by myself, but by the original author, who was a…

  • Few Are Those Who Follow The Man, But Many Are Those Who Follow His Fortune

    Around 1440, the Italian humanist Poggio Bracciolini composed an interesting dialogue entitled On the Unhappiness of Leaders (De Infelicitate Principum).  It is styled on the classical model, in which notable figures debate the relative merits of different propositions. 

  • Who Frontinus Was, Why He Is Important, And Why You Should Read Him

    I once heard someone pose the question, “Why didn’t the Greeks or Romans produce a military theorist like Sun Tzu?”  The answer to this question is that they did, in fact, produce a theorist just as profound—arguably more profound—than the great Chinese sage.  The problem is that you’ve never heard of him.  His name is…

  • The New Translation Of Frontinus’s “Stratagems” Is Now Available

    Fortress of the Mind Publications is very pleased to announce that Quintus Curtius’s new annotated translation of Frontinus’s Stratagems has been released. It is currently available in paperback and Kindle editions. The hardcover edition will be available very shortly, and the audiobook edition is expected in early November.

  • The Story Of Akulka’s Husband (Podcast)

    In this podcast we discuss the story of “Akulka’s Husband,” which is found in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s novel The House of the Dead. What does the story mean, and what conclusions can be drawn from it?

  • When Someone Else Has Control Of Your Work, Problems Inevitably Arise (Podcast)

    When you give control of your work to third parties, you must take care that they do not alter, corrupt, or destroy what you have created. We use the story of the development and issuance of the M16 rifle in the U.S. military in the early 1960s as a tragic example.

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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.

  • 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…

  • The Colt Night Cobra (Video)

    In this video we discuss the Colt Night Cobra. Those of you who are revolver enthusiasts may enjoy it.

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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.

  • 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…

  • 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.

  • 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,…

  • 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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Original copy of Cicero’s De Officiis (On Duties) published in Holland in 1642.  From the collection of Fortress of the Mind.