Author: Quintus Curtius

You Have No Right To Turn Away (Podcast)

Quintus Curtius Podcast , , ,

In an 1842 letter to Ralph Waldo Emerson, the Scottish writer Thomas Carlyle chastised Emerson, saying, “A man has no right to say to his generation, turning away from it, ‘Be Damned!’ It is the whole past and the whole future, this same cotton-spinning, dollar-hunting, canting and shrieking, very wretched generation of ours. Come back into it, I tell you.” What did he mean by this? And what importance does Carlyle’s admonition have for us today? It turns out that it has a great deal of importance. We discuss.

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The Loss Of The “Boston,” Which Was Burned By Lightning

Quintus Curtius History , ,

No one should doubt the extraordinarily destructive power of lightning.  A dramatic illustration of this power occurred in 1830, when the packet ship Boston was hit by a bolt of lightning in the Atlantic and burned to the waterline, with the loss of one unfortunate passenger. 

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The Expedition Of Antoine d’Entrecasteaux

Quintus Curtius History, Travel & Exploration ,

The French naval officer and explorer Antoine Bruni d’Entrecasteaux was born at Aix-en-Provence in 1739.  He enlisted in the French Navy in 1754; but he must have shown promise to his superiors, for they granted him an officer’s commission two years later. 

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A Bad Omen At Sea Portends Disaster

Quintus Curtius History , , ,

The following story is found within the pages of an 1840 volume entitled The Book of Shipwrecks and Narratives of Maritime Discoveries and the Most Popular Voyages.  The narrator of the tale, as seems to have been the custom in those days when relating first-hand accounts, has omitted some specific details, such as the ship’s name, the dates, and the identities of major protagonists.   

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The Aftermath Of Battle (Podcast)

Quintus Curtius Podcast , , ,

In this podcast I describe unforgettable images that have emerged from the aftermaths of certain battles. We discuss Livy’s description of the battlefield after Cannae, a scene in Dante, and an anecdote from the American Civil War.

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A Literary Review Of “Stratagems”

Quintus Curtius Current News

A literary review of the new translation of Stratagems appeared on the Classical Wisdom substack on October 6, 2025. The review is entitled Rome’s Lost Art of War.

In The Same Meadow (Podcast)

Quintus Curtius Podcast , , ,

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

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When The Sleeper Wakes

Quintus Curtius Literature, Thought ,

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.

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The Millennium Challenge Of 2002

Quintus Curtius Thought ,

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. 

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A Miraculous Escape From Certain Death, And Retribution

Quintus Curtius History , ,

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 witness to the events.  This discretion seems to be consistent with the regular practice of the era. 

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