Thought

The Banners Of The King Of Hell Go Forth

Quintus Curtius Thought , , ,

In the thirty-fourth canto of Dante’s Inferno, our intrepid tourists Dante and Virgil find themselves at the very bottom of Hell’s ninth circle, known as Judecca, a name derived from Judas Iscariot.  With his enthusiasm for classification and categories, Dante has given us names for the different parts of the ninth circle, in which are housed particular types of traitors:  Caina (for traitors to family), Antenora (for traitors to country), Ptolomaea (for betrayers of guests), and Judecca (for traitors to benefactors).

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The Zero Sum Game

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I read recently a fascinating tale of nautical survival. In 1965, six teenage Tongan boys were shipwrecked on the uninhabited island of Ata in the Tongan Archipelago of Polynesia.  After stealing a boat, they had encountered a storm which deposited them on the island without any means of communication with the outside world. 

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Ne Plus Ultra

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Canto XXVI of Dante’s Inferno takes place in the eighth bolgia (ditch) of the Eighth Circle of Hell.  Here reside those guilty of providing fraudulent or deceitful counsel.  In life, these souls used their persuasive abilities to harm or destroy others; and, in keeping with Dante’s attention to the principle of contrapasso, their punishment in Hell fits their crimes during life.  As they once used their tongues for malicious speech, so in the afterlife are their souls “tongued” forever with flame. 

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Deep Memories Yield No Epitaphs

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Chapter 23 of Moby-Dick is entitled “The Lee Shore.”  It offers some philosophical commentary on the need for travel and direct experience.  Melville reflects on the restless, roaming nature of a sailor named Bulkington: 

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Nowhere Is Rome Less Known Than At Rome

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In a letter written to Giovanni Colonna in 1337 or 1341—scholars are uncertain of the precise date—Petrarch says as follows:

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Press Your White Hairs With A Helmet

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In book nine of the Aeneid, the Rutulian warrior Numanus Remulus makes a famous declamation, in which he speaks the following lines:

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When The Sleeper Wakes

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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

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

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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. 

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