Honorius, who manages a blog dealing with themes of history, virtue, and philosophy, has just published a beautiful Arabic translation of my essay, Seven Pillars of a Noble Youth. It is very much appreciated.
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The historian Edward Gibbon’s autobiography, entitled Memoirs of my Life and Writings (1796), contains the following passage:
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Max Hastings’s excellent history, Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy, discusses one revealing engagement that took place between American and North Vietnamese forces in late March of 1971. This action—a ferocious assault on a remote firebase named Mary Ann—merits further reflection, I think, and we will give it its due here.
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The New England regional author Edward Rowe Snow (1902—1982) related a strange and fascinating piece of Nantucket lore in his 1979 book Tales of Terror and Tragedy. Since the volume is long out of print, I will retell it here.
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If we are to understand the mind of early medieval man, we must attempt to place ourselves in his situation and circumstances. It is difficult for us, having been reared in an age of relative peace and prosperity, to grasp the degree to which Western Europe had succumbed to chaos, warfare, and barbarism after Roman civil authority collapsed in the fourth and fifth centuries.
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In 1917 there was published in Germany a book entitled Deductions from the World War (Folgerungen aus dem Weltkriege). It was an analysis of lessons learned from the previous four years of intense fighting, and its author was a man named Baron Hugo Von Freytag-Loringhoven. At the time he was a lieutenant-general, and he was working as the deputy chief of the German Imperial Staff. An English translation of his book appeared in 1918.
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The Swiss orientalist and explorer Johann Ludwig Burckhardt crossed the cataracts of the Nile in 1813 and was intending to penetrate into the heart of unknown Nubia. Near a place called Jebel Lamoule, his Arab guide dismounted from his camel and approached the intrepid European; his intention was to practice on him a time-honored extortion ritual much observed in that region when escorting foreigners. The ritual was called “preparing the grave for the traveler.”
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The ancient Greek statesman and general Alcibiades once likened his career to the lives of the mythical half-brothers Castor and Pollux.[1] These two figures are together called the Dioscuri, and they are attended by many stories and fables, some of which are contradictory or ambiguous. According to myth, the Dioscuri are alive and dead on alternate days. Homer says:
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The Roman writer Aelian, in his Varia Historia (X.5) credits the following parable to Aesop the Phrygian, although I have never heard it mentioned in collections of his stories. He said that a pig squeals when it is touched by man for a good reason: it does not produce fur or milk for human use, as a goat or sheep, and has nothing to offer except its own meat.
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The Roman writer Aelian, in his Varia Historia (III.44), conveys the following anecdote. Three young friends, he says, were traveling to Delphi in order to consult the oracle. Along the way, they lucklessly encountered some bandits. In the melee that followed, some of the robbers were killed.
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