Winston Churchill, like most statesmen, was known to have little patience for pettifoggery and pirouetting around a problem. His mind instinctively sought the core of a problem, and was able to slash through brambles and thickets to find it. His biographer William Manchester wrote, “[He] cared little for obtuse political or social theories; he was a man of action: state the problem, find a solution, and solve the problem.”
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Philo of Alexandria wrote a relatively obscure essay entitled On the Prayers And Curses Uttered by Noah When He Became Sober. His translator has fortunately shortened this unwieldy title to the compact De Sobrietate, or On Sobriety. It contains the following passage of importance:
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The philosopher Philo of Alexandria relates the following anecdote in his short treatise On the Life of Moses (II.23.178). The prophet Moses, we are told, had appointed his brother to the office of high priest. His decision had been based on his brother’s merits, but there was inevitably some grumbling by people who believed that the appointment was the result of familial favoritism.
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We do not know the precise location of Charlemagne’s birthplace. He donned the crown at the ripe age of twenty-nine in 771 A.D. upon the death of Carloman II. From that moment he became embroiled in an almost ceaseless series of military campaigns designed both to expand his frontiers and safeguard them; in this turbulent age, kings needed to fight as well as administrate. Historians tell us that he undertook around fifty-three campaigns, and personally commanded most of them.
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The chronicler known to posterity as Notker the Stammerer (“Notker Balbulus”) was born in what is now Switzerland around A.D. 840. He seems to have come from a family that had the means to provide him with the best education his era could offer. We find him in adulthood as a monk at the monastery at St. Gall, where he was able to exercise his considerable musical talents in composing verses and hymns.
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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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Quintus Curtius 
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