One of Poe’s lesser-known stories, The Domain of Arnheim, seems to offer his theory of aesthetics. I say “seems to,” because the dream-like quality of the story leaves the reader with more than a residue of ambiguity.
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More futility than nobility is found in the wars of the emperor Justinian. His capable general Belisarius reconquered Africa and Italy, humbling the strutting pride of the Vandals and Goths; but these fugacious victories only hastened the West’s final ruin.
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Edgar Allan Poe’s short story The Sphinx is not one that readers may be immediately familiar with. Despite having been composed in 1850, its lesson resonates powerfully in the age of social media and unrelenting news cycles.
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In 1870 an obscure French army officer and military theorist named Charles Jean Jacques Joseph Ardant du Picq died from wounds he received during an engagement of the Franco-Prussian War.
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Readers may not be aware that one of the meanings of the word levee is an assemblage of visitors before a sovereign. It was in this sense of the word that Benjamin Franklin composed a short but pointed commentary on an Old Testament parable from the Book of Job, which he entitled “The Levee.”
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The fecund pen of Benjamin Franklin has conveyed, in the realm of personal and professional advice, numberless treasures to posterity. Recently, while engaged in research for an upcoming translation project, I was directed to an old volume of Franklin’s writings. In it appeared the short composition presented below.
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Ibn Khallikan’s Biographical Dictionary contains an entry (III.68) for one Abu Bakr Al Suli, who is described as an accomplished scholar, biographer, and enthusiast of the game of chess. He was so good at this game, we are told, that his name entered the roll of Arabic proverbs in the saying, “He plays chess like Al Suli.”
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The noted jurisprudent, polymath, political scientist, and theologian Ali Ibn Muhammad Ibn Habib (علي إبن محمد إبن حبيب) was a native of Basra, Iraq, and lived from about A.D. 974 to 1058. He is more commonly known by the name Al-Mawardi (الماوردي).
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There is a saying referenced in Cicero’s Academica (I.5) that touches on our practical inability to give instruction to power. The reference is as follows:
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An enigmatic story is contained in Ibn Khallikan’s biographical summary of the life of the seventh century Basran poet Ibn Mufarrigh. The story is one of the few times that the biographer, speaking of himself in the first person, relates an incident connected with his own life.
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Quintus Curtius 
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