The defilement of a nation’s cultural heritage is among the most odious of crimes. But the offense is especially noxious, and finally unforgivable, when committed by national leaders for their own personal aggrandizement. The past is always vulnerable to the malicious exigencies of the present. An illustrative example is found in the pages of Roman history.
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Philosophers and theologians have often pondered whether, or to what extent, wicked deeds are punished within the lifetime of a malefactor. Some maintain that the consequences of evil actions can never be avoided, and that, sooner or later, divine retribution will be visited upon him who offends the gods of justice. Others take a different position, and hold that punishment for the commission of foul acts is a purely random occurrence. Some men, they say, arrive at their appointment with Fate, while others seem to lead charmed lives, escaping justice while walking through life’s raindrops. As for which view is correct, no man can know. For my own part I tend to subscribe to the belief that wicked deeds always exact a certain price from their authors. That price may be postponed, or deferred, or placed in arrears, or hidden from the view of others; but the levy nevertheless weighs on the soul of the malefactor, and steadily corrodes it from within.
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I expect to publish a new, annotated translation of the Roman military classic Stratagems. It will contain a detailed explanatory introduction, hundreds of footnotes, a commentary on the text, a bibliography, and an extensive index.
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In 1822, Alexander Garden, an aide-de-camp of Major General Nathanael Greene, published a fascinating work titled Anecdotes of the Revolutionary War in America, With Sketches in Character. Some of the stories contained in the volume are based on Garden’s own experiences, or were conveyed to him personally by veterans of the conflict. Out of a great many fascinating and forgotten morsels, I have selected two for the reader’s enjoyment.
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A touching example of battlefield chivalry is found in the august pages of Alexander Garden’s Anecdotes of the Revolutionary War in America. This forgotten work, through interviews with veterans and knowledgeable parties, was published in 1822, and compiles a great number of stories connected with the war and its combatants. One of them we will present here.
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Buried in the learned and fecund pages of Ibn Khallikan (IV.43) is an amusing tale of an impoverished poet of medieval Sicily. Who will object to its retelling?
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Enthusiasts of the history of science are familiar with the ingenious method used by the ancient Greek scientist Eratosthenes to measure the Earth’s circumference. Briefly described, he measured the angle of a shadow cast by a stake driven into the ground at midday in the Egyptian city of Alexandria. He compared this to the fact that, at the same time, a stake located far to the south at Cyene, Egypt cast no shadow at all. Knowing from geometry that alternate interior angels are equal, he was able to calculate the number of degrees on the Earth’s spherical surface between Cyene and Alexandria, and from this, to produce a number for the sphere’s circumference.
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The Roman writer Aulus Gellius (X.8) relates an interesting anecdote about his country’s military punishments in olden times. He says that if a soldier committed some offense, he would be “bled”: that is, he would be subjected to a ritualistic opening of a vein and be forced to lose some blood.
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This podcast is a book review of General Eoin O’Duffy: The Political Life Of An Irish Firebrand, by Jack Traynor. This book is a scholarly but brief political biography of a key figure of Irish politics from the War of Independence through the end of the 1930s. We discuss the book and its subject matter, and venture some thoughts. What does O’Duffy’s life teach us about the influence of character on a man’s fate?
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In December 2024, I had a great conversation with Dr. Massimo Pigliucci, a professor of philosophy at City College in New York City, an evolutionary biologist, a scholar of Greco-Roman practical philosophy, and an authority on Stoicism. He is also the author of How to Be a Stoic and The Quest for Character. We covered a wide range of topics, and the full dialogue can be found in the link below:
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Quintus Curtius 
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