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~ (n): An office or position that provides its occupant with an outstanding opportunity to speak out on any issue.

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Tag Archives: Rome

The Top 5 Posts from the Greeks and the Romans in 2013

08 Wednesday Jan 2014

Posted by jrbenjamin in History, Philosophy

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

2013, Ancient Greece, General Philosophy, Greek History, review, Roman History, Rome, The Top 5 Posts from the Greeks and the Romans in 2013, Top 10

Greek Bust

The top 5, in order:

1. Partying with the Greeks by Thomas Cahill (from Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter)

I think any twenty-first century American could be forgiven for reading Cahill’s version of the Greeks and their symposia with a certain amount of identification. On a more personal level, the reflections of Archilochus accord with many of the transient, recurring thoughts and melancholic moods I’ve had while leaving parties in the early hours of the morning.

2. The Odyssey Home by Homer (from The Odyssey)

During a year in which I read heavily about war and its million unseen impacts, especially those which are felt at home, Homer’s Odyssey provided, among other things, insight into some eternal truths about military conflict. While the opening stave is by no means the strongest section of the text, it is probably the best summary of the Odyssey’s basic plot line and themes. It’s also a stark, dramatic introduction to Odysseus, one of the great heroes in fiction.

3. The Discourses of Epictetus by Arrian (from The Handbook of Epictetus)

A stirring argument for two distinctly Aristotelian insights: practice moderation in all things and make the most of your days. These exhortations are especially noteworthy when one considers the guy speaking them was born a slave.

4. Do Not Act as If You Were Going to Live Ten Thousand Years by Marcus Aurelius (from The Meditations)

This is nothing you haven’t read before, though it’s still essential, because in addition to bering one of the first to say it, Marcus Aurelius was also one of the best. It’s especially worth noting his nod to Heraclitus in the image of time as a river that is forever flowing.

5. Friends with Socrates by Xenophon (from Memorabilia)

It’s amusing to read an epistemic breakdown of something as delicate and natural as friendship. Still, Socrates’s voice here is at its most eccentric and convincing, as he explains how exactly relationships with others can come to result in non-zero sum paradigms.

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Eager for Slavery

11 Tuesday Jun 2013

Posted by jrbenjamin in Freedom, History, Political Philosophy, Politics

≈ Comments Off on Eager for Slavery

Tags

Augustus, Barack Obama, Caligula, Freedom, George W. Bush, Gore Vidal, history, politics, PRISM, Rome, slavery, the Patriot Act, The Roman empire, Tiberius, US-984XN

Tiberius“The only Roman emperor I wholeheartedly admire is Tiberius.

He was a brilliant politician, a brilliant administrator, a man of state and of the people. He was somebody who was meant to govern the Roman Empire. When Augustus died, or was murdered, Tiberius became emperor, as the succession was working then. And immediately the Senate and people of Rome sent him an overall mandate, a carte blanche, saying that to anything he proposed — as the emperor living on the Palatine hill — they would automatically concur and accept. He was already a semi-divinity in their eyes. That had started with the death of Augustus who had been deified…

And I found out what Tiberius’s response had been to the Senate. He sent back a message — because they were very upset that he didn’t respond immediately with a million thanks — that said, ‘I cannot accept this blanket compliance with anything that might come from me on Palatine Hill here. Suppose that I go mad, or mad with power, or corrupt. Suppose there has been a coup in the palace and somebody else is in charge and you don’t know about it. Would you still want the word of the emperor to be automatic law?’

And they sent back word, ‘Yes, Tiberius. You are the law, all power is with you. Everything that you send us will be accepted and then made law.’ Well, he sent it back with the same objections.

They went on and on for about three or four times and he was getting nowhere with the Senate and they were getting above their station which he was quick to remind them: it would be his decision and his decision was no. After all, they lived through despots just before he came to the throne. Did they want that again? And they said, ‘We beg you, great emperor,’ and so on. He realized he was getting nowhere with them and he said, ‘I accept your folly but I can only make one obiter dicta. And that is how eager you are to be slaves.’

That to me is the United States today: eager for slavery.”

Gore Vidal

__________

Gore Vidal, speaking in response to a prompting about the passage of the USA Patriot Act in 2001.

The recent exposure of the Obama administration’s clandestine data collection apparatus, called US-984XN, or PRISM, would have (I’m sure) inspired Vidal — with his characteristic venom and vitriol — to bring up the case of Tiberius one more time. It was one of the anecdotes he reached for most often, and one which should be on our minds today.

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Do Not Act As If You Were Going to Live Ten Thousand Years

07 Sunday Oct 2012

Posted by jrbenjamin in Philosophy

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

C.S. Lewis, ethics, Jorge Luis Borges, Marcus Aurelius, Mortality, posterity, Rome, stoicism, The Meditations, Time

Marcus Aurelius“Men seek retreats for themselves, houses in the country, at the seashore, and in the mountains; and you tend to desire such things very much. But this is a characteristic of the most common sort of men, for it is in your power whenever you will to choose to retreat into yourself. For nowhere either with more quiet or more freedom from trouble does a man retreat than into his own soul, particularly when he has within him such thoughts that by looking into them he is immediately perfectly tranquil; and I affirm that tranquillity is nothing other than the proper ordering of the mind.

Do not act as if you were going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over you. While you live, while it is in your power, be good.

How much trouble he avoids who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks, but only to what he does himself, that it may be just and pure; or as Agathon says, do not consider the depraved morals of others, but cling to the straight and narrow path without deviating from it.

He who has a powerful desire for posthumous fame does not consider that every one of those who remember him will himself also die very soon; then again also they who have succeeded them, until the whole remembrance shall have been extinguished as it is transmitted through men who foolishly admire and then perish. But suppose that those who will remember are even immortal, and that the remembrance will be immortal, what good will this do you?

Time is like a river made up of the events which happen, and a violent stream; for as soon as a thing has been seen, it is carried away, and another comes in its place, and this will be carried away too.”

Marcus Aurelius and Horse

__________

From Book Four of Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.

A good friend from college, MS, often carries The Meditations in his backpack or back pocket, occasionally glancing at the thin and worn volume whenever he has a spare minute. On a lazy day last Spring, I asked him about the book, and he handed it to me, directing my attention to several dog-eared pages and marked passages — words that are nearly flawless in their logic and stoicism.

It’s impressive that Marcus Aurelius wrote The Meditations in his spare time. He was a statesmen; his philosophical reflections — which espouse self-discipline, virtue, and ethical reflection — came from private moments which he snatched away from a public life. He wrote this in the year 167 CE.

Marcus Aurelius’s understanding of posterity, of the uselessness of being remembered beyond death by men who will themselves die, calls to mind C.S. Lewis’s crisp observation that, “All that is not eternal is eternally useless.”

I especially like the final sentence which analogizes time as a river. It was echoed some eighteen centuries later in Borges’s unforgettable line:

“Time is the substance I am made of. Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river…”

Note: I haven’t been writing anything original for this blog for the past week or so, and that’s because I’ve been swamped with writing work for my day job (as a grad student). So recently I’ve just been putting quotes and commentary on here. I apologize for this: at least for now you’re stuck with the words of much greater men.

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