The massive obelisk detailing the famous laws of Hammurabi, king of ancient Babylon, begins with a prelude; an opening allusion to ancient Akkadian deities. The gods of Anu, Anunaki, Bel and others who once once ruled over mankind made Hammurabi a great man by blessing the land and the mighty…
Month: September 2019
The Exploration of Beauty in the Greater Hippias
Hippias of Elis was among a half dozen or so principally influential sophists from classical antiquity. He joins the ranks of Protagoras and Gorgias, among others. Surviving accounts of Hippias can be found in Plato’s Protagoras, Hippias Minor, Hippias Major, and Xenophon’s Memorabilia. Apparently Hippias’s main struggle was for self-suffiency, and thus he decided…
Mapping the Platonic Dialogues
Attempts to successfully map the Platonic/Socratic dialogues as a whole have been too numerous to count. Should the apocryphal dialogues be included? Should the dialogues be organized by thematic relationships? Should they be organized according to historic periods in Socrates’s life? The first and most memorable organization of Plato’s dialogues…
The Absurd World of Pantagruel
There is a long tradition of outrageous satirical writing in Western literature. One need only flip through the pages of Chaucer, Cervantes, or Swift to find analog to the notorious and infamous writings of Rabelais. After recently reading the Screech translation of Pantagruel, I was struck by the anarchic chaos…