Dec 7– From Cicero by "Plutarch" translated by Arthur Hugh Clough

 Some of this sass is in the reading.

Dec 7– From Cicero by Plutarch translated by Arthur Hugh Clough

Summary: Cicero was a wily politician/judge.

Commentary: So the Lives are all paired (it's sometimes titled Parallel Lives). Each set has a Greek and a Roman that were somehow similar, comparable, whatever. Which I knew. What I didn't know is that there's a little essay at the end comparing the two. I've been reading these all year, and generally not super impressed with them, but I wonder if it'd work better if I actually read excerpts from a matched pair and the essay together. That's not generally how 15MAD works, but I think it'd really improve it for this set.

Dec 6– “The Vision of Mirza” and “On Westminster Abbey” (1711) by Joseph Addison

 And The Dutch

Dec 6– “The Vision of Mirza” and “On Westminster Abbey” (1711) by Joseph Addison

Summary: Boring didactic story about how we need to endure life being terrible because heaven is great, followed by whining about monuments.

Commentary: A strong contender for the worst essays of the year. The world would safely be a better place without either one of these.

Dec 5– Poems by Christina Georgina Rossetti (~1850)

 Reading of one of the poems.

Dec 5– Poems by Christina Georgina Rossetti (~1850)

Summary: Poems, mostly about death and remembering.

Commentary: Four shortish poems today, so speed round on each one, plus an overall note as a set. 

Song: This is more or less how I feel about dying. Don't worry about me! Go live your own life.

Remember: I think this is a more reasonable take. I want people to mostly forget about me, but I recognize that they won't, and I think this is healthy balance.

Up-Hill: I guess this is showing range? Very different than the other. 

In the Round Tower at Jhansi: I somehow missed the pistol line the first time I read this, and it's a very different (but still mostly working) poem without it.

I like this little poetry sampler, even as someone who doesn't love poetry. It helps that Christina writes like a human being instead of a generic poetry machine #9001. I think the fact that they're shorter helps. I like some longer poems (semi-abandoned Odyssey series will come back sometime before the end of the year), but shorter is nice (and I think it's hard to keep up poetry over a long stretch without having to do some real stretching to keep the form (or shifting into non-poemish poetry that would do better as narrative).

The first two together form a nice contrasting view of death. Both are healthy in their focus on the living more than the dead, while the first takes it to an almost excessive degree, while the second is more reasonably measured. Just forger about me vs don't worry about me.

Dec 4– From "The Aeneid" by Virgin (19 BC) translated by John Dryden

 The Trailer

Dec 4– From The Aeneid by Virgin (19 BC) translated by John Dryden

Summary: Dido works to seduce Aeneas during a hunt, the gods convince him to leave anyway. 

Commentary: I don't know if it's the translation, the content, or the fact that I'm not familiar with the out of order story, but I enjoy the Aeneid bits a lot less than the Odyssey ones.

Dec 3– Buddhist Writings, translated by Henry Clarke Warren

 Remember the time Bobby Hill was Buddhist?

Dec 3– Buddhist Writings, translated by Henry Clarke Warren

Summary: The Buddha will be born when people live to be 100 (but not 100,000), in the middle-middle of the continent of India, to a high caste (convenient, can't have your religious figure be a peasant), to a perfectly virtuous mother (holy Madonna-whore complex, Batman!) who will die a week after childbirth.

Commentary: Two things jump to mind here:

1. If you put these conditions on the destined king in a fantasy novel, no one would buy it. "People have to live to be older than they do now. But not too old!" He will be born in the middle of the middle of the middle of India (a whole paragraph of middles). To warrior caste parents (that one tracks) and a mom who is absolutely virtuous and perfect (kind of cliché, there, although this might be one of the earliest appearances), who will die a week later (Because barren women are useless, apparently. She gets to keep her couch at least!). Also, the Buddha turns into an elephant and gets unbirthed. Maybe. It's a dream sequence.

2. I had to do math and look up how to do the circle inscribed in a square stuff. The circumference of a circle inscribed in a square is pi times the length of a side (technically it's an oval in a rectangle, but the math for that is just taking the average, which I did). Classical education musing of the evening: How many literature scholars knew that math back then? Could I have figured it out? (It's sort of a right triangle problem, but I doubt I would've figured out to use pi.) Did they all just have formula books sitting around? I want to get one of those engineering references and keep it on my desk. With the formula, it was fairly easy to do the math.

Dec 2– From "Le Morte d’Arthur" by Thomas Malory, edited by William Caxton (1485)

 Castle Anthrax!

Dec 2– From Le Morte d’Arthur by Thomas Malory, edited by William Caxton (1485)

Summary: Galahad escaped the Castle of Maidens, beats up Lancelot and Percivale. Lancelot witnesses a healing, and promises not to bang Guinevere (that's gonna go great), and gets called out.

Commentary: Lancelot gets a pretty severe tongue lashing here: 

Now have I shewed thee why thou art harder than the stone and bitterer than the tree. Now shall I shew thee why thou art more naked and barer than the fig tree. It befell that Our Lord on Palm Sunday preached in Jerusalem, and there He found in the people that all hardness was harboured in them, and there He found in all the town not one that would harbour him. And then He went without the town, and found in midst of the way a fig tree, the which was right fair and well garnished of leaves, but fruit had it none. Then Our Lord cursed the tree that bare no fruit; that betokeneth the fig tree unto Jerusalem, that had leaves and no fruit. So thou, Sir Launcelot, when the Holy Grail was brought afore thee, He found in thee no fruit, nor good thought nor good will, and defouled with lechery. Certes, said Sir Launcelot, all that you have said is true, and from henceforward I cast me, by the grace of God, never to be so wicked as I have been, but as to follow knighthood and to do feats of arms.

God brought you the grail, but then decided you sucked. 

Dec 1– From "Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous" by David Hume (1734)

Dialogue

Dec 1– From "Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous" by David Hume (1734)

Summary: OH MY GOD HUME YOU'RE SO SMART! *INAPPROPRAITELY SEXUAL NOISES*

Commentary: I NEVER HAVE TO READ ONE OF THESE EVER AGAIN!

Hylas and Philonous engage in the classical philosophical dialogue routine of one guy mindlessly agreeing with the other part of the time and being an idiot the rest of the time in order to make whatever point the author wants to without using any actual logic. Here, Hume "seems" (his favorite weasel word, since apparently even he knows this is bullshit) that heat isn't real and that skepticism is bullshit by repeating things that don't actually prove this.

Thanks, Elliot. I sure loved reading this 1700s version of Ben Shapiro. I'm sure he spent a lot of time on college campuses going, "heat isn't real; change my mind."