Democracies were acutely problematic when they did not collectively comprehend the necessity of legitimate authority permeating the polis. Lacking this understanding, power was elevated in authority’s absence. Scrupulous fear of the gods is the very thing which keeps the Roman Commonwealth together. To such an extraordinary height is this carried among them, both in private [...]
Augustine passed on to us, and all posterity, prescient words of wisdom: that even in the most disconcerting and dark of times, beauty, compassion, truth, love, and happiness abound. When the Visigoths sacked Rome in 410, the city that had taken the world captive had fallen into captivity. The event was a transformative moment in [...]
The Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC) was actually the second war fought between Athens and Sparta in the fifth century. Why did hostilities break out into the open again? The reflections of the Greek general and historian Thucydides on this question in his History of the Peloponnesian War constitute one of the greatest books of all time. [...]
Thucydides' account of the twenty-seven-year war between Athens and Sparta is filled with timeless questions about human conflict: When are aggression and vengeance justified? Can peace ever truly be secured by war? How does war affect the integrity of language and character? What is the role of chance in war? Is war ever truly inevitable? Additionally, the participants [...]
And if we should know what government is, we should observe, in Thucydides' laconic account of the revolution at Corcyra, what happens when it fails.– Stringfellow Barr Most keen observers would say that our government has been in failure mode for a number of decades, and this is not easily refuted on empirical grounds. Readers of [...]
Scrupulous fear of the gods is the very thing which keeps the Roman Commonwealth together. To such an extraordinary height is this carried among them, both in private and public business, that nothing could exceed it. –Histories, Polybius Infirmity doth still neglect all office Whereto our health is bound; we are not ourselves When nature, [...]