Classics

Do You Know What an Odyssey Is?

My title is a question: "Do you know what an odyssey is?" I am asking each of you to ask yourself: "Do I know what an odyssey is?" In learning as in traveling and, of course,...

Welcome to Colonus: The Theban Plays of Sophocles

I'm uncertain of the joy of reading the Theban plays of Sophocles—the story is just too monstrous—but in accord with the awe. This translation conveys it... Sophocles: The Theban Plays, translated by David R. Slavitt (256 pages, Yale University Press, 2009)

Music of the Republic

Music pervades our lives and always has. It has taken you outside of yourselves and taken you deep within. It has been associated with things divine... Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords our readers the opportunity to join Christopher Nelson as he explores the...

Finding Your “Why”

What enabled men like Athanasius, Augustine, and Aquinas to discover their “why” in ages past can still transform young men and women today... Over the years, I have discovered that nearly every time I come across...

Do You Know What an Odyssey Is?

An odyssey is an adventurous and searching journey, or an intellectual or spiritual quest. It is the proper name for the life of learning. One can shape one's own odyssey into a journey that lacks neither enchantment nor definition... Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series...

The First Question and The Illiad

To the extent that I am a human person, Homer's Iliad speaks to me, but my particular circumstances are my own. As a result, a great question will help all people, including me, and so might be applicable to my peculiar place in space and time without being...

An Oration on the Scholar’s Mission

The end of the scholar is not to be a scholar; but a man, doing that which cannot be done without scholarship. The end is never the production of a work of art, however grand in conception, successful in execution, or exquisite in finish; but the realization...

The Classical Tradition in Antebellum America

The classical curriculum remained the educational gold standard in nineteenth-century America. In fact, its influence grew, as women’s academies with a classical curriculum were founded all over the expanding nation... The Golden Age of the Classics in America: Greece, Rome, and...

Homer’s “Odyssey” Is a Gift

“Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story of that man skilled in all ways of contending, the wanderer, harried for years on end, after he plundered the stronghold on the proud height of Troy.” So begins Homer’s...

How Latin Helps Us Learn

By nixing Latin instruction from our schools, have we knocked the feet out from under generations of students, leaving them to struggle through the fog of schooling and literacy on their own...? A little over...

Was Dante Wrong to Name the People He Put in Hell?

Might Dante not have been better served had he peopled the Hell of his Divine Comedy with fictional characters of his own invention, instead of actually naming them and therefore damning them?... If one were asked to name the greatest...

Mercy and the Liberal Arts

Inasmuch as mercy is a human virtue, and the liberal arts are human education, the virtue of mercy is precisely the sort of thing one will explore in a good liberal arts curriculum… I would like to begin by drawing attention to...

Reading the “Illiad” in the Light of Eternity

It is impossible to love both the victors and the vanquished, as the Iliad does, except from the place, outside the world, where God’s Wisdom dwells... Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords readers the opportunity to join Cicero Bruce as he considers the

Why Read Old (Pagan) Books?

At the end of each semester, I inevitably have one or two well-meaning students who are still unsure why they were asked to devote so much time and care to reading, annotating, and discussing archaic Greek literature. They...