There’s a saying: It’s good to be the king. Tell that to Publius Helvius Pertinax Augustus. Pertinax came to power following the assassination of Commodus, the son of Marcus Aurelius whose reign was marred by erratic behavior, which included the slaughter of nobles and mass bloodshed in the Colosseum. (Commodus enjoyed fighting in the arena
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Nowadays, the norm when reading a book alone is to read it silently to oneself. Apparently, this practice was unusual in the ancient world. As an undergraduate I had to read St. Augustine’s Confessions (397-400), which some claim to be the first autobiography written in the Western world. At the time, I remember being taken
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Over Easter weekend, Pope Francis delivered a lovely if banal message to the world in the wake of the brutal attacks in Brussels. He called upon the world to use “weapons of love” to combat the “blind and brutal violence” employed by ISIS. It is difficult to admonish the Pope too harshly for using the
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Following Bernie Sanders’ electoral triumphs over the week, NPR’s Domenico Montanaro opined that “despite the math, Bernie Sanders has already won.” Montanaro based this reasoning on Sanders’ widespread support, which has caused Hillary Clinton to align herself with some of his socialistic positions instead of taking the more moderate stance she would have preferred. As
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This weekend, the Facebook page Anonymous posted a short clip from the 1981 movie My Dinner with Andre that went viral. In the clip, one of the characters provides an absolutely chilling perspective on the world in 1981—one that in many ways applies to today, and has even perhaps been magnified. Here’s the clip below:
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In recent years, a number of people have advocated for the teaching of classical languages like Latin and Greek to make a comeback in the schools. Schools in Australia have tried this and seen amazing results on test scores in a variety of subjects. So why does instruction in languages like Latin and Greek boost
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