March 9, 2009
Tough times evoke dreams of superheroes, even flawed ones like the characters in the new film “Watchmen.” Is the stock market down? Call for Dr. Wall Street. Is unemployment booming? Jobade to the rescue. Is there an insurgency to counter? Here comes Afghanisuperstan. Who, finally, should brood over the whole scene if not Punditocrat?
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March 5, 2009
“Spartacus, a Thracian man, once served as a soldier with the Romans, but as a consequence of being captured and sold, he ended up among the gladiators. He persuaded about seventy of them to fight for freedom and not for show at the games. After they overpowered the guards he ran off with them” (Appian, Civil Wars 1.116.539). More
March 2, 2009
“March is a crazy kid,” say the Italians. On a day when snow covers New York City and Washington but nothing worse than a blustery – and dry – wind blows here in the Finger Lakes, I’ll take that proverb. We Upstaters don’t wish bad weather on our neighbors, but we smile at the favors of a topsy-turvy month. After all, from time to time it snows here in May.
Spartacus too experienced the ups and downs of the weather. He once, for example, tried to ferry his men across the Strait of Messina on makeshift rafts in the winter waves: good luck to that. Landlubbers, the rebels would have had their work cut out for them on a summer day.
February 27, 2009
History is not prayer. To pray is to aim for spiritual elevation while studying the past is more like plodding along. Yet perhaps history prepares the soul, even so, by teaching a simple lesson: we are not the first to pass this way.
Take, for example, the current mood of crisis in much of the world. The economy rumbles; corporations and stock exchanges shake; governments plan dramatic changes. It seems frightening, perhaps even apocalyptic, until things are put into perspective.
February 23, 2009
With the season for pilgrimages of a sort upon us – Spring Break road trips for college students, more tony treks for the Palm Beach set – I can’t help but reflect on a detail of Spartacus’s revolt. Most of the rebels were Northerners: Celts, Germans or Thracians (roughly, Bulgarians). The rebellion, however, was almost entirely a southern affair. It began in south-central Italy at Capua (near Naples), almost reached Sicily, and found its center in Thurii, sited on a lush plain in the “sole” of the Italian “boot.” More
