The coming academic year's set texts
So far I've been told to get a copy of Isocrates's Helen and Plato's Phaedrus leading me to suspect that this year's Ancient Greek Literature course is aiming towards philosophy. Must certainly beat this year's obsession with fate and destiny in such works as the Iliad and Odyssey.
So here I am sitting with my copy of Helen:
"There are some who are much pleased with themselves if, after setting up an absurd and self-contradictory subject, they succeed in discussing it in tolerable fashion; and men have grown old, some asserting it is impossible to say, or to gainsay, what is false, or to speak on both sides of the same questions, others maintaining that courage and wisdom and justice are identical, and that we possess none of these as natural qualities, but that there is only one sort of knowledge concerned with them all; and still others waste their time in captious disputations that are not only entirely useless, but are sure to make trouble for their disciples." [Isocrates: Helen 1 ed. George Norlin]
I do believe this year is going to be quite entertaining. Thankfully the greek doesn't appear to be too challenging.
I do admire the audacity of my department in setting an out of print book as the version needed for Phaedrus. Thank god for abebooks.co.uk even if it does mean my out of print platonis opera tomus II has to be shipped from an obscure second hand bookshop in S. Africa incurring a £12 delivery charge - *has a light-bulb moment* As I suspected amazon.com have a nice new shiny in print hardcover version for $40 - typical that it would remain in print across the pond. Decisions, decisions; I always think second hand books have a certain charm - my 150yr old english-greek lexicon is a prime example, but even I have to admit that £12 delivery for a book which they are charging £6 to purchase is a little steep - bah! Who cares? I want a piece of S. Africa - hopefully someone will have penciled in some intriguing comments in its margins rather like the "for if fear of death were present to me" comment in my lexicon. I always wonder what Irish schoolboy wrote that - Irish because that is where it came from - a second-hand bookshop in Belfast courtesy of abebooks.
Anyways, I'm off to read the remainder of Helen and see if it is in anyway charming...
So here I am sitting with my copy of Helen:
"There are some who are much pleased with themselves if, after setting up an absurd and self-contradictory subject, they succeed in discussing it in tolerable fashion; and men have grown old, some asserting it is impossible to say, or to gainsay, what is false, or to speak on both sides of the same questions, others maintaining that courage and wisdom and justice are identical, and that we possess none of these as natural qualities, but that there is only one sort of knowledge concerned with them all; and still others waste their time in captious disputations that are not only entirely useless, but are sure to make trouble for their disciples." [Isocrates: Helen 1 ed. George Norlin]
I do believe this year is going to be quite entertaining. Thankfully the greek doesn't appear to be too challenging.
I do admire the audacity of my department in setting an out of print book as the version needed for Phaedrus. Thank god for abebooks.co.uk even if it does mean my out of print platonis opera tomus II has to be shipped from an obscure second hand bookshop in S. Africa incurring a £12 delivery charge - *has a light-bulb moment* As I suspected amazon.com have a nice new shiny in print hardcover version for $40 - typical that it would remain in print across the pond. Decisions, decisions; I always think second hand books have a certain charm - my 150yr old english-greek lexicon is a prime example, but even I have to admit that £12 delivery for a book which they are charging £6 to purchase is a little steep - bah! Who cares? I want a piece of S. Africa - hopefully someone will have penciled in some intriguing comments in its margins rather like the "for if fear of death were present to me" comment in my lexicon. I always wonder what Irish schoolboy wrote that - Irish because that is where it came from - a second-hand bookshop in Belfast courtesy of abebooks.
Anyways, I'm off to read the remainder of Helen and see if it is in anyway charming...