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Emily Wilson
Seneca: A Life
Penguin Random House UK, 2014
Martin Heidegger once famously opened a lecture on Aristotle with a rather potted biography of the philosopher known as the Stagyrite: “He was born, he lived and worked, and then he died.”
Concise, although more than a little dismissive, but biographies of great men and women necessarily decline in detail the further back in time the subject of the biography lived. (more…)
5,133 words
Part 2 of 2 (Part 1 here)
Nero was only 16 when he became Emperor. His coming to power had nevertheless been enabled by several murders and/or suspiciously timely deaths. Claudius may or may not have died accidentally, but Narcissus, who favored Britannicus and the Senator Silanus, were poisoned almost certainly on the orders of Nero’s mother. (more…)
4,287 words
Part 1 of 2 (Part 2 here)
Alexander Bätz
Nero: Wahnsinn und Wirklichkeit
Hamburg: Rowohlt Buchverlag, 2023
Among those able to name any Roman emperors, Nero is likely to be on their list. Although he was Roman Emperor for only 14 years, from 54 to 68 AD, he is widely viewed as one of the most famous or infamous of all of them, strongly associated with the persecution of the Christians and the murder of both his mother and wife, and he is widely seen as the embodiment of tyranny. (more…)
Epictetus, in an eighteenth-century English artist’s imagining.
Epictetus, in an eighteenth-century English artist’s imagining.
1,834 words
Socrates was not in prison since he was there of his own free will. — Epictetus
I’m free.
And freedom tastes of reality.
— The Who
We should talk about slavery. Goodness knows, it’s not a subject we hear talked about much these days. That’s my dose of irony, now for some history. If you were at school or college today in the West, you would know that no slavery existed until a man called Jim Crow had his people — probably the Ku Klux Klan, or Donald Trump’s ancestors — sail to Africa, cast black people into chains, and then bring them back to America to pick cotton and be lynched. (more…)
250 words / 2:35:59
Host Greg Johnson was joined by learned Counter-Currents writers Stephen Paul Foster, Mark Gullick, James J. O’Meara, and Kathryn S. on the last installment of Counter-Currents Radio to share their lists of five essential books every educated person needs to read — plus, of course, answer YOUR QUESTIONS — and it is now available for download and online listening.
Topics discussed include:
00:05:00 Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War (more…)
1,495 words
Seneca and James Romm, ed., trans.
How to Keep Your Cool: An Ancient Guide to Anger Management
Princeton University Press, 2019
Long before self-help books, pop-psychology gurus, TED talks, non-fiction political punditry, and “anger-management” classes, the ancients dispensed wisdom on a variety of topics, personal and societal. (more…)