Aug 29, 2025
And now for something completely different. The Odyssey portion of our tour is over, and the Iliad portion will now begin. But wait! Wasn't the Iliad a poem about war? And isn't Aeneas supposed to do battle for Latium? So why is it all sunshine, butterflies, and love goddesses? Today we launch into Part II of the poem...
Aug 15, 2025
It's time we finally talked about the elephant in the room: does Virgil actually like Augustus? Or is he just pretending? This doesn't seem to have been much of a question in the ancient world--the commentator Servius wrote quite bluntly that "Virgil's intention was to imitate Homer and praise Augustus." But in the wake...
Aug 1, 2025
Everyone, everywhere, thinks about the afterlife. If you think you don't, you're wrong: you do. Because what you believe about life after death is an expression of how you think the universe is ordered, and whether you believe there's such a thing as ultimate justice. That in turn affects how you live--and almost no one...