Tag: Roman history
We’re excited that you’ve joined the conversation! At HMU, we want to continue the great authors’ conversations in a contemporary context, and this blog will help us do that. We look back to Aristotle and the early philosophers who used reason and discourse to gain wisdom and now we endeavor to do the same every day.
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October 21, 2016
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s blog.
Leadership has been on nearly everyone’s mind as of late. Unfortunately, it is not a Great Idea in the Great Books canon. However, there are many categories that touch upon ideas of leadership, such as Government, Man, Constitution, and Virtue and Vice. There is very little agreement about what makes a good leader. In fact, the only point of nearly universal agreement among Great Books authors is that some sort of government is necessary for the life of a state.
April 29, 2016
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
The following list compiles ten things I learned about Gibbon by reading the footnotes from The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. First of all, I highly recommend his footnotes, just for the fun of trying to puzzle out what Gibbon deems worthy of being source-material. But also, because his notes guide the reader to understand how he uses source materials,
December 11, 2015
Tracing a word back to its origins offers a fun experiment, even a well-known word that is easily understood. This simultaneously enables the ancient contexts and the word to come alive. For example, reading about the Roman emperor Septimius Severus, the word ‘severe’ often comes to mind, which is not entirely a coincidence. Severus was severe in his treatment of enemies, opponents and those who felt entitled to goods without earning them.