Mycenaean Tomb Discovered on Ionian Islet

Findings unearthed by archaeologists in the southern half of the Ionian islet of Meganisi, southeast of the holiday island of Lefkada, are of major scientific, historical and cultural value, experts said on Tuesday. Excavations in the region of Kefali over the past two years brought to light an untouched Mycenaean-era tomb. According to reports, there is evidence that archaeologists have in fact discovered a complex of Mycenaean tombs. The Teleboans island complex, where Meganisi belongs, are the remnants of a larger peninsula that existed in pre-Classical antiquity, according to archaeologists.

retirado daqui.

Shakespeare (Again)

They Did It Again

E tudo, claro, por um preço insultuosamente baixo. O dos gregos não é bilingue* (o que se compreende pelo volume de páginas), mas ainda assim é suficiente para nos deixar roidinhos de inveja.


*agradecemos ao Miguel ter chamado a nossa atenção para o facto.

Alexander: how great?

In 51 BC, Marcus Tullius Cicero, who had reluctantly left his desk in Rome to become military governor of the province of Cilicia in southern Turkey, scored a minor victory against some local insurgents. As we know from his surviving letters, he was conscious that he was treading in the footsteps of a famous predecessor: “For a few days,” he wrote to his friend Atticus, “we were encamped in exactly the same place that Alexander occupied when he was fighting Darius at Issus”—hastily conceding that Alexander was in fact “a rather better general that you or I.”

Artigo de Mary Beard. Continuar a ler aqui.

Händel: 'Cipião' (Abertura & Marcha)

Qualcuno Che Sia Della Antichità Tanto Amatore

Both this discourse and what we have said elsewhere many times before show how greatly the mode of conduct in republics of the present differs from that in republics of ancient times. Thus, we see miraculous losses and miraculous gains every day, because when men possess little of that exceptional ability, fortune shows her power all the more; and because fortune is changeable, republics and states often change, and they will continue to change until someone rises up which is so devoted to antiquity that he will regulate fortune in such a way that she will have no cause to demonstrate, with every revolution of the sun, how powerful she can be. 

Vedesi, pertanto, e per questo discorso, e per quello che più volte abbiamo altrove detto, quanta diversità sia, dal modo del procedere delle republiche presenti, a quello delle antiche. Vedesi ancora, per questo, ogni dì, miracolose perdite e miracolosi acquisti. Perché, dove gli uomini hanno poca virtù, la fortuna mostra assai la potenza sua; e, perché la è varia, variano le republiche e gli stati spesso; e varieranno sempre, infino che non surga qualcuno che sia della antichità tanto amatore, che la regoli in modo, che la non abbia cagione di mostrare, a ogni girare di sole, quanto ella puote. 

Maquiavel, Discourses on Livy 2.30 

Oxford University Press, Oxford: 1997 (trad.: Julia & Peter Bondanella).

Plutarco, Shakespeare, Ralph Fiennes

A biografia por Plutarco, que inspirou a peça de Shakespeare, 

pode ser lida aqui, na tradução de Nuno Simões Rodrigues.

Better book titles (Ovídio, «Metamorfoses»)

An Ancient Greek Debt Solution

The blade of sovereign default is hanging unsteadily over the neck of the euro zone. Greece will be first – of this investors are certain. But fears are rising that Ireland and Portugal will follow soon after. So what should be done? What’s past is prologue: History is littered with sovereign defaults. For some answers, let’s go back — WAY back. The first recorded sovereign default appears to have happened in, um, Greece, according to “Foreign Bonds: An Autopsy,” by Max Winkler and Thomas H. Healy. (In fairness to Greece, the first recorded instances of many things are in Greece. ) The year was around 400 B.C.; Plato was an up-and-coming young philosopher; and Dionysius of Syracuse, a noted tyrant, had a problem: He’d borrowed too much money from his subjects.

para continuar a ler a história.

(no entanto, este site regista um outro primeiro incumprimento, também grego)

Filosofia Política Clássica vs Moderna IV

Being asked by them [os Efésios] to write laws he [Heraclito] would not condescend to do so because the city was already governed by a bad constitution.

[ἀξιούμενος δὲ καὶ νόμους θεῖναι πρὸς αὐτῶν ὑπερεῖδε διὰ τὸ ἤδη 3 κεκρατῆσθαι τῇ πονηρᾷ πολιτείᾳ τὴν πόλιν.]

Heraclito DK A1 (= Diógenes Laércio 9.2) 

The Texts of Early Greek Philosophy, Cambridge: 2010 (trad.: Daniel Graham).

Thus, seeing that in Rome, which was organized by its own inhabitants and by many prudent men, there arose every day new reasons for creating new institutions in support of a free way of life, it is therefore not surprising that in other cities, which experience more disorderly beginnings, there arose so many problems that they could never be reorganized aright.

[Non è adunque maraviglia, veggendo come in Roma, ordinata da sé medesima e da tanti uomini prudenti, surgevano ogni dì nuove cagioni per le quali si aveva a fare nuovi ordini in favore del viver libero; se nell’altre città, che hanno più disordinato principio, vi surgano tante difficultà, che le non si possino riordinarsi mai.]

Maquiavel, Discourses on Livy 1.49 

Oxford University Press, Oxford: 1997 (trad.: Julia & Peter Bondanella).