Robert Kaplan offers a brief in defense of empire at the Atlantic. “Throughout history,” he argues, “governance and relative safety have most often been provided by empires, Western or Eastern. Anarchy reigned in the interregnums.”Globalization today depends on the . . . . Continue Reading »
Larry Sidentop’s Inventing the Individual is intellectual history of the old school, the broad-sweep, big-idea type. Jeffrey Collins thinks that for all the dangers the book works (TLS review). It is “a thoroughly interesting and fundamentally convincing book.”The key . . . . Continue Reading »
Did the Greeks sacrifice all the animals they ate? Gunnel Ekroth (“Meat in ancient Greece”) says No, though he also says that most of the meat they ate was “sacred,” even if not “sacrificial.” The distinction of the two is crucial.Drawing mainly from osteological . . . . Continue Reading »
Gunnel Ekroth considers the important role that decisions by lot played in Greek society:“This was not an infrequent phenomenon in Greek society and was encountered not only at sacrifices, but also when land was parcelled out at colonial undertakings as well as at the selection of political . . . . Continue Reading »
In a TLS review of Luke Harding’s The Snowden Files, Edward Luttwak traces things back to dynamics within the post-9/11 intelligence bureaucracy. In Luttwak’s telling, it’s a case study of bureaucratic expansion.He argues that “Only a few hundred were really justified of . . . . Continue Reading »
Joan Cadden’s Nothing Natural is Shameful is many things: A careful study of the medieval reception and use of various Aristotelian texts; an analysis of medieval natural philosophy and ethics and the relation between the two; a contribution to research about Western views of sodomy; a . . . . Continue Reading »
Pastor Arthur Kay offers these thoughts on the symbolism of Palm Sunday:“Palms are associated with covering clouds (Feast of Booths, Leviticus 23:40). They are also associated with the nations (Exodus 15:27; Revelation 7:9). Therefore, on Palm Sunday, Jesus is already coming on the . . . . Continue Reading »
No other mythology, writes Eva Kuels in The Reign of the Phallus, gives rape a more prominent role than that of Greece (49). In our expurgated handbooks of mythology, it’s called “dalliance” or somesuch, but Kuels argues that the artifacts show that what’s happening is . . . . Continue Reading »
Ancient Greeks sacrificed and ate pigs and dogs. Israelites were forbidden to do so.Ancient Greeks made blood pudding from sacrifices. Israelites were not supposed to eat blood.Ancient Greeks sometimes sacrificed pregnant sows. Israelites were commanded not to take both the eggs and the . . . . Continue Reading »
Was sacrificial meat distributed equally or hierarchically in ancient Greece? Some have resolved the question diachronically: Archaic Greece had a more democratic sacrificial distribution that democratic classical Athens.Gunnel Ekroth concludes that the two systems lived side-by-side. Choice pieces . . . . Continue Reading »
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