We will compare and contrast Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, the Funeral Oration of Pericles, and Winston Churchill’s speech honoring those pilots who saved democracy after the Battle of Britain. […]
Why did the Ionian Greeks reject the Spartan leadership under the Pausanius, and why did they plead for Athens to take up the liberation of the Asian Greek colonies from the Persians, leading to the founding of the Delian League? Simply put, the Delian allies were impressed by both the military acumen and integrity of the two Athenian generals Aristides the Just, and Cimon. Also, the Spartans embarrassed Cimon, who sought to reconcile Athens and Sparta, which contributed to the outbreak of the Peloponnesian Wars. […]
The Church Fathers focus on our love for our neighbor when contemplating this commandment. St Gregory Palamas in our English translation renders the commandment as, “You shall not accuse anyone falsely.” We are warned that if we accuse anyone falsely, we may “become like the devil, who falsely accused God to Eve and was cursed by God. Rather, we should conceal our neighbor’s offense, unless by so doing others may be injured; and in this way we will imitate not Ham, but Shem and Japeth, and so like them receive the blessing.”
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This is second video and blog where we examine both history and Plutarch’s moral biographies of the key Athenian leaders before and in the first years of the war. In the first video we reflected on Pericles and his reforms leading to the Radical Democracy of Athens in the years […]
Why study the Peloponnesian Wars? Simple, you cannot understand Greek philosophy and history without studying these wars. Socrates lived through and fought in these wars and was tried and executed after these wars. Many dialogues respond to issues and questions raised by these wars. […]
Since we seek to draw moral lessons from history, we favor the Lives of Great Greeks and Romans by Plutarch. […]
Many people think that one of the Ten Commandments prohibits us from lying, but that is a shallow understanding of the commandment. Actually, the Ten Commandments urges us not to bear false witness against our neighbor. Not only are we forbidden to slander our neighbor, but we are also urged to guard his reputation. We slander our neighbor even when we tell the truth in a hurtful manner. […]
To a Stoic Philosopher, the question of Theodicy, or why God permits bad things to happen to good people, why God permits suffering, is simply absurd. The fact is, we do suffer, we will face injustices, we will suffer illnesses and death, and the rain falls on both the good man and the bad man. God will not shield us from suffering and injustice, but God will provide us with the strength to endure the challenges of this life. […]
Pope Benedict once said that both the supporters and opponents of the Second Vatican Council have one characteristic in common, and that is, most of them have never read the decrees or the history of Vatican II and are ignorant of the actual teachings of the council. His solution was to draft the Catholic Catechism, but unfortunately, nobody reads that either. […]
General Winfield Scott, brilliant strategic general and hero of the Mexican War, served under seven Presidents, but in the 1860’s he was in his seventies, and was so obese that he had to be hoisted on and off his horse with a crane. But he was still a sharp general, and his “Anaconda Plan” was the strategy that would win the war, and this Great Snake picture was printed in the newspapers across the country. 1861. This plan called for a naval blockade that strangled the commerce of the Confederacy, the Union forces seizing control of the Mississippi River, then Union forces marching through the heart of the Confederacy. General Scott predicted that 300,000 soldiers would be needed to defeat the Confederacy, which was less than half the size of the eventual Union Army, but it was shocking numbers at the beginning of the war, when the Union Army had fewer than twenty thousand soldiers. […]
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