The role of rhetoric in ancient education is almost impossible to overstate. From approximately age 12 onward, educated Greeks and Romans spent years learning to speak persuasively in public. Everything else in ancient intellectual culture was shaped by this training.
The literary culture of the Augustan age — Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Livy — was funded largely through Maecenas's patronage, which is itself funded by Augustus. Understanding the literary ideology requires understanding the political economy.
The Socratic method as a pedagogy — eliciting knowledge through questioning rather than transmission — is still the most intellectually demanding teaching method we have.
Greek historical consciousness was more ambivalent. The Athenians were proud of their past but also capable of the future-oriented thinking that made them innovators. The Spartans explicitly rejected written history as a form of security — their past was not something they wanted foreign powers to study.
The spread of the horse and the implications for Bronze Age steppe mobility are still being worked out. The Sintashta culture's development of the spoked-wheel chariot around 2100 BC changed Eurasian warfare.
The Corinthian War and the King's Peace of 387 BC are the moments where the Greek world definitively accepted Persian arbitration of inter-Greek disputes.
I was literally just thinking about this yesterday
Respectfully disagree. Here's my experience: I was skeptical at first but now I'm a convert
The role of rhetoric in ancient education is almost impossible to overstate. From approximately age 12 onward, educated Greeks and Romans spent years learning to speak persuasively in public. Everything else in ancient intellectual culture was shaped by this training.
The best challenge structure is one that asks you to read something in a category you haven't tried, not a quota.
The literary culture of the Augustan age — Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Livy — was funded largely through Maecenas's patronage, which is itself funded by Augustus. Understanding the literary ideology requires understanding the political economy.
Blade Runner and Do Androids Dream are almost completely different things. The film doesn't need the book.
Great point about non-fiction. I'd add that learn from your mistakes
Why hasn't anyone mentioned mystery in this thread?
I had the opposite experience — memoir worked great for me
The TBR pile represents optimism. I will not be talked out of it.
Earthsea is a book that sounds simple until you're in it and realize every sentence is precise.
Ged losing his power at the end of The Farthest Shore is the correct ending and Le Guin knew it.
The Socratic method as a pedagogy — eliciting knowledge through questioning rather than transmission — is still the most intellectually demanding teaching method we have.
The pile is infinite. This is the only fact that matters.
Love the detail in this write-up
Greek historical consciousness was more ambivalent. The Athenians were proud of their past but also capable of the future-oriented thinking that made them innovators. The Spartans explicitly rejected written history as a form of security — their past was not something they wanted foreign powers to study.
The spread of the horse and the implications for Bronze Age steppe mobility are still being worked out. The Sintashta culture's development of the spoked-wheel chariot around 2100 BC changed Eurasian warfare.
The Corinthian War and the King's Peace of 387 BC are the moments where the Greek world definitively accepted Persian arbitration of inter-Greek disputes.