Tag: Virgil
Working the Soil in American Literature: A Review of Ethan Mannon’s...
Do we love the soil and the creatures put in our stead, or do we prefer the images our devices project at us? While the choice is not always so cut and dry, Mannon’s book can help us begin to retool our imaginations and ennoble common labor again.
I Sing of Shoes and the Man
But the dark events of that afternoon have remained with me and have prompted a question that I have often wrestled with, fruitfully, I think, but never to a clear decision: Lacking a proper foundation in kickball, what sort of culture, if any at all, could flourish in a Newton, Massachusetts?
Finding Arcadia: The Garden in the Cosmos in Latin Literature
Paul Krause examines the politics of Latin literature and discovers a desire for peace and joy, a peace and joy found in an intimate environment of beauty which the poets, even theologians, described as a garden. But the race to Arcadia runs through strife, war, and murder.
Laying Waste Our Fields
“That day when Turnus raised the flag of war…
The high commanders…
From every quarter drew repeated levies
And laid the wide fields waste of their...
Asking for Direction in Baffling Times
"All Italians, all the Oenotrian land,
Resorted to this place in baffling times,
Asking direction; here a priest brought gifts..."
Virgil, The Aeneid
What do I do now?...
A Sweet Gift from Heaven
“The heavenly gift of honey...” Virgil, The Georgics
Thus Virgil opens his final book of The Georgics. Perhaps these words rolled off his pen with...
One Faithful Bee
“Some have affirmed that bees possess a share Of the divine mind and drink ethereal draughts; For God, they say, pervades the whole of...
Learning from the Bees
“Passing their lives under exalted laws,
Alone they recognize a fatherland
And the sanctity of a home, and provident
For coming winter set to work in summer
And...
The Gift of Spring
“Nor would the stress
Of life be bearable for tender things
Did not so long a respite come between
The cold and heat, and heaven’s indulgence grant
This...
The Heart, in Suffering
“Some day, perhaps, remembering even this
Will be a pleasure.”
Virgil, The Aeneid, I
Aeneas and his men have endured much since leaving Troy. And of course...