books of the Ancient World - search/destroy

Care to explain?

I enjoyed the bit in "Pericles" about Anaxagoras and the 1-horned ram, explaining how the "natural philosopher" and "seer" could both be correct. Plutarch is a Neoplatonist, correct?

Proclus wrote a magisterial commentary on Euclid's Elements, as mentioned above, that set the agenda for thinking about mathematics for at least 1500 years, in the Hellenistic world, the Arab world, and then the European world, in part because his commentary was included in standard translations of the Elements into Arabic and then Latin. So people would pick up the Elements and think they were reading Euclid's preface, when it was really Proclus. And his readings of Euclid inject a Neoplatonist agenda into all of these cultures. Stealth philosophy!

yes, Plutarch was a Neoplatonist.

I love Neoplatonism (I may be a Neoplatonist?)

Droit, can I come to you with questions when I get to Book 10 of the Elements?

Please tread lightly, such a request may be of the nature of a professional favor.

you can try! I'm not exactly an expert on the Elements but I know a few things. Book X is pretty hardcore!

I have a soft spot for Xenophon's Anabasis. Also for Arrian's account of Alexander the Great's conquest of Persia and beyond. Diogenes Laertius's Lives of Philosophers is very uneven, but contains hundreds of fascinating little anecdotes in among the tedium. Apuleius's Golden Ass is quite the best ancient approximation of a novel.

Steely Dan serendipity from Euclid's Elements, Book XI, prop. 31:

Let DR, WU be drawn through and meet one another at Y, let aTb be drawn through T parallel to DY, let PD be produced to a, and let the solids YX, RI be completed.

I have the T.E. Lawrence translation of The Odyssey lying around waiting to be read. I thought 7 Pillars was good but it was years since I read it.

Also really want to read Lucian's proto scifi.

Read the Pancachantra last year which was interesting.

Lucian is fun. Follow it with cyrano di bergerac's similar flght of fancy.

I have a copy of the Cyrano de Bergerac around somewhere.

Thanks for the discussion, guys---you led me to this good article: http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/proto_sf, incl. link to entry re Cyrano.

My Bergerac is a second-hand Folio ed of the Aldington translation which has nice Quentin Blake illustrations, too
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