In this episode, my son Jack joins me to examine The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius, a Roman scholar living just after the fall of the Roman Empire in 476 CE. A renaissance man before the Renaissance, Boethius translated Greek philosophers like Aristotle and Plato, served as a trusted aide to the Gothic king Theodoric in Ravenna, and was a mathematician, astronomer, and family man whose sons became consuls in their early 20s. Despite his Christian faith, tensions with the Arian Theodoric led to his imprisonment and brutal execution at 44. This tragedy tarnished Theodoric’s rule, but Boethius’ legacy shaped medieval thought, preserving Greek philosophy and influencing giants like Chaucer, Dante, Aquinas, and Shakespeare.

Written in a cell awaiting death, The Consolation of Philosophy is a profound dialogue between Boethius and Lady Philosophy. Divided into five books, it blends prose (prosa) and poetry (metrea), offering wisdom through a narrative arc. Book One introduces Boethius’ despair; Book Two explores Fortune’s fickleness; Book Three seeks the highest Good; Book Four tackles the problem of evil; and Book Five reconciles divine foreknowledge with free will. The poems, rich with mythological and Biblical imagery, provide emotional breaks and reinforce the prose’s insights. As C.S. Lewis noted, this work was beloved by educated Europeans for centuries.

Boethius weaves Neoplatonism, Stoicism, and Aristotelian ideas into a Christian framework. Lady Philosophy echoes Plato’s belief in innate knowledge, urging Boethius to “dream of your origin,” and champions philosopher-kings. Stoic themes emerge as she declares the mind free despite bodily exile, while Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover aligns with Boethius’ God. The concept of exile as a spiritual crisis resonates, connecting Boethius to figures like Odysseus and Dante.

Jack and I discuss whether this is a satire, and how much both of us love Boethius as a character in his own novel.

The Ignatius Press edition, translated by Scott Goins and Barbara Wyman, shines with clear prose, excellent footnotes, and quality paper—perfect for annotating. This book demands a reread and sparks a reading list including Chaucer, Milton, and C.S. Lewis’ The Discarded Image. Join us! I think this book is for everyone, but even if you think, "Maybe not for me," you'll know what it's about and why it matters.

This is a year-long challenge! Join me next week for Sun Tzu's The Art of War and The Tao Te Ching from Lao Tzu.

LINK

Ted Gioia/The Honest Broker’s 12-Month Immersive Humanities Course (paywalled!)

My Amazon Book List (NOT an affiliate link)

CONNECT

To read more of my writing, visit my Substack -  https://www.cheryldrury.substack.com.

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Captivate - https://crackthebook.captivate.fm 

In this episode of Crack the Book, we take a look at Week Fourteen of Ted Gioia’s Humanities Course, covering Virgil’s The Aeneid (Books 1–2), Ovid’s Metamorphoses (Book 1), and selections from The Portable Roman Reader. The focus is on key texts from Roman literature, their historical context, and their connections to earlier Greek works, providing an overview of their content and significance.

Key Discussion Points:

• Virgil’s The Aeneid (Robert Fagles’ Translation): Written between 29–19 BCE, The Aeneid serves as Rome’s foundational epic, modeled on Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. Book 1 opens with Aeneas, a Trojan survivor, shipwrecked on Carthage’s shore due to Juno’s interference, meeting Queen Dido, an exile from Tyre. Book 2 recounts Troy’s fall, including the Trojan Horse stratagem and Aeneas’ escape with his father Anchises and son Ascanius, losing his wife Creusa. The text emphasizes Aeneas’ pietas (duty to gods, family, state). Divine rivalries, notably Juno’s grudge from the Judgment of Paris and Venus’ protection of Aeneas, drive the narrative. The Fagles translation includes maps and a glossary for accessibility.
• Ovid’s Metamorphoses (David Raeburn’s Translation): Composed around 8 CE, Metamorphoses is a 15-book poem chronicling transformations from creation to Ovid’s era. Book 1 covers the creation of the cosmos from Chaos, the division into four elements (fire, water, earth, air), and humanity’s decline from the Golden to Iron Age. It includes a flood narrative with Deucalion and Pyrrha and the story of Io, transformed into a cow by Jupiter to evade Juno. The Raeburn edition organizes vignettes with titled sections for clarity.
• The Portable Roman Reader (Basil Davenport, Ed.): Published in 1951, this anthology includes poetry from Rome’s Republic, Augustan, and later Empire periods. Catullus (c. 60s–50s BCE) offers direct, personal verses, translated by Byron. Horace (65–8 BCE) writes complex, philosophical odes, less accessible due to style. Martial (c. 38–104 CE) provides epigrams on public life, including two elegies for a deceased young girl. Davenport’s notes contextualize each era, and the anthology features prose by Livy, Caesar, and Tacitus for future study.
• Contextual Notes: The texts reflect Rome’s engagement with Greek literary traditions, adapting gods’ names (e.g., Hera to Juno) and themes. The course’s schedule prioritizes rapid coverage to identify key works and connections.

Takeaways:

I loved this week so much! It felt great to come "home" to Rome. I've got specific ideas about how to approach each of these books, but in my opinion they are all worth the time for certain people.

The music was gorgeous, arias and overtures from Puccini and Verdi! You must listen...check out my link below. And the cave paintings were worth examining as well, especially the handprints from Indonesia. See that link below, too.

This is a year-long challenge! Join me next week for WHATEVER IS NEXT

LINKS

Ted Gioia/The Honest Broker’s 12-Month Immersive Humanities Course (paywalled!)

My Amazon Book List (NOT an affiliate link)

Spotify Play List of Puccini and Verdi without words

Cave Paintings

CONNECT

To read more of my writing, visit my Substack -  https://www.cheryldrury.substack.com.

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Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/crack-the-book/id1749793321 

Captivate - https://crackthebook.captivate.fm 

The Honest Broker’s Humanities Course shifts to the Middle East and Persia, exploring the Quran (circa 800 A.D.) and the 13th-century poet Rumi, before returning to Rome next week. The reading, kept under 250 pages, includes 14 of the Quran’s 114 surahs (1-5, 12, 17, 18, 32, 36, 55, 67, 103, 112) and self-selected Rumi poems. New to both texts, I approached them with curiosity, trusting the curator’s selection after prior Bible readings, but found the experience underwhelming.

The Quran portrays Allah as focused on division between believers and unbelievers, with frequent mentions of hell for those lacking faith. Submission to Allah’s will is paramount, and praying toward Mecca symbolizes spiritual alignment and community unity. The text excludes Jews from Abraham’s promise if they do wrong, though some verses suggest salvation for believers, possibly including Jews and Christians. Jesus is depicted as a prophet, not divine, contrasting Christian beliefs. Allah seems to emphasize punishing unbelievers, with hell referenced often, and fasting is highlighted as a path to righteousness, noted during Ramadan.

Familiar Biblical stories—Cain and Abel, Joseph, Moses—appear but differ from their older Genesis versions. Joseph, for example, is nearly perfect in the Quran, unlike the flawed figure in the Bible. The origins of these variations remain unclear after online research. Some Quranic verses, like “God does not burden any soul beyond its capacity” (Surah 2:286), contrast with Christian teachings, such as Galatians 6:2’s call to “bear one another’s burdens.”

Rumi’s poetry feels modern and dreamlike but elusive compared to upcoming Roman poets. Plans are in place to revisit Rumi when studying Dante, a contemporary. The Quran was read on a Kindle (Clear Quran translation), which hindered the experience due to reliance on spatial memory for physical books, making note-taking and recall difficult. Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s music and Islamic architecture were briefly explored but felt overwhelming. Next week’s reading covers Virgil’s Aeneid (Books 1 and 2), Ovid’s Metamorphoses (Book 1), and selections from Horace, Catullus, and Sulpicia in Davenport’s Portable Roman Reader, with Verdi and Puccini arias and cave art.

LINKS

Ted Gioia/The Honest Broker’s 12-Month Immersive Humanities Course (paywalled!)

My Amazon Book List (NOT an affiliate link)

Rumi's Poems

CONNECT

To read more of my writing, visit my Substack -  https://www.cheryldrury.substack.com.

Follow me on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/cldrury/ 

LISTEN

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5GpySInw1e8IqNQvXow7Lv?si=9ebd5508daa245bd

Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/crack-the-book/id1749793321 

Captivate - https://crackthebook.captivate.fm 

Can you be scandalized by a 2000-year-old book? I think I was with Suetonius’ Lives of the Caesars, a gripping, gossipy account of the first twelve Roman emperors, from Julius Caesar to Domitian. Written around 120 AD, Suetonius’ work (part of The Honest Broker’s “Humanities in 52 Weeks” list) blends history with salacious details, offering a vivid, if dark, portrait of power, excess, and moral decline. It's not exactly light beach reading but proved endlessly fascinating for its unapologetic dive into the personal lives of Rome’s rulers.

Suetonius, born around 70 AD to a Roman knight family, organizes the book into twelve biographies, which I've listed here for easy reference:

• Julius Caesar
• Augustus
• Tiberius
• Caligula
• Claudius
• Nero
• Galba
• Otho
• Vitellius
• Vespasian
• Titus
• Domitian.

Notably, Galba, Otho, and Vitellius, from the chaotic years of 68-69 AD, were barely recognized as emperors. Each biography sketches the ruler’s family background, reign, military campaigns, and personal habits, with Suetonius excelling in the juicy details of their excesses. His vivid prose, like describing Caligula as transitioning from “emperor” to “monster,” reveals the depravity of unchecked power—think murders, incest, and shocking debauchery.

The book’s strength lies in its storytelling, but its darkness—wanton death, sexual depravity, and a lack of heroism—can be exhausting. The Roman people’s hope for better rulers is repeatedly dashed, as seen when Caligula’s assassination leads to Claudius, another cruel leader. The complex web of intermarriage and adoptions among the Julio-Claudians is dizzying, with family trees barely helping. Economically, Suetonius notes rising “value” in Roman real estate under Julius Caesar, missing that this was inflation driven by reckless state spending, a recurring issue that strained the empire and its people.

Suetonius’ perspective, shaped by living through Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian’s reigns, adds depth, though his distance from earlier emperors allows for embellishment. This week's music was Mozart’s symphonies 39-41, sweetness and light compared to Rome’s darkness.

This is a year-long challenge! Join me next week for the Koran and the poems of Rumi.

LINK

Ted Gioia/The Honest Broker’s 12-Month Immersive Humanities Course (paywalled!)

My Amazon Book List (NOT an affiliate link)

I misspoke! Gates of Fire was written by Steven Pressfield, not Victor Davis Hansen. Sorry about that!

CONNECT

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Captivate - https://crackthebook.captivate.fm 

Episode Overview

This week, I consider the Stoic philosophy of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations and Epictetus’ Enchiridion, part of Ted Gioia’s Humanities List (link below!). Moving from Greek dramas to 2nd-century Roman Stoics, we first talk about the move from Greek lit to Roman, how the mindset and history will impact what we read. I cover Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus in depth, mention Admiral Stockdale (a modern Stoic) and end the episode with Rudyard Kipling's poem "If."

Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations

Meditations, the private journal of a Roman emperor, emphasizes self-focus, humility, and inner peace. Key takeaways include:

• Focus on your own mind and skills, not others’ actions or opinions.
• Embrace nature to cultivate curiosity and appreciation for the world.
• Accept life’s brevity and smallness, acting virtuously without expecting rewards.
• Find peace within, not in external escapes like vacation homes.
• Hold pleasures loosely to achieve contentment in the present moment.
• I note the surprising modernity of Aurelius’ advice but question its contradictions, like the futility of life versus the call to virtue.

Epictetus’ Enchiridion

Epictetus, a former slave turned philosopher, offers a direct, practical guide in The Enchiridion. I prefer Epictetus’ straightforward style, finding it more relatable than Aurelius’ introspections. Highlights include:

• Distinguish what harms the body from what affects the will—Epictetus’ own lameness adds poignancy to this teaching.
• Know your limits and operate fully within them, committing wholeheartedly to your purpose.
• Avoid excess in speech, laughter, or indulgence, embracing simplicity.
• Consider the parallels to Biblical teachings like Colossians 3:17.

Reflections and Challenges

I don't love Stoicism, as I think it sacrifices deep love and beauty. But there's no doubt that its ideals have a place in society--Stockdale and Kipling both reflect that. Translation struggles (George Long’s arcane 1877 version versus Gregory Hays’ readable Meditations) and time management issues due to travel delayed this week’s reading. Classical music (Haydn’s Symphonies 45, 94, and 104) enriched the experience, though I skipped the art.

What’s Next

Next week, I explore Suetonius’ Twelve Caesars with Mozart’s symphonies and Italian art by Botticelli and Caravaggio. Subscribe to follow the journey!

LINKS

Ted Gioia/The Honest Broker’s 12-Month Immersive Humanities Course (paywalled!)

My Amazon Book List (NOT an affiliate link)

Haydn's Surprise Symphony

Admiral James Stockdale

Spencer Klavan (Modern Classicist)

CONNECT

To read more of my writing, visit my Substack -  https://www.cheryldrury.substack.com.

Follow me on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/cldrury/ 

LISTEN

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5GpySInw1e8IqNQvXow7Lv?si=9ebd5508daa245bd

Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/crack-the-book/id1749793321 

Captivate - https://crackthebook.captivate.fm 

I'm reading and talking about Ted Gioia's "Immersive Humanities Course," 52 weeks of World Classics.

Reading a familiar text in a bigger reading list like this offers its own special challenges. I start with a little insight about what to do when that happens.

I think the best way to talk about these very familiar books is to take them one at a time. Then I have some thoughts about translations (again) and reading in general. 

Genesis: This is a much longer book than you think! The story starts out very broad and then narrows to tell how God decides to work through a man named Abram. We then see how God continues to work through now-Abraham’s family, through Isaac, Jacob and Joseph. None of these men are perfect, or even very heroic except possibly Joseph, but God uses them anyway. Genesis is different than the other very old texts (religious and otherwise) we’ve read in this schedule, and it’s certainly quite different than the Greek philosophy. We see a God who is personal and emotional, capable of anger and also great love, and who is both all-powerful and yet interested in every individual in the entire world.

Ecclesiastes: This is a poem of sorts, and you definitely know part of it because of the Byrds’ “Turn Turn Turn.” The main character, the Preacher (likely King Solomon), reflects at the end of his days on “What’s it all for?” He never settles on a real answer but reflects on how to live, so in its themes it is a lot more like Plato or Aristotle. It’s not didactic like Confucius’ Analects. It feels a lot more like the Dhammapada, but less fatalistic and actually lovelier in its construction. I think the weariness of Ecclesiastes speaks to the human condition, common across time and geography.

Matthew: The first Gospel opens with Jesus’ genealogy through Joseph, and I think Matthew’s emphasis as he relates the story of Jesus’ life is on the fact that the very people who should have been most willing to hear the message did not. Matthew is rooted in Jewish scripture, continually quoting prophets as he relates Jesus’ ministry. The book starts with three chapters known as the Sermon on the Mount, which is harder to read straight through than I expected. It is a lot of sayings and aphorisms, not a lot of story, and you know by now how I feel about that. The book then moves into more narrative as the miracles increase in type and scope, leading to the crucifixion. The teachings from Jesus and Matthew’s own writing are aimed squarely at the Jewish leaders here, pointing out what they are missing and their refusal to see Jesus for who he is.

Mark: This is the shortest Gospel, and I also think of it as the “immediately” Gospel. Mark uses that word at almost every transition from one scene to another, and it makes the book feel very action-oriented. I felt like Mark was sitting with me saying, “Let me tell you what happened!”

Luke: Luke is not an eyewitness at all, and even opens the book up saying he has talked to lots of people so he can get an accurate history put down. Luke's always been my favorite for a variety of reasons...

John: But I was wrong. John is the single best piece of writing I have read so far in this program. It is amazing. The entire book is crafted beautifully, and it’s now my favorite Gospel. Also, it has the very best ending you could hope for. Read it.

Romans: Okay, full disclosure, my Bible study group is doing Romans this year, walking slowly through Paul’s longest letter. Coming to Romans after the previous readings, I was absolutely struck by the vigor of Paul’s writing. It’s energetic, masculine, wide-ranging and urgent. It is deeply personal in a way that none of the previous readings were. I loved reading it in one big chunk and offer reflections on how much I learned this time through Romans. But I will also fight anyone who says Paul didn’t study Aristotle!

I reflect a little on the music, Wagner, and mourn the loss of Warner Brothers cartoons in our world! And then in my culture update, it's a little good and a little BAD.

This is a year-long challenge! Join me next week as we shift our attention to Rome and the Stoics.

LINK

Ted Gioia/The Honest Broker’s 12-Month Immersive Humanities Course (paywalled!)

My Amazon Book List (NOT an affiliate link)

The book The Red Tent

The movie Tokyo Cowboy

CONNECT

To read more of my writing, visit my Substack -  https://www.cheryldrury.substack.com.

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LISTEN

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Captivate - https://crackthebook.captivate.fm 

I'm reading and talking about Ted Gioia's "Immersive Humanities Course," 52 weeks of World Classics.

Ted listed SIX Greek dramas for this week: Bacchae (Euripides), Lysistrata (Aristophanes), Agamemnon (Aeschylus), and the three Theban plays from Sophocles, Oedipus the King, Oedipus in Colonus and Antigone.

We discuss how to read drama in general. I tried to read a little bit of background on each play before I dove in. One thing that’s easy to forget with Greek drama is that the audience didn’t have any spoilers; they knew all of these stories really well. They were there to see HOW it came together. That meant that some of the plot gets treated with shorthand in some ways. 

I tried to figure out the major players, and how they might have interacted with characters I had met elsewhere. It’s astonishing how all of these characters are connected by one or two degrees of separation. Bill and I joke that it feels exactly like when we moved to Charleston a couple of years ago. I swear that every person we meet knows someone else we know through one or two people. It’s the strangest thing, and Greek drama is exactly like that.

I also flag my books like crazy: one flag for the cast of characters; one for the endnotes; one for a map, even if it’s in a different book. As a matter of fact, my Fagles translation of the Odyssey came in handy this week. Not only are there some great maps, there is also a glossary of all the proper names in the Odyssey. Many, many of the characters I came across this week also put in an appearance in the Odyssey.

Finally, I kept a brief “plot summary” of each play as I read. Only Bacchae was divided into scenes, but for each play I tried to keep a brief synopsis of the action as I read. This kept me from mixing up characters too much, and also it helped me to get an idea of how the various stories fit together. 

In addition, I read out loud occasionally, especially if I found myself alone in the house. It’s easy to lose the thread of some of these long passages, especially where the chorus has an extended explication of action taking place off stage. Reading out loud helped me capture the rhythm of the language and also the drama of it in a way that reading silently could never do.

I started with Euripedes’ Bacchae, translated by Paul Woodruff. To be honest, half the reason I bought this edition was that it had Elvis on the cover as Dionysus! Not long after the founding of Thebes, Dionysus appears to bring his cult to the city. Dionysus is a son of Zeus but also the grandson of the founder of Thebes, Cadmus. Dionysus’ cousin Pentheus is now king, and he refuses to acknowledge the god-status of Dionysus. Let’s just say Pentheus regretted that decision. This play was shockingly brutal to me, even though all the violence always takes place off-stage in a Greek drama. There are ideas of redemption, and lack of it, woven throughout the play. Bacchae left me curious about anything related to the practice of the cult of Dionysus. Apparently the rites were so secret that nothing, not one thing, survives to help us understand what they did.

Next I read Aristophanes’ Lysistrata. This is a comedy, truly a farce, whose entire plot revolves around the women of Greece coming together to deny all their men sex so they will quit fighting with each other. It is hilarious, and I’d love to see this one performed live. I love a good marriage quote:

Happily, I bought an edition of Lysistrata that also had three other plays translated by Aaron Poochigian. Clouds, in particular, is a send-up of Socrates and that one is definitely on my to-read list! Also, it was fun to see Aristophanes again after meeting him in Symposium. His argument for love was the idea of “you complete me,” so it was interesting to think about that in light of all of the marriage talk here.

Agamemnon was next, by Aeschylus. Here’s where things took a more serious turn. I feel like Aeschylus grabbed me by the throat and wouldn’t let go. Agamemnon was the king of Argos who sailed off to Troy to help his brother Menaleus take back Menaleus’ wandering wife Helen. When he showed back up in Argos after a decade, his wife carried out the murder plot she had had ten years to perfect. This play is so dark, so full of blood guilt and pain and anger, you just can’t look away. Is there such a thing as guilt that a family can’t erase? Where does devotion to a god cross paths with family love and loyalty, and can anyone win? This is the first play of the Oresteia trilogy (or “cycle”) in which Clytamnaestra and Agamemnon’s son Orestes also is a hero. Here’s an idea for an aspiring novelist: write a novel about the Murdaugh murders, but based on the Oresteia cycle. I’m not smart enough but I will definitely read that! As far as future reading, I’m definitely returning to find out more about Orestes.

For this play and the three from Sophocles I read the towering Fagles translations. It’s not that I’ve become an expert, but even with my little bit of reading I’m starting figure out what I like in a translation, and for now, for me, it’s Robert Fagles all the way. 

Finally, I read the Sophocles plays set in Thebes: Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone. Before I read these plays, I only knew about Oedipus from our friend Sigmund Freud and the Oedipus complex. Now I feel kind of mad at Dr. Freud, honestly, because the truth of Oedipus is nothing like the salacious diagnosis. These plays were dark, but not howling in anger like Clytemnaestra in Agamemnon. The ideas of blood guilt remain—can a family undo the dark sins of an earlier generation, or are they doomed to carry out the devastation begun by someone else? Can there be redemption? (I think that the idea of redemption like we Christians think of it is far from Greek ideals.) Can the Fates turn kind? I can’t even describe how much I enjoyed these plays, if “enjoy” also includes crying over the scene where Oedipus tells his daughters goodbye, and being furious at what a total jerk Creon is. Of the three, I particularly loved Oedipus at Colonus.

If there is any small part of you that wonders if you can do this, you CAN. And it’s absolutely worth the effort.

Music this week was Early Blues. We looked at Greek pottery for art. Links are below.

This is a year-long challenge! Join me next week for seven books of the Bible. If you've never read it or read it a hundred times, you will get something out of next week's episode.

LINK

Ted Gioia/The Honest Broker’s 12-Month Immersive Humanities Course (paywalled!)

My Amazon Book List (NOT an affiliate link)

Oedipus at Colonnus (YouTube)

Greek Pottery

Blind Willie Johnson (Spotify)

CONNECT

To read more of my writing, visit my Substack -  https://www.cheryldrury.substack.com.

Follow me on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/cldrury/ 

LISTEN

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Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/crack-the-book/id1749793321 

Captivate - https://crackthebook.captivate.fm 

I'm reading and talking about Ted Gioia's "Immersive Humanities Course," 52 weeks of World Classics.

This week’s reading was the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Somehow I did not get Ted’s recommended translation by Susan Hollis. Instead, I had the gigantic and very, very beautiful reproduction of the complete Papyrus of Ani. This edition had a huge influence on my week "in" Egypt.

The Book of the Dead isn’t really one book; at the time of its writing (around 1300 BC) it was common to have a papyrus scroll of spells and directions placed in the coffin with the deceased. In this case, the priest Ani had died and this is his scroll. There have been many such scrolls, and pieces of scrolls, found in various tombs across Egypt. Each section of the scroll contains a text that has, for modern purposes, been called a chapter. Many scrolls have many “chapters” in common, but so far no scroll has all of them. On top of that, the chapters can be in any order. 

The chapters (are they prayers? Spells? Opinions seem split.) are, for the most part, pretty obscure. We spend some time reading excerpts, just to get a sense of them. There really isn’t a description of how a person might become “spiritualized” or “pure.” Everything is instruction for the dead in the afterlife.

Here are a few more thoughts about this reading. It might seem a little random, but this reading felt a little random, too:

• Until the Rosetta Stone was found in 1820, the text was completely unknown. The guess was that it was a book of wisdom similar to our Bible. That’s actually completely wrong—none of it is oriented toward the living. The text is all about the god Osiris, who was murdered, mourned and buried. Later myths tell of Osiris’ resurrection. The vignettes are personalized, in this case for the priest Ani (and his wife Tutu).
• Burials apparently re-enacted the death of Osiris in ritual form, delivering the deceased to the point of the weighing of the heart. There are prayers to open the deceased’s mouth, ears, and eyes in the afterlife, because all of these would be necessary to live there. There is debate whether the myth created the ritual, or did the burial ritual arise first, with the myth developing around it later to explain the actions? It’s interesting to me that we can’t know based on what the Egyptians left behind.
• Judgment in the afterlife is the literal weighing of the deceased’s heart against a feather! (I would definitely not pass.) The feather is called a ma’at, and is “Truth” or “Rightful Order.” If you are found to have a light heart, you can pass to the good afterlife, the Field of Reeds.
• The heart is the single most important part of a person, living or dead. It’s the engine of the body and the seat of both emotions and intelligence. In the afterlife it was very important not to lose your heart, even though it was now outside of your body thanks to the mummification process.
• The Egyptians saw death as the confrontation with nonexistence and irrationality. The goal of weight your heart was to travel as an akh, in the sun and in order. The Book of the Dead is a guide to thwart the chaos of the universe, and even the gods had to contend with that disorder.
• Words, images and reality were a unity in Egyptian thought. The images in the scrolls function as text, and all of it is real. In drawing or writing things, they take on reality. In fact, this was why defacing the name of a king would be regarded as a capital crime; it was no better than assaulting or murdering the king himself.
• Many gods are represented by animal faces or body parts. Interestingly, this wasn’t meant to communicate actual appearance, but to connote the attributes of that animal with that god. 

I’m coming away from this week with a new regard for the difficulty that Egyptologists have in interpreting the texts. There is still simply so much we don’t know. In fact, the translations themselves are quite difficult because of the way the language is structured, up to and including the direction of the writing on the scroll.

I’m also coming away with a sense of the weirdness of lots of beliefs. I know that is just a very Western-centric attitude, but maybe I can explain it further. The world is just a lot weirder than we want to think about. There is even a god who was praised because she was a “licker,” something I have never heard before, and the Egyptians had a Celestial Cow. I have loved this reading project for introducing me to things I had no idea of.

I’m interested in looking at some Egyptian artifacts in real life. One benefit of having these beautiful color plates in my book was that I spent a long time looking at the details of the papyrus, at the various dress of people in vignettes, trying to identify the gods from one page to the next. It was a very interesting exercise and I’d love to compare what I looked at on these pages to a sarcophagus or papyrus in a museum.

We listened to some music from Youssou N'Dour, and those links are below.

This is a year-long challenge! Join me next week for seven books of the Bible. If you've never read it or read it a hundred times, you will get something out of next week's episode.

LINK

Ted Gioia/The Honest Broker’s 12-Month Immersive Humanities Course (paywalled!)

My Amazon Book List (NOT an affiliate link)

Egyptian Art

The Michael C. Carlos Museum (mentioned--you should go!)

Music of Youssou N'Dour

CONNECT

To read more of my writing, visit my Substack -  https://www.cheryldrury.substack.com.

Follow me on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/cldrury/ 

LISTEN

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5GpySInw1e8IqNQvXow7Lv?si=9ebd5508daa245bd

Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/crack-the-book/id1749793321 

Captivate - https://crackthebook.captivate.fm 

I'm reading and talking about Ted Gioia's "Immersive Humanities Course," 52 weeks of World Classics.

This week I tackled the Epic of Gilgamesh and also The Dhammapada. Gilgamesh was written in approximately 2000 BC, the oldest known story in the world, and is about 1500 years older than anything I’ve read to date. The Dhammapada is the oldest writings of the Buddha, from approximately 450 BC, which is a lot more in line with some of the other things I’ve been reading. I think it’s important to note the relative ages of these works and know how they fit together.

Gilgamesh was an actual, historical king of a Mesopotamian city called Uruk, around 2750 BC. The poem tells the story of how he angers the gods and then makes a best friend from a former wild man, Enkidu. They go rampaging, killing beasts for the sport of it, and that angers the gods. Enkidu is cursed and falls ill. When he dies, Gilgamesh is heartbroken and goes in search of a cure for his own mortality. He fails in that quest. Here are a few of my take-aways:

• The style of writing feels extraordinarily primitive to me. There is something very, very basic about the story, and many times it feels like it’s written with the mindset of a sixth grade boy: lots of graphic talk about sex and body parts, and lots of bloody killing. Until the last part, there wasn’t much nuance and there wasn’t a lot of reflection on anyone’s part.
• The Flood story is well-described here, lending credence to an actual, world-changing flood taking place at some point in history. The narrative of it is very interesting, especially the description of a square “boat” constructed and filled with pairs of animals.
• Book X is much more thoughtful than earlier sections. Gilgamesh is mourning his dead friend, searching for ways that he himself might become immortal. But the only immortal human tells him:

• And that’s what it comes down to. Man will always and forever struggle with his mortality. We have and we will. The oldest and most enduring story is about the oldest and most enduring question.
• There is just not a lot of man-woman romance in these old stories. Only Penelope and Odysseus come to mind in the last few weeks. Here, Enkidu is seduced by the temple prostitute but there’s not much more mention of women than that. I was actually surprised to see a wife mentioned in the quote above!

The Dhammapada reminded me very, very much of The Analects of Confucius (Week 4). Books of aphorisms are very hard to read in big chunks, as I’ve already noted. It’s more a matter of scanning, trying to see how things fit together, if there are over-arching themes. I have a few thoughts here as well:

• Some of these sayings of Buddha are good sense, and we saw them in Confucius, and we see them in Proverbs. A wrongly-directed mind will do to you far worse than any enemy; a rightly-directed one will do you good.
• All the talk of “emptying” and forgetting the self is bleak to me. It’s a completely different mindset from the Greek philosophy I’ve read until now. It’s not Stoic; it’s a kind of blankness, a rejection of self but not an embrace of anything else as far as I can tell. 

Reading the Dhammapada leaves me feeling very sad, to be honest. I’ve shared before that I’m a Christian, and I’ve read the Bible a pretty fair amount. There are painful parts to it, but there is also extreme joy. The goal of the Buddha seems to be an evenness to life, a flattening out. Maybe the beauty of the Advent season as it turns to the joy of Christmas was what I reacted to, but I don’t think Buddhism is for me at all. The Dhammapada goes in the “Okay, read that one, check” box, and it hasn’t inspired any further reading from me. Curiosity about the culture? Maybe. But in a world where there are so many things to read, at least I can say “no, thank you” to this.

This is a year-long reading project! Next week we are on to the Egyptian Book of the Dead--it's going to be amazing.

The music selections this week are varied and I’m excited about them, too: choral music from William Byrd, Handel’s Messiah (my fave), Tallis’ Lamentations of Jeremiah, and the Byrd’s Turn, Turn, Turn. For art, it’s all things Michelangelo. A big, juicy week ahead for sure.

LINK

Ted Gioia/The Honest Broker’s 12-Month Immersive Humanities Course (paywalled!)

My Amazon Book List (NOT an affiliate link)

Mesopotamian Art

CONNECT

To read more of my writing, visit my Substack -  https://www.cheryldrury.substack.com.

Follow me on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/cldrury/ 

LISTEN

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5GpySInw1e8IqNQvXow7Lv?si=9ebd5508daa245bd

Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/crack-the-book/id1749793321 

Captivate - https://crackthebook.captivate.fm 

I'm reading and talking about Ted Gioia's "Immersive Humanities Course," 52 weeks of World Classics.

An interesting combination this week. Ted Gioia, the creator of my reading list, called it “Love and War,” but it felt like a lot more than that. And last week, I called it a hodgepodge, but I can admit I was wrong.

Plato’s Symposium is the third of Plato’s works on this list. After wrestling with Ethics in particular last week, I was happy to get back to my friend. Symposium is written as a dialogue among friends, recalled by one who wasn’t there, a little like the game of “Telephone” we’e all played. The friends’ topic? Love, specifically eros. Given that this is upper-class Ancient Greece, there is a significant discussion of love between men; honestly romantic love between men and women is practically ignored. 

The reading plan only covered a few portion of Herodotus’ Histories, Books 1 and 6-8. For full disclosure, I did NOT complete the reading but stopped with Book 7. In my edition of Histories the assigned books were more than 350 pages and I simply ran out of time. If I had done all the reading this week I would have been around 430 pages! Given that I “signed up” for about 250 pages per week, I had to stop. Confession time over.

As always, I have so many, many thoughts about these works. For Symposium, I summarized each person’s eulogy as a way to get my hands around the text. A few ideas:

• Obviously Love held an important place in the lives of Greeks. This entire dialogue is centered around it, but it doesn’t look like love in many ways. I’m accustomed to thinking of love as wanting and being willing to work for the best of your beloved, and that being mutual. That desiring “for” someone else, rather than merely desiring them, was absent at least as far as I could see.
• There are a number of points made about Love as the dialogue progresses, and they definitely don’t agree. As always, you’re left to parse out the better and worse arguments. 
• “You complete me” (yes, Jerry Maguire) makes an appearance! That attitude has been around a looooong time. Aristophanes tells a long and pretty funny tale about how human beings were at one time two-headed, eight-limbed creatures, but when Zeus got mad and split everyone in two. Now we go around looking for our other half.
• Does Love motivate us to honor? What kind of Love would do that? Or maybe Love is a moderating force? (I found that a weak argument.) Is its purpose beauty? Those are all offered as arguments, and all are rejected by Socrates. 
• Socrates, via his mentor Diotima, argues that Love’s purpose is procreation. As someone who has actually been pregnant several times, I found Socrates’ discussion of pregnancy to be uncomfortable, to say the least. 
• There is a ton of homoerotic talk, especially from Socrates and Alcibiades. It is just so strange to me that there is virtually no discussion of love between men and women, but tons between older and younger men. As usual, my bias shows, but it’s who I am.

On to Herodotus. He’s been on my radar since I read History of the Ancient World by Susan Wise Bauer about a year and a half ago, and seeing him on the reading list was part of my motivation to jump in. He did not disappoint. The sections that I read were the origin stories of Croesus and Cyrus, and Persia, and then the beginning of the Persian War. I ended with the Battle of Thermopylae, which is an amazing story in its own right. A few takeaways:

• Every military leader should read this book. I may actually send it to my son who is in the Navy! There are examples of excellent leadership, and cranky leadership, and dumb leadership. Herodotus is opinionated, funny, and incisive, if not always historically accurate. When Demaratos, the exiled Spartan king, advises Xerxes to use caution as he plans his war, he points out that men who are free will always be braver, better soldiers than men who are slaves. Xerxes brushes him off, but Demaratos then points out that Xerxes has no experience fighting with an army of free soldiers. It’s profound and brave, considering capricious Xerxes.
• Geography rules everything. The mountains, plains, islands and bays are vitally important to history. We ignore it at our peril. The ancient world was certainly ruled by it. And on that note, modern maps often relegate the eastern Mediterranean to the very edge of the map. How refreshing to see the Med as the center, with Europe, Turkey, Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa on one map. We (I?) are so Western-focused that it’s easy to forget that the water goes a long, long way past western Greece. My edition of Histories was full of excellent maps and they went a long way in improving my experience of reading.
• Sometimes the whole world can turn on one jerk. The Greeks held Thermopylae, a tiny mountain road, until a servant decided to show the Persians the “back way” through a secret mountain pass. The Persians ambushed the Greeks from behind and that battle was lost. It took that one guy.

I could keep writing a long, long time, but it would get boring. I loved reading the Histories, but probably my favorite role of Herodotus was “anthropologist.” There were so many different cultures that clashed in that area and he was alert to all the differences: the matrilineal Lycians; the cannibalistic Scythians; the dual-monarchist Spartans. He digresses and chats and then gets back to the story. 

If you are interested in reading this, I can’t recommend The Landmark Herodotus: The Histories, edited by Robert Strassler, enough. It’s well-illustrated and -mapped and the translation (by Andrea Purvis) is eminently readable. The footnotes are just enough, without dominating your attention. This is how a history book should be. 

This is a year-long challenge! Join me next week for Gilgamesh and the Dhammapada.

LINK

Ted Gioia/The Honest Broker’s 12-Month Immersive Humanities Course (paywalled!)

My Amazon Book List (NOT an affiliate link)

CONNECT

To read more of my writing, visit my Substack -  https://www.cheryldrury.substack.com.

Follow me on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/cldrury/ 

LISTEN

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5GpySInw1e8IqNQvXow7Lv?si=9ebd5508daa245bd

Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/crack-the-book/id1749793321 

Captivate - https://crackthebook.captivate.fm