A political poem

A political poem

A political poem.

A political poem

A political poem.

Season's Greetings, one and all! Around this joyous time of year, we're inundated by lists proclaiming absolute knowledge of the best Christmas films and songs, but little mention is ever made of the best Christmas poems...

Until now!

Listen along, and learn about the five greatest Christmas poems written by Virgil, Milton, Tennyson, Eliot, and Hardy.

Happy Holidays, my learned friends!

"Ours is the crowning era foretold in prophecy: born of time, a great new cycle of centuries begins. Justice returns to earth, the Golden Age returns, and its first-born comes down from heaven above..."

And just who might this heavenly "first-born" child be? From what royal eminence does he descend? From what divine seed is he made? To whom shall he return, when his hour on this earthy stage is through?

We leave it to Virgil, the pagan saint of Dante's dream, to answer these great questions. I could think of no better passage than the Mantuan's "Fourth Eclogue" to bring in the holiday season. Enjoy!

"One swallow does not a summer make, nor one fine day; similarly one day or brief time of happiness does not make a person entirely happy”. Does this apply to podcasts as well? Does one episode not a wise man make? Can you not comprehend all of Aristotle in twenty minutes? You'll have to listen to find out...

“Some there are who say that the fairest thing seen on the black earth is an array of horsemen; some, men marching; some would say ships; but I say she whom one loves best is the loveliest". She bats her eyes and smiles at the competition, secure in the knowledge that there is no thing, and doubtless no person, by whom her radiant beauty and unutterable loveliness will ever be surpassed. She is, we well know, the fairest thing of all--the immortal object of Sapphic adoration and rhyme, the fully-formed Venus emerging from the frothy, misty sea.

“Our institutions do not emulate the laws of others. We do not copy our neighbors: rather, we are an example to them. Our system is called a democracy, for it respects the majority and not the few”. To this day, some two and a half millennia hence, Athens still remains an example to its neighbors. Mounted high above us, she enjoys the lonely summit of grandeur and refinement to which every civilization hopes to ascend. She alone breathes this thin air to which we’ll never be fully acclimatized. The greatness of any age, the perfection of any epoch, shines less brilliantly when held next to the dazzling prosperity of Pericles’ tenure.

Here, in our first discussion of Thucydides, the most scrutinizing and professional historian ever to have lived, we will delve into the peculiarities of this renowned city state, whose rapid acquisition of territory and power threatened her Peloponnesian neighbors to the point of war. In the following, we will touch on the famous passages from Thucydides’ classic work, including his depiction of Corinth’s hostile assessment of the Athenians, Pericles’ Funeral Oration at the end of the war’s first year, the devastating plague by which Athens was afflicted, and the morally bereft Melian Dialogue.