Are you a Greek or a Roman?

In Aubrey de Selincourt's introduction to Livy's History of Early Rome, he lists the Roman virtues as fair-dealing, integrity, the fear of God, political competence and devoted patriotism. Regarding political competence, he contrasts the Romans to the Greeks who he says "thought of everything but accomplished nothing." I've read the first three out of five books of Livy's history, and so far the Romans have had kings, dictators, decemvirs, consuls, tribunes and, through it all, the Senate. The government was never perfect, and kept changing its form, but it did last hundreds of years. I suppose this is what de Selincourt means by "political competence". This makes me wonder, "Am I a thoughtful Greek or a competent Roman?" Which are you?

Sweet Dreams

What better way to drift off to sleep than with Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility? My grandson is off to a good start in his reading choices.

Laugh with P.G. Wodehouse

My son spends too much time on the computer. He laughs and smiles and gazes fondly at the screen. This makes me uneasy. Like most things that he finds fun, I'm wary of it. Is there some danger to this, some sign that society is going awry? Shouldn't he be interacting with people, maybe talking with someone--his mother, for example--and not some machine? I peek onto the screen to see what is so attractive:
"hahaha thats sooo funny
you think its funny?
yea i do
so do i
me too"
. . .and so on.

I limit his computer time. I tell him that he should be reading, or practicing the violin, or playing Scrabble, or some other wholesome activity that people did back when society wasn't going awry. I've been reading Laura Ingalls Wilder lately. It makes me think he should be doing chores of some kind, or playing the fiddle. When I've been dipping into Jane Austen, I have the feeling that he should be reading aloud to the family in the evenings, or leading us all in a glee. Anyway, I try to keep him from spending too much--any, really--time sitting at the computer. Of course, this makes it all the more attractive, which may explain why he can stomach those pointless conversations.

He resorts to subterfuge. "I need the computer to do my homework!" he cries. I can't help wishing that teachers would require homework to be turned in on lined paper, written with a No. 2 pencil for the lower grades, blue or black ink for the upper. Or better yet, written with a quill on parchment , like at Hogwarts. The point is, while I think the computer is a wonderful invention, when it comes to my son lavishing his time and attention on it, I'm against it.

Of course, as so often happens when I disapprove of what someone else is doing, it isn't long before I catch myself doing the very same thing. For the last three days I have been stealing every free moment to sit with the computer. I have been smiling into the screen and laughing out loud. What could turn me into such a shameless hypocrite? The answer is P.G. Wodehouse, a web site called www.classicreader.com and a story called "The Girl on the Boat".
I could write about how funny and wonderful P.G. Wodehouse is, but it would be more fun (for me, and especially for you) just to give you a slab of it to read for yourself. See if you don't find yourself smiling at your screen.

Wodehouse sets the stage:

"About this time there was a good deal of suffering in the United States, for nearly every boat that arrived from England was bringing a fresh swarm of British lecturers to the country. Novelists, poets, scientists, philosophers, and plain, ordinary bores; some herd instinct seemed to affect them all simultaneously. It was like one of those great race movements of the Middle Ages. Men and women of widely differing views on religion, art, politics, and almost every other subject; on this one point the intellectuals of Great Britain were single-minded, that there was easy money to be picked up on the lecture-platforms of America, and that they might just as well grab it as the next person."

Later on in the story a father and son are talking about their dinner guests:

"A dinner-jacket is perfectly in order. We shall be quite a small party. Six in all. You and I, a friend of mine and his daughter, a friend of my friend's friend and my friend's friend's son."
"Surely that's more than six!"
"No."
"It sounded more."

Two of Wodehouse's books (Right Ho, Jeeves and Code of the Woosters) have made it onto a list of the top ten funniest books according to a survey in Great Britain. While The Girl on the Boat doesn't have any one scene as hilarious as Gussie Fink-Nottle's speech to the Market-Snodsbury school (Code of the Woosters), every page is good for at least a couple of smiles and a laugh or two. Add to that a satisfyingly happy ending, and it's perfect medicine for lightening your worries, even if society is going awry.

weekly quote

Here's something from the other book I'm reading, Your Money or Your Life by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin:

". . .the difference between prosperity and poverty lies simply in our degree of gratitude."

This book came out in 1992. It's a how-to guide for managing money with frugality. You can almost hear Henry David Thoureau cheering in the background as the authors write about living deliberately, and rejecting the current economic trend of "more is better" in favor of following a different drummer. They teach financial intelligence, integrity and independence.

The weekly passage

As well as reading about Livy, try reading this bit from his introduction in Book One:

"I invite the reader's attention to the much more serious consideration of the kind of lives our ancestors lived . . .I would then have him trace the process of our moral decline, to watch, first, the sinking of the foundations of morality as the old teaching was allowed to lapse, then the rapidly increasing disintegration, then the final collapse of the whole edifice, and the dark dawning of our modern day when we can neither endure our vices nor face the remedies needed to cure them. The study of history is the best medicine for a sick mind; for in history you have a record of the infinite variety of human experience plainly set out for all to see; and in that record you can find for yourself and your country both examples and warnings: fine things to take as models, base things, rotten through and through, to avoid."

"Real, Solemn History"

In Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen has the character Catherine Morland declare her dislike of "real, solemn history". She says, "it does not tell me anything that does not either vex or weary me . . .with wars or pestilences, in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all--it is very tiresome . . . "

This week I'm reading a book that should qualify as "real, solemn history"--Livy's History of Early Rome. I'm happy to say that it has neither vexed nor wearied me and that good and bad men and women are included. I'm still in Book One and already there has been a spectacularly bad pair, Tullia, the daughter of King Servius Tullius and her brother-in-law, Lucius Tarquinius, or Tarquin. They each kill their spouses (she killing his brother, and he killing her sister) and then literally throw the king out of the Senate House and into the street, where their assassins kill him and Tullia runs over him in her carriage. Tarquin becomes king, and you can imagine what kind of king he is, after that beginning. He finally gets so bad that the populace demand that he and his family go into exile and the position of king be eliminated. Two consuls are elected and the Roman Republic is born.

Of course the ousted king stirs up trouble with Rome's enemies, and during the ensuing war a young girl is taken hostage. This girl, Cloelia, goes against Catherine's theory of history by being both good and a woman. She bravely escapes from the enemy's guards and leads a group of captured girls to swim across the Tiber River and back to the safety of their families. The enemy king is so impressed that he asks for her to be returned to him (curiously, the Romans comply). He then praises her publicly and allows her to select other hostages to be freed. Livy tells us that a statue of Cloelia on horseback was set up at the top of the Sacred Way after the war. There are two other heroes mentioned in this particular war. One tries to assassinate the enemy king and then puts his hand into fire to prove that no punishment will deter him. The other fights off the entire enemy army at the most vulnerable entrance to the city, a wooden bridge, while Roman soldiers work at destroying it. He holds off the enemy until the bridge collapses and then jumps into the river fully armed and swims to safety. He, too gets a statue. By the time Livy wrote down these stories they'd had 500 years to improve. I wonder how much is real and how much legend. Still, it's history--solemn, but not at all tiresome.

Dear everyday reader,

What to read next? That's always the question after you finish a good book. As a teenager I dove into books headfirst--whether they were good, bad, or indifferent. After reading some emotionally charged novel like Jane Eyre or Gone with the Wind I would feel a sense of loss. I had to go back to my ordinary life and return Jane and Mr. Rochester to the library shelf. I sometimes feared that I had now read all the good books, and would never again be deliciously swept away by a good story. I needn't have worried; decades later I am still discovering books and authors that thrill me, although perhaps not in the same way that I was thrilled as a teenager. I would like to share some of those books in this space, which will be part book review, part journal, and part commonplace book*.


*A commonplace book is a small notebook or journal where you write down bits--quotes, lines, or paragraphs that strike you when you are reading so that you can always have them at your fingertips. If you don't have one, try starting one. I keep mine on my nightstand and read it often.