Elektra, etc.

[saavedra77]

The other day I noticed that the guy in the next office, the other company's CFO, was reading Aeschylus, of all things. We got into a surprisingly interesting conversation about Agamemnon, Klytemnestra, Orestes, Elektra, an eye for an eye leaving everyone dead or accursed, how amazing 4th/5th century Greece was--It was a pleasant surprise to find someone else in the office interested in one of my intellectual hobby-horses.

Coincidentally, I went a little Classical-Greece-crazy at the bookstore, last weekend:

Freeman, Charles. The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason. New York: Random House, 2002. This is the book I'm reading now: it's about how the established Christian church of the late Roman Empire & its Catholic & Orthodox successors distrusted, resisted, & ultimately stifled Greek traditions of rationalism & science. It traces the roots of Greek mathematics, philosophy, & science as far back as far as Heraclitus & the campaign to suppress them as far forward as far as St. Thomas Aquinas.

Woodruff, Paul. First Democracy: The Challenge of an Ancient Idea. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. This is an analysis of Classical Athenian "demokratia"; the important events the book describes range from the late 6th century tyrannies to the Macedonian capture of Demosthenes in 322, but the book appears to be more about what the word meant than the chronology.

Comments

[uniquecrash5.livejournal.com]

You know, you'd probably be interested in a series of essays that this fellow bradhicks has posted. They're largely about the Greek religion (he's a 'Hellanic Reconstructionist') but there's some really interesting stuff in there; he's a damn fine read, basically. Start here () (though the previous entry also gives some interesting background as well). I added him to my friends list on the basis of some earlier stuff he'd written; he's quite a good writer.

[saavedra77.livejournal.com]

Related conversation:

http://www.livejournal.com/community/latinos/199658.html?thread=996586#t996586