I hardly qualify as a classicist, but I've read a lot of mythology, most of Plato, chunks of Aristotle, and an assortment of others. Despite this hobby, I'd never ran across this piece of information that is probably fairly basic (as far as classical information goes):
In Greek tradition, the Seven Sages or Seven Wise Men were a group of ancient Greek sages of the 7th and 6th centuries BC. They are also called Sophoi. The first listing of them was by Plato in his Protagoras. A widely used list includes the following: Bias of Priene, Chilon of Sparta, Cleobulus of Lindos, Periander of Corinth, Pittacus of Mitylene, Solon of Athens, and Thales of Miletus. These men served Greece as rulers, lawgivers, and advisers and were reputed to have written many popular maxims.
I knew Solon was one of the ancient sages, but I'd never ran across the complete listing and had never seen the men referred to as "sophoi," though it of course makes philological sense.
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Thou dankish half-faced gudgeon! Create your own Shakespeare insult. Pretty funny. Or go here and get some pre-fabs.
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I've been intending to start a new feature at TDE. It would either reproduce something from my weekend reading or reflect on a passage from my weekend reading. I've never gotten it off the ground, partly because family and work commitments have pretty much sucked every glob of literary plasma out of my veins. But I ran across something yesterday evening that seems worthwhile, and it dovetails with my intellectual desertification:
For [Matthew] Arnold as for [T.S.] Eliot, 'the buried life describes our failure to realize our emotional potential' because of a 'lack of true self-awareness' due to the burden of daily living.
From the current issue of The University Bookman.
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Moral theology, democracy-style: What percentage of Americans think certain actions are sins. Sex before marriage (45%) and harming the environment (41%) nearly tie.
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Books to Film 2008: 10 Books You Should Read Before Seeing The Movie. I don't plan on reading these books, but the bullet summaries might prove useful as the summer blockbuster season unfolds.
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From Shadow of Diogenes' Joke of the Day:
A woman gets into a cab and tells the cabbie to take her to the airport. He says," You are the third pregnant woman in a row that I have taken to the airport. " She indignantly replies,"I'm not pregnant !" To which he retorts,"We're not at the airport yet either."
