……………………… Ian Mason I should now define for you, clearly and without complication, what I mean by just and unjust. For I refer to the tyranny, in the soul, of […]
Author Archives: Jane Mason
‘It’s all in Plato’-C.S. Lewis on the Theory of Forms: Republic V:476b-d
When Aslan said you could never go back to Narnia, he meant the Narnia you were thinking of. But that was not the real Narnia. That had a beginning and […]
A6, B12, B50 and B101: Unity lies behind Change
I was led to Heraclitus in a roundabout way; I have long been an admirer of Socrates and astonished at the genius of Plato, but was also drawn by the […]
nunc est bibendum: Odes 1:37
I really like this ode because my sister recommended it to me and I love how Cleopatra is represented in several different ways throughout the poem. I also like how […]
Endure O heart!: Odyssey 20, lines 10 – 21
I have chosen this passage from the Odyssey, as it is one that I have found can be comforting, especially during times of uncertainty. More often than not we have […]
carpe diem: Odes 1.11
Horace’s Carpe diem consists of an invitation for the reader to appreciate the day in all its facets, in every moment, without thinking about tomorrow. It is the most famous […]
Epigrams 9.61 and 12.50: A Living Estate and a Sterile Mansion
In my seventeenth-century literature class, I teach Ben Jonson’s poem “To Penshurst.” He borrows from both of these (and other) epigrams in that poem. I wanted my students to read […]
Aeneid 1.198-207: Keep yourselves safe for better times
Over the centuries since Virgil wrote these words, they must have been read by countless people who were experiencing a time of crisis. In the Spring of 2020, with people […]
Histories 1.30-1.32: Solon at the Court of Croesus Part 2 – Cleobis and Biton
The Cleobis and Biton passage, like the Tellos passage, encapsulates the archaic Greek values of familial piety and of death over life. This passage, however, is somewhat more revolutionary than […]
Histories 1.30-1.32: Solon at the Court of Croesus Part 1 – the story of Tellos
This passage is incredibly iconic and embodies as much as it reinforces many conceits in the Greek and consequently the Western imagination: this is the archetypal dialogue between simplicity and […]