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The ancient world’s most (in)famous arson
In 356 BC, a man by the name of Herostratus lit fire to the temple of Artemis at Ephesus, one of the 7 wonders of the ancient world. The temple would burn to the ground and Herostratus would be sentenced to death. But, you might be wondering why a seemingly ordinary man would seek to…
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Trajan’s market: World’s first shopping mall
Trajan’s Market is one of Rome’s most impressive ancient sites. Built during the reign of Emperor Trajan in the early 100s AD, it’s often called the world’s oldest shopping mall. The complex stood along the edge of Trajan’s Forum and may have even been used to relocate shops displaced by the forum’s construction. The market…
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Employment as major component of identity
In the modern world, when you meet someone, oftentimes one of the first descriptors you give about yourself besides your name is your job. It is a primary characteristic of the modern individual. Our jobs as construction workers, doctors, teachers, or as students represent a major part of our identity. As such, we are oftentimes…
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Negotiation → negotium otium
While watching the news about the recent negotiations happening in DC, I thought about negotiation and the word’s etymology. One might think that it has something to do with discussion or business, but the root is much funnier, in my opinion. Negotiation is actually a negative of a Latin word, otium. Though the positive has…
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Roman attitudes vs. Christian attitudes towards the divine
In a book I discovered at a used bookstore (Grey Matter, which I strongly recommend) in New Haven a while back, I found something interesting about how people today and how Romans thought of the divine very differently. I think the discrepancy makes ancient religion so fundamentally unlike modern religion that ancient religion simply cannot…
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Money: Source of Evil or Benefit to Society?
What I would like to investigate is the biblical idea of the love of money being the root of evil, and not money itself. I was led to think about this idea due to a seminar regarding utopia where many of my peers seemed very opposed to the idea of money in a hypothetical utopia.…
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AI and Classics: the Past and Future
AI and Classics. A most bizarre combination. One from ages past and the other only in its infancy. But it is the unexpected combination of AI with Classics that will bring antiquity into the future. The Herculaneum Papyri are the only collection of books from antiquity that has survived in its entirety. Preserved by the…
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St. Augustine and Government
Saint Augustine was a devout Christian philosopher who lived more or less during the final stages of the decline of the Western Roman Empire (4th and 5th century A.D.). Though he does count as an ancient philosopher, he is more of a bridge between the older, classical philosophers and medieval philosophers than anything else. I…
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Should Property Serve the Common Good?
For this post, I would like to share an interesting take on the institution of property I read recently. Thomas Aquinas, one of Western philosophy’s most influential writers, put forth the essential idea that divine law and natural law aim at the common good. Property depends on said law to exist; therefore property must also…