A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry
A look at the history of battle in popular culture
This week, we're taking another trip through an ancient author, in this case looking at a passage from Cicero's De legibus ("On the Laws") and discussing Cicero's vision of the origin of laws and how those ideas have found their way into current thinking. Cicero was a remarkably prolific author, and a tremendous amount of … Continue reading Collections: A Trip Through Cicero (Natural Law)
The last part of our four-part look at ancient polytheism, looking at the smallest of gods, and the biggest of humans.
Last week, we looked at some of the basic functions of polytheistic practice, centered on the concept of do ut des, striking a bargain with the god. This week, we're going to turn to another key set of rituals: divination. We're mostly going to look into indirect forms of divining the will of the gods, … Continue reading Collections: Practical Polytheism, Part III: Polling the Gods
Part II of a series at the underpinnings of ancient polytheistic (Greek, Roman, Mesopotamian, Norse, etc) religious practice.
Today we're going to start looking at one facet of how polytheistic religions function, their practicality. This is going to be a series (I'm currently planning at least four parts) looking at some of the general facets of how ancient polytheistic religions work. And work is the operative word, more so than many religions and … Continue reading Collections: Practical Polytheism, Part I: Knowledge
This short essay is responding to a (mis)characterization made - in passing, perhaps, but unchallenged - about the sort of people in the early Christian Church in the context of a high profile political discussion between two notable thinkers on the right, David French (writes for NRO) and Sohrab Ahmari (writes for Catholic Herald/NYPost) (moderated … Continue reading New Acquisitions: Class, Status and the Early Church
By popular request, today we're going to talk about oaths. Oaths appear a lot in fantasy fiction - and even in historical fiction - and they are frequently done wrong. I remarked on this in part II of my "How it Wasn't: Game of Thrones and the Middle Ages" that, "characters are forever being asked … Continue reading Collections: Oaths! How do they Work?
