Word: ancient
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...French used to say, pocketing the 5-centime change on their glass of Pernod. But this ancient expression of French thrift became meaningless when, with the fall of the franc that began with World War I, the sou gradually descended to its present poker-chip worthlessness of one-hundredth of an American cent...
Harvard's .benign, bemused Werner Wilhelm Jaeger, 70, world-renowned interpreter of ancient Greek humanism, one of the first scholars to bear Harvard's exalted University Professor title. At nine, German-born Classicist Jaeger fascinatedly read his first Latin grammar straight through, at 25 took over the University of Basel's Greek chair, once occupied by Nietzsche. His biography of Aristotle (1923) revolutionized classical scholarship when he was still a young professor at the University of Berlin; his monumental Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture is a three-volume university, a gold mine of the ideas that...
Possibly El Greco never finished the painting; possibly it has lost a section from the top. For those to whom it speaks, it is a last cry of an ancient mariner of the spirit...
Time, earthquakes, and most recently, mortar shells, lobbed into the sanctuary during the Jerusalem fighting in 1948, all but ruined the ancient structure. Mosaics were smashed; the 11th century outer dome of wood and lead bulged, showing signs of collapse. As soon as peace returned to the Holy Land, the King of Jordan organized an emergency committee to restore the mosque...
...which "sophistication" may mean anything from talking like Noel Coward to owning a Diners' Club card, the plumed figure of La Rochefoucauld towers at an impressive altitude of worldliness. The eldest son (born in 1613) of an ancient and doughty French clan, François de la Rochefoucauld followed with vigor the customs of the royal court, which is to say he carried on a succession of tumultuous affairs with titled ladies, tangled in the incessant intrigues and wars of 17th century France, recovered twice from severe wounds, and at 66 died, as befitted a gentleman, of the gout...