Word: plutarch
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Emperor's appetite for eminence, the authors write: "History was for him, as for Carlyle, a worship and rosary of heroes, especially those who guided na tions or molded empires. He loved Plutarch even more than Euclid; he breathed the passions of those ancient patriots, he drank the blood of those his toric battles...
...where they went after they disappeared from sight. (Aristotle suggested that they were fiery "exhalations" in the atmosphere.) Whenever a comet appeared, it was taken as a sign from heaven of impending calamity: a flood, an outbreak of disease or even the fall of a king or empire. Plutarch wrote that a brilliant comet shone for seven nights in the sky over Rome after the assassination of Julius Caesar. In Shakespeare's dramatization of that event, Caesar's wife echoes the same theme: "When beggars die, there are no comets seen. The heavens themselves blaze forth the death...
...Greek scientist Archimedes, the study of mathematics and physics meant far more than pure scholarship. Imaginative application of the laws he worked out led to eminently practical inventions-from contrivances employing the lever to an ingenious steam-powered cannon. Perhaps his most remarkable contribution to weaponry, according to Lucian, Plutarch and other ancient writers, was a "burning glass" that focused the sun's rays to set fire to Roman ships besieging his home town of Syracuse around 214 B.C. Exactly how Archimedes managed this spectacular use of solar power has long been the subject of scholarly debate. Many historians...
...small roles I much admire the cool and calculating young Octavius of Philip Kerr, and the oily Decius of John Tillinger. Some of the rest need work, including Bryan Utman as the boy-servant Lucius (a role that Shakespeare had to invent instead of taking over from Plutarch, and was so beautifully done on this stage six years ago by Alan Howard). Utman is not helped at all by the ugly and fussy song composed for him by John Morris...
...operates in a kind of social-literary tradition that includes figures as diverse as James Agee and Plutarch. Most of his work is devoted to giving a forum to the voiceless; The South Goes North, like his other works, is the transcribed conversations he has had with hundreds of people. His work demonstrates his skill at getting the natural poetry of America's downtrodden to express itself more than it exhibits his own considerable writing talents. By talking to people as people instead of as sterile percentages, Coles paints faces on the nation's oppressed and allows the full dimension...