(no subject)

Kings is really bad. But since it's more or less as trashy fantasy novel (kingdom? yes. heroic idealistic (and rather boring) young main character? yes. war with evil country? yes. evil courtiers and intrigue? yes. lame attempts at humor? yes. even lamer attempts to be insightful? yes.) I am completely hooked. This is bad: I have to much work to start watching a silly tv show.

I am trying to divide monster-chapter in two, and am meandering around as a result in Quintilian. Also in ancient issues of Harvard Studies in Classical Philology (someone was writing his dissertation on De praepositionis sub usu:"In this thesis I have examined all the Latin writers through Suetonius in order to determine the usage of the temporal sub." My man Henry Litchfield, however, wrote about National exempla virtutis in Roman literature:

Given the ideal virtues, founded on a practical basis of patriotic motive, we have to ask: How had the Roman moral teachers, in seeking to inculcate them, been the supplying the want which Christianity later satisfied by the inspiration of the lives of Jesus of Nazareth and of His saints? If we find, as surely we shall find, that the age which produced an Imitatio Christi was yet, if anything, less given to reliance upon moral instances than was that which preceded it, we shall naturally seek some explanation of their prominence in the Roman ethical system.

And my favorite (and slightly culturally relevant part):

In a society which exalts Washington and all by deifies Lincoln, the casuist is yet trained almost instinctively to ask himself not "What would Washington or Lincoln do in the given situation?" but "What would Jesus do? Or St. Paul?" This will doubtless be even more the case under other than republican governments, which seem to be the natural nursury of exempla.

Poor Mr. Litchfield would be sadly disappointed, I think, to learn that we are now more likely to ask "What would make a good Facebook status in the given situation?" than anything.