There's always time to sack Massilia...
Feb. 3rd, 2012 10:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ricardienneIt's hard to express how much I HATE GRADING. I hate writing the same comments and making the same corrections on almost every exam, and I am pretty sure I am going to institute a policy of not assigning points to my auditers auditters auditors because it doesn't matter to them anyway. On the bright side, my two worst students skipped class today, which made it a lot more fun to teach.
I went over to G.'s this afternoon to read Lucan. I still worry that G. sees me as a sort of little sister/dorky student in need of help, but on the other hand, I still think that I have more in common with her than with a lot of the (very nice) people in the department. As in, I feel a lot more comfortable indulging in my morbid and borderline inappropriate sense of humor around G. than with the more demure group of women in the year above me. Also, I should point out that the idea of impromptu reading groups and hanging out and translating classical texts just for fun was one of the things I fantasized about grad school.
Also, the thing that really set me on this path was an undergrad class on Seneca's Thyestes and the absolutely appallingly pointed comments about power and autocracy therein. Many of which also show up in Lucan. We were reading bits of book 3, namely Caesar's march on Rome and his siege of Massilia. A few of the especially nice sententiae:
82-3: [Caesar] rejoices to be so great an object of fear to populaces, and he would not have preferred to be loved.
111-2: [Caesar] blushed to bid more than Rome blushed to bear.
134-40 (Caesar's speech to the tribune Metellus): "You want the empty hope of an honorable death? Our hand, Metellus, will hardly pollute itself with that throat of yours; no honor will make you worthy of the wrath of Caesar. Is Liberty left safe with you as her protector? The lengthy age has not so mixed sublime with base that, if the laws are preserved by Metellus' bidding, they would not rather be destroyed by Caesar.
146-7 (Cotta trying to make Metellus back down): You will have preserved the ghost of liberty if you would desire whatever is ordered of you
359: (Caesar to the Massilians) though we are hastening to the Hesperian pole of the world, there is time to destroy Massilia.
365-6: (idem) It pains me when I don't have enemies, and we think it a waste of arms if those who could have been conquered don't rebel.
I went over to G.'s this afternoon to read Lucan. I still worry that G. sees me as a sort of little sister/dorky student in need of help, but on the other hand, I still think that I have more in common with her than with a lot of the (very nice) people in the department. As in, I feel a lot more comfortable indulging in my morbid and borderline inappropriate sense of humor around G. than with the more demure group of women in the year above me. Also, I should point out that the idea of impromptu reading groups and hanging out and translating classical texts just for fun was one of the things I fantasized about grad school.
Also, the thing that really set me on this path was an undergrad class on Seneca's Thyestes and the absolutely appallingly pointed comments about power and autocracy therein. Many of which also show up in Lucan. We were reading bits of book 3, namely Caesar's march on Rome and his siege of Massilia. A few of the especially nice sententiae:
82-3: [Caesar] rejoices to be so great an object of fear to populaces, and he would not have preferred to be loved.
111-2: [Caesar] blushed to bid more than Rome blushed to bear.
134-40 (Caesar's speech to the tribune Metellus): "You want the empty hope of an honorable death? Our hand, Metellus, will hardly pollute itself with that throat of yours; no honor will make you worthy of the wrath of Caesar. Is Liberty left safe with you as her protector? The lengthy age has not so mixed sublime with base that, if the laws are preserved by Metellus' bidding, they would not rather be destroyed by Caesar.
146-7 (Cotta trying to make Metellus back down): You will have preserved the ghost of liberty if you would desire whatever is ordered of you
359: (Caesar to the Massilians) though we are hastening to the Hesperian pole of the world, there is
365-6: (idem) It pains me when I don't have enemies, and we think it a waste of arms if those who could have been conquered don't rebel.
