State of the ?

The present combination of the new editions of the Oxford World's Classics and the fact that The Book Depository seems to be offering most of them for more than three euros cheaper than one might find them in the bookshop is proving a nigh unbearable temptation to me.

I can't actually afford this temptation, but that doesn't mean it isn't there.

So far, I've yet to read an infelicitous prose translation in the Oxford series. And so I seem to be gradually acquiring the classical literary education I've long been at pains to avoid. I'm going to have to read the major philosophical works and get my own copies to mark up. Which should be fun, provided I can get translations of Plato as readable as the translation of Seneca.

Not to mention Demosthenes, Isocrates, and Aeschines - not in the Oxford or Penguin series, sadly, but lawcourt speeches are valuable evidence. I'm probably going to have to shell out for the Loeb Isocrates, since he is the miraculously disappearing translation in the library.

There are, fortunately, a couple of translations of Celsus On Medicine on the internet, since he is next to impossible to find in print. Galen, on the other hand? Finding the majority of his titles - seriously, the man was insanely productive of treatises - is going to be deeply unfun. I might have to scrape together the money to go sit in the Bodleian or the British Library for a couple of weeks, to avoid having to interlibrary loan copious amounts of material.

What I'm doing right now is hunting for mentions of doctors and/or healing deities in the literary sources. There's not actually a whole hell of a lot of them that I've found so far: a little - famously - in Aristophanes' Wealth concerning the Asclepion at Athens; a mention of Asclepius at the end of Cicero's On the Nature of the Gods, the useless doctor in Plautus' The Brothers Menaechmus... so far, that's it. I still have quite a lot of reading to do, of course. Pausanias, among others - including the lawcourt speeches and the rest of Cicero - still lies before me.

This moderate survey of the literary sources is to be accompanied by an attempt to get to grips with the archaeological material, primarily at Athens, Corinth, Epidauros, Cos, and Lebena - and I need to track down healing sanctuaries from Roman sites and perhaps Asia Minor, if I can find Asclepeia in those places.

The goal is to have something that resembles a plan of action by February. At which point, I need to consider my research questions - primarily the interaction of 'medicine' and 'healing' and their coexistence (?) in the social and cultural milieu - again, and see what sort of progress I'm making then.

In order to keep myself honest, I'm going to be writing about my thesis (un)progress here fairly regularly. It may get even more boring in these parts in the coming weeks. On the other hand, there may actually be cool bits of icky history. Who knows?

State of the ?

The present combination of the new editions of the Oxford World's Classics and the fact that The Book Depository seems to be offering most of them for more than three euros cheaper than one might find them in the bookshop is proving a nigh unbearable temptation to me.

I can't actually afford this temptation, but that doesn't mean it isn't there.

So far, I've yet to read an infelicitous prose translation in the Oxford series. And so I seem to be gradually acquiring the classical literary education I've long been at pains to avoid. I'm going to have to read the major philosophical works and get my own copies to mark up. Which should be fun, provided I can get translations of Plato as readable as the translation of Seneca.

Not to mention Demosthenes, Isocrates, and Aeschines - not in the Oxford or Penguin series, sadly, but lawcourt speeches are valuable evidence. I'm probably going to have to shell out for the Loeb Isocrates, since he is the miraculously disappearing translation in the library.

There are, fortunately, a couple of translations of Celsus On Medicine on the internet, since he is next to impossible to find in print. Galen, on the other hand? Finding the majority of his titles - seriously, the man was insanely productive of treatises - is going to be deeply unfun. I might have to scrape together the money to go sit in the Bodleian or the British Library for a couple of weeks, to avoid having to interlibrary loan copious amounts of material.

What I'm doing right now is hunting for mentions of doctors and/or healing deities in the literary sources. There's not actually a whole hell of a lot of them that I've found so far: a little - famously - in Aristophanes' Wealth concerning the Asclepion at Athens; a mention of Asclepius at the end of Cicero's On the Nature of the Gods, the useless doctor in Plautus' The Brothers Menaechmus... so far, that's it. I still have quite a lot of reading to do, of course. Pausanias, among others - including the lawcourt speeches and the rest of Cicero - still lies before me.

This moderate survey of the literary sources is to be accompanied by an attempt to get to grips with the archaeological material, primarily at Athens, Corinth, Epidauros, Cos, and Lebena - and I need to track down healing sanctuaries from Roman sites and perhaps Asia Minor, if I can find Asclepeia in those places.

The goal is to have something that resembles a plan of action by February. At which point, I need to consider my research questions - primarily the interaction of 'medicine' and 'healing' and their coexistence (?) in the social and cultural milieu - again, and see what sort of progress I'm making then.

In order to keep myself honest, I'm going to be writing about my thesis (un)progress here fairly regularly. It may get even more boring in these parts in the coming weeks. On the other hand, there may actually be cool bits of icky history. Who knows?

Books 2010: the fall and rise (and fall)

Books 2010: 101

non-fiction

101. Christopher Clark, Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia 1600-1947, London, 2006.

This work won the Wolfson Prize for History, which I did not know when I picked it up. It turns out that's not a bad endorsement, not in the least. This history stretches from the Electors of Brandenburg in the early 17th century through the Prussian kingdom of Frederick William I, German unification, the end of the monarchy, and the ultimate dissolution, after WWII, of Prussia as a corporate entity.

Clark's history is lucid, readable, and possessed of a generous sense of empathy. He nevers fails to discuss power-political developments in light of their social and cultural milieu, and retains - despite the wide scope of this work - firm control of the direction of his narrative. I could wish he digressed a little more, actually - the Germanies are only one of the many periods of history I'm shamefully underinformed about, and some of the episodes he touches on sound fascinating - but the book is already nearly 700 pages long, not including notes and index, so one can see why firm control of his priorities would be necessary.

He makes several very pointed observations, as well. One of them I think bears quoting, on the use and reuse of historical narratives for political purposes.

"Those who seek to legitimate a claim to power in the present often have recourse to the idea of tradition. They decorate themselves with its cultural authority. But the encounter between the self-proclaimed inheritors of tradition and the historical record rarely takes place on equal terms. The National Socialist reading of the Prussia past was opportunistic, distorted and selective. The entire historical career of the Prussian state was shoehorned into the paradigm of a national German history conceived in racist terms." [662]

It bears remembering.

Books 2010: the fall and rise (and fall)

Books 2010: 101

non-fiction

101. Christopher Clark, Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia 1600-1947, London, 2006.

This work won the Wolfson Prize for History, which I did not know when I picked it up. It turns out that's not a bad endorsement, not in the least. This history stretches from the Electors of Brandenburg in the early 17th century through the Prussian kingdom of Frederick William I, German unification, the end of the monarchy, and the ultimate dissolution, after WWII, of Prussia as a corporate entity.

Clark's history is lucid, readable, and possessed of a generous sense of empathy. He nevers fails to discuss power-political developments in light of their social and cultural milieu, and retains - despite the wide scope of this work - firm control of the direction of his narrative. I could wish he digressed a little more, actually - the Germanies are only one of the many periods of history I'm shamefully underinformed about, and some of the episodes he touches on sound fascinating - but the book is already nearly 700 pages long, not including notes and index, so one can see why firm control of his priorities would be necessary.

He makes several very pointed observations, as well. One of them I think bears quoting, on the use and reuse of historical narratives for political purposes.

"Those who seek to legitimate a claim to power in the present often have recourse to the idea of tradition. They decorate themselves with its cultural authority. But the encounter between the self-proclaimed inheritors of tradition and the historical record rarely takes place on equal terms. The National Socialist reading of the Prussia past was opportunistic, distorted and selective. The entire historical career of the Prussian state was shoehorned into the paradigm of a national German history conceived in racist terms." [662]

It bears remembering.