More specifically concerning: economy
The Histories of Books
29 October 2002, around 17.10.
To write the much-lamented Cicero essay, I happened to check two small pamphlets out of the library, both Teubner editions of short works by Sallust (or an anonymous author in the style of Sallust). Both had been edited by A. Kurfess (who also edited the Teubner edition of Sallust’s other works [1956]) and had belonged […]
The Historicity of Peasants
14 March 2003, around 9.01.
Have been reading Michael Rostovtzeff’s A Large Estate in Egypt in the Third Century B.C. A Study in Economic History (Madison, WI: 1922), a short book in which the notorious Russian historian gives the Zenon archive his attention. Of course, in 1922 the Zenon archive, with early Ptolemaic documents numbering in the thousands, was bigger […]
Shortcuts
19 May 2003, around 7.48.
In a papyrologist’s dream world, every office would have a recent monograph devoted to it; so would every institution, every tax, every contract type, and so on. Many of these monographs, it must be admitted, are not very interesting to read, and most of them are undoubtedly cited far more often than they are read. […]
Pragmatism
1 July 2003, around 12.23.
You might consider trying to duplicate your institution’s colors in the flower and candles, unless they are something like pomegranate and puce. Columbia’s blue and white lend themselves very well to table decorations, especially in the spring when the little blue irises are available, and have been known to bring a tear to the eye […]
poena sine fine
6 August 2003, around 8.05.
After reading Donna Wilson’s Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the ‘Iliad’ (based on the dissertation she prepared for the University of Texas, Austin) the largest question I have for the author concerns her relationship with her father. Her discussion of the character of reparation in the Iliad emphasizes the role of the father in […]
Citation (11)
16 August 2003, around 2.08.
the cunning Manager.
Report from the Jungle
2 September 2003, around 17.25.
It was a war of each against all, and the devil take the hindmost. You did not give feasts to other people, you waited for them to give feasts to you. You went about with your soul full of suspicion and hatred; you understood that you were environed by hostile powers that were trying to […]
regarding
9 November 2023, around 13.18.
Ms. Ludwig XV 7 (83.MR.177), fol. 64v, ca. 1405. Under the conditions of a rising standard of living, non-conformity with the system itself appears to be socially useless, and the more so when it entails tangible economic and political disadvantages and threatens the smooth operation of the whole. —Herbert Marcuse (One-Dimensional Man, p. 4) Regard […]