Here’s what I got done besides that:

Plato:

Lysis (it was fine)

Euthyphro (great! Plato’s humor is one of his strengths)

Symposium’s positive reputation is well deserved. I had bounced off of the Benardete translation several times and ended up reading the Nehamas and Woodruff translation featured in Hackett’s Complete Works. Here’s a charming example where Agathon is being poetic:

“Love moves us to mildness, removes from us wildness. He is giver of kindness, never of meanness. Gracious, kindly—let wise men see and gods admire! Treasure to lovers, envy to others, father of elegance, luxury, delicacy, grace, yearning, desire.”

I’ve whinged about this Hackett book but I can’t argue with the results. My good friend who actually likes Plato organized a symposium to discuss it which I enjoyed immensely. Life is so much better with peer pressure encouragement.

Here’s something from out discussion that’s puzzling me. Socrates/Diotima tells us Love chases after Beauty because he lacks beauty, but how can possessing something beautiful make you beautiful? (As a mythic image it makes sense, but this dialogue is talking about these things literally.) Someone who possesses wealth is a wealthy man, but someone who possesses good or wise or beautiful friends does not become good or wise or beautiful himself because of this. Socrates makes this explicit at the start of the dialogue: “‘How wonderful it would be, dear Agathon, if the foolish were filled with wisdom simply by touching the wise’” (175d).

Why then is Diotima allowed to have the last word on Love’s lack of beauty? Are we supposed to think that Socrates was incorrect and wisdom can be transferred through proximity, because all of the people at the symposium are literally sitting next to Socrates and becoming wiser? Or are we being taught that mere proximity is not enough to transfer any virtue? Alcibiades tries to get Socrates[’s goodness] to rub off on him, but the moment he leaves his side he goes back to his old shameless ways (216b), and conversely Socrates does not become beautiful. I am still more sympathetic to the idea that wisdom or goodness is transferred by proximity than that beauty is transferred this way.

Drama:

I participated in a Catherine Project intensive reading group for the surviving works of Aeschylus. This was the worst reading group I’ve ever been a part of, counting even the To Kill a Mockingbird discussion in my freshman English class, where I actually cried. Having only read The Persians before, I was not prepared for the topics Aeschylus wanted us to discuss.

Aeschylus, unlike so many Greeks, is interested in women. Because of this and other trendy subjects like refugees, democracy, and kings, discussion became quite heated and veered into modern politics. This even included an invocation to ✨Hitler✨. Discussion was for some periods wholly unproductive. We spent too much time talking about who was right and wrong. I think Aeschylus has a lot of interesting things to say but I suggest you do not read him with a group of strangers.

The Oresteia Trilogy (Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides): Very good, although The Eumenides was weaker than the first two and kinda hamfisted. Because it follows the return of Agamemnon to Greece after the Trojan War, this is a good follow on to the Iliad or Odyssey.

The Suppliant Maidens: Has potential. This is the first of a trilogy whose other plays are lost. The broad strokes of the rest of the story are known, but Catherine Project has a rule against outside sources which meant we didn’t discuss the events that follow the first play, and I think we missed out.

The Persians: amusingly Athenian. This is a play by and for Athenians but from the point of view of the Achaemenid court. Atossa, wife of Darius and mother of Xerxes, is the main character, worrying about the fate of her son and people. “Mild Darius” is much lauded and Xerxes much maligned. Which makes sense, because this play is about the second Persian invasion, but screw those Ionians I guess. Here’s mild Darius putting down the Ionian revolt 15 years earlier:

[Herodotus Histories 6.31] Whenever they took one of the islands, the Barbarians, as each was conquered, swept the inhabitants off it; and this they do in the following manner:—they extend themselves from the sea on the North to the sea on the South, each man having hold of the hand of the next, and then they pass through the whole island hunting the people out of it. They took also the Ionian cities on the mainland in the same manner, except that they did not sweep off the inhabitants thus, for it was not possible.

[6.32] Then the commanders of the Persians proved not false to the threats with which they had threatened the Ionians when these were encamped opposite to them: for in fact when they conquered the cities, they chose out the most comely of the boys and castrated them, making eunuchs of them, and the fairest of the maidens they carried off by force to the king; and not only this, but they also burnt the cities together with the temples. Thus for the third time had the Ionians been reduced to slavery, first by the Lydians and then twice in succession by the Persians.

Seven Against Thebes: I really enjoyed this one. I think King Eteocles’ cynicism towards the gods is an interesting portrait of someone of faith to whom many bad things happen. It answers some questions I had about archaic Greek beliefs. Eteocles’ lack of piety is unique amongst Greek characters; he does not disbelieve in the gods and is not disrespectful, but because of his family’s experiences with prophecy and divine interference he is resigned to having an antagonistic relationship with fate. This is worth adding to any group reading Sophocles’ Oedipus trilogy.

Prometheus Bound: Another one I quite enjoyed. In a reversal of a typical dramatic setting, here we humans get a voyeuristic look at a god in a low moment. This would be good for a humanist reading group, maybe with a younger group. We had a fun time speculating on Prometheus’s motives and making analogies to other kinds of “upliftings.”

Something that really stood out to me during this discussion was how reflexively anti-technology people are. I don’t know if this meme is recent pop-culture or something that comes from a Christian guilt complex. People don’t believe in a free lunch, but they are also skeptical of lunches that come at a reasonable price! ‘Maybe there’s a downside to the technology Prometheus gave us.’ You think we should roll it back to before agriculture and fire? Are you suicidal? Put me down as a pro-technology fanatic who believes that boats and power plants are good.

Writing

What are my goals for this blog in 2026?

• at least 3 topical blog posts. There are a few topics that I’m very excited about but my existing outlines or drafts need troubleshooting. Some working titles include:

  • Why Does Socrates Seem Like Such an Idiot? A lack of prior art dooms Socrates to look like a scrub to us moderns. Does this mean there really is progress in philosophy? What does this teach us about how we should write today? (inspired by Plato’s Theaetetus)

  • Information Robustness: A Case Study of R vs K Selection. The goal is to pass on DNA. Rabbits make many offspring with low parental investment; humans make few offspring with high parental investment. Preserving information like literature presents similar challenges to preserving DNA. Which strategy is the best?

  • Don’t Wait for Athens. Athens sucked, actually. Today sucks in some ways also, but not as much as Athens did. Even with the problems of today, there has never been a better intellectual environment. Also, stop bitching about AI.

  • The Frigid King. I make the case that Xenophon believed a Great Man must harden his heart in order to rule, despite Xenophon’s personal passions. I also talk about how this influenced Alexander the Great and compare modern leaders to this ideal. (based on Xenophon’s Cyropaedia and Memorabilia)

• at least 3 [book] reviews. I also sometimes do a roundup of shorter reviews under the title “time well spent.” I like reading book reviews, especially negative ones, but unfortunately I like most of the books I read.

• Bookclub posting: Bookclubs are good! Use peer pressure to your advantage! I will continue to host an in-person bookclub and write something about it. The first thing on my tentative list for 2026 is Plato’s Republic.

I’ll be thrilled with myself if I publish one post a month next year. I know that’s not a lot compared to many, but it’s more than I did last year. I have a job and a wedding to plan and a very demanding personal writing project that I can’t post about yet.

Reading

1. Plato

I’m continuing to work my way through Plato. I am not sufficiently motivated to read all of Plato. Plato isn’t my favorite, and I still think philosophy kind of sucks, but I am going to continue with at least some of the shorter dialogues. A half dozen is reasonable to sprinkle throughout the year:

• Lysis — the request of my study buddy

• Republic — for my in person bookclub and to check the box

• Sophist — this and Statesman follow the dreadful Theaetetus that I read in 2025

• Statesman

• Parmenides — I have read some of Parmenides’ fragments and found it quite interesting, and he was referenced in Theaetetus

• Alcibiades 1&2 — Plutarch’s Life of Alcibiades was fun so I expect these to be good

For Christmas I got the Xanthippic Dialogues by Roger Scruton which are fictionalized platonic dialogues of Xanthippe, Socrates’ wife. Xanthippe is a funny character in the real texts and I’m interested in the idea of writing a “fake” dialogue. I also got some Loebs on early Ionian pre-Socratic philosophers; does anyone really know what Orphism is? If so, can you explain it to me?

2. Drama

Just before the holiday my bookclub did Sophocles’ Oedipus trilogy and I read Aeschylus’s Persians. I found this far more rewarding than expected since I wasn’t wowed by Antigone when we did it in my highschool english class. For 2026 I’ve earmarked:

• Aeschylus’ The Seven Against Thebes is his take on the Oedipus myth. This takes place immediately before the events Sophocles illustrates in Antigone; the two play writes have slightly different cannons.

• Euripides’ Iphigenia in Aulis and Iphigenia in Tauris are about Iphigenia who was sacrificed by her father Agamemnon to propitiate success in the Trojan war. This features in the Aeneid, which I plan to read this year.

• Euripides’ Ion is about the son of Apollo and a mortal woman. He is the mythological founder of Ionia, a region in which I have great interest. I’m also doing a lot of research into Apollo and Greek prophecy, so this is a good fit.

One thing that’s so interesting and rewarding about Greek literature is that the same myths are addressed from different angles by different authors. Everyone knows Sophocles’ Oedipus, but it doesn’t agree exactly with Homer or with Aeschylus’ interpretation. By reading different authors you circle around and approach the folk/lay version of the myth. This is why Greek myths are compared to comic books/movies; just as we have several renditions of Spiderman’s origin story, we have several different Jasons.

3. Other Planned Reading

I set down the Odyssey half way through 2025 and forgot to pick it back up. I should finish that and read the Aeneid this year, which will go nicely with the two Iphigenia plays. My fiance and I discuss these on our walks so it doesn’t take up a “slot” for something else.

Six dialogues plus four plays rounds out to one item a month with some room for laziness. Regardless of whatever “big” book I’m reading for research or pleasure, if I can get through one thing from that list each month I will keep momentum and feel like I accomplished something. Some of my unread pile are reference books so you miss out on the fabulous feeling of checking something off a list.

Also, I hate to say I’ll do something and not do it. There are some books I want to read and expect to get through this year, but I’d rather say after I complete them than set myself up for disappointment by bragging in advance. Whims change; better to allow flexibility.

In Search Of

I’m in search of an online reading group for Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War. If you are running one, please invite me. I have a proven history of actually doing the reading and show up on time. I want to read Thucydides so that I can read Xenophon’s Hellenica with proper context, but I honestly don’t think I can see it out without peer pressure.

Actions

Keep hosting bookclub (see above). In person hosting, be it a dinner party or a poker game, is virtuous. A bookclub reduces your food obligation as a host (though not to zero) and the power of peer pressure is pointed at getting you to read. I go into more detail in my post here:

Publish a website organizing Heraclitus’ fragments. I recently had cause to study the fragments of the ancient Ionian philosopher Heraclitus of Ephesus. The UX of studying the fragments was not great, so I’m making it better. In our age, there’s more information available than anyone could read in their lifetime. Therefore, user experience is a large factor in allocating your time. Expect this Q1 2026.

Use social media more. Unlike everyone else writing a list like this, I want to use social media more in 2026. I already scroll so much that the only way I can possibly increase usage is by posting more instead of passively consuming. The malaise generated by scrolling too much comes almost completely from from the passivity; the creative part of social media can be very, very good. I want to maximise the surface area for people to discover me. I’ve made good friends this way and gotten jobs this way! You can follow me on twitter at ijfen for such bangers as:

Use AI more. LLMs are the best thing since the spreadsheet. Set up Claude Code and try it as a first resort. Have more conversations with LLMs about areas of research. Do another coding project after Heraclitus. Stay up to date with new capabilities.

I hope everyone had as nice a holiday as I did. Get to work on your resolutions!

Announcement: Heraclitus Space August 31st

Sunday, August 31st, I will be participating in a Twitter space1 to discuss the Ionian pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus. Link to attend. The best way to be informed is to follow our hostess Byronic Heroine on Twitter.

If you’d like to read Heraclitus’ fragments and commentary in advance of the space, here is the translation I’m reading.

I have a special interest in Ionia before and during the Ionian revolt of 499 BC, and Heraclitus is one of the early Greek philosophers that make that time and place so special. (Athens, eat your heart out.) If you have recommendations for resources to learn more about pre-revolt Ionia, do let me know.

The Math Academy Way

I just published a review of The Math Academy Way by Justin Skycak of Math Academy here on substack. Although the book is about teaching math, my review is really about how to learn anything. It’s 2.2K words and should take about 10 minutes to read. (The review is, I mean! The book is much longer.) I think I did a good job coming up with an example to show the difference between automaticity and mere competence by having you read something backwards.

This review did better than my other blog posts; it seems like people are more interested in reading about meta-education they can use than obscure greek writers. Who woulda thunk? Social media kudos are like crack, which is why I write about what I do; there’s no danger of popularity going to my head. Welcome, new subscribers; please get in the boat.

Festivals of the Athenians

Athens, the modern pre-modern. The birthplace of rational democracy! Athens can take pride in her arts and her philosophers like Plato and Socrates. Whatever happened to that guy? Oh, right, they executed him for blasphemy. Well, at least everyone voted on it….

In Athens, like in all of ancient Greece, religion was an integral part of public life. Festivals of the Athenians by H. W. Parke is a very readable reference text for the official practice of that religion, based on contemporary texts and some arts and crafts. It’s organized by month, with one chapter/month and festivals of unknown date at the end. There are around a dozen pages of black and white images.

I read it as part of my delightful but futile quest to understand a society very different from my own, but also it’s entertaining. The Athenians had lots of strange or amusing customs, many of which have strange and amusing justifications by myth:

In the usual Greek fashion [ancient historians] told the aition—the just-so story—which recounted the first occasion of some custom in a context which accounted for the strange features of the practice. Sometimes these legends were isolated episodes from the past history of Athens; at other times they served to link the custom with one of the great figures of Greek mythology and so give it a dignified pedigree. Practically always the aition was the product of fantasy and did not actually represent the origin of the ritual, which usually was a piece of primitive cult-practice, best explained in terms of anthropology.

You probably won’t find it rewarding unless you have an interest in religion or ancient Greece. This is not a pop-history book, but nor is it dry. The level of detail is good, dense but not difficult, similar in style to the other book of Parke’s that I’ve read. It’s 208 pages including notes with citations, select bibliography, and an index. It was published in 1977 and is out of print, but used copies are readily available on ebay and archive.org.

As an aside, Parke considers Regime of the Athenians to be pseudo-Xenophontic.

Some Plato

Boo! My hipster cred is gone. I’m reading mainstream texts like Plato.

I’ve just gone through the stuff relating to the death of Socrates, Apology and Crito. I’ve also re-read Xenophon’s Apology and the end of his Memorabilia to compare.

Crito in particular I am impressed by. This is a conversation between Socrates and his wealthy friend Crito that takes place in prison days before Socrates’ death. Crito entreats Socrates to escape his execution and flee Athens. Socrates convinces him that it is just that he stay and die. I’ve been underwhelmed by some of Socrates’ rhetoric in other works, but his passionate argument here is impressive. Xenophon mostly presents the political argument for death in Memorabilia, and Plato takes a more spiritual track in Apology, but Socrates gives Crito a legalistic argument that is just excellent. I was…moved? To be fair, I’m more sympathetic to legalistic morality than the average person.

“Or do you think it possible for a city not to be destroyed if the verdicts of its courts have no force but are nullified and set at naught by private individuals?”

His great patriotism—he argues with the Laws of Athens personified—is a central part of the argument. I thought I knew what nationalism was: loving your country and thinking her better than all others. But I see now that that’s a shallow facsimile of patriotism. Socrates doesn’t just love Athens; he respects Athens. He respects the state per se, as an institution, separately from the people, the land, or his particular ancestors. This is a view so foreign it didn’t even occur to me that someone could respect their state. Perhaps the closest thing in our modern day would be the British respecting the English crown?

Up Next

• Heraclitus’ fragments, in advance of the Twitter space on Sunday, August 31st. Link to attend live or listen to the recording.

• More Plato. I’m planning on leaving Republic for last, but do let me know if you have strong thoughts on the order. I had put off buying any more Plato in hopes that the ex-library bookstore would come through, and finally a copy of the Republic popped up. It feels more special when you have to hunt for it!

• More of Plutarch’s Lives. Plutarch bookclub is going well! It’s less of a commitment for attendees because each Life stands alone. Please see my previous post on hosting a reading group for more information.

• The rest of the Odyssey. I discuss this with my fiancé on walks, but it’s been very muggy so we haven’t been walking much. He’s reading a prose translation by Butcher and Lang which isn’t bad. I’m reading the Lombardo translation which is dreadful. It’s extremely colloquial, terse, and artless. What am I missing?

Anyway, it’s August, and I’m back on the horse. Here’s a book review.

The Math Academy Way

I read through the public working draft of The Math Academy Way by Justin Skycak (his twitter), the creator of online math learning program Math Academy. I’m no longer a student and not yet a parent, but I socialize with many people involved in alternative education and this came across my feed.

Math Academy is in the business of teaching math, but The Math Academy Way explains the why and how of learning that is transferable to other domains, which is why I read it and you might enjoy it. For examples other than math the book (paper?) uses frequent analogies to sports talent development, and here is a twitter thread applying the knowledge graph part of the method to learning to paint.

There’s lots of information that will help you learn to learn, but in my opinion the most important part of the Way is its discussion of “automaticity.” If you believe Skycak about automaticity, a positive view of memorization follows. The first part of this essay explains what automaticity is and why it’s good in general, not just for math. Then I write about a second key topic, the knowledge graph, and how you can apply that to your own learning project. I follow with some miscellaneous tips from the book that you can apply to your own studies of whatever.

Portions of the book cover topics specific to schooling, like grade inflation. I’ve omitted those topics from this post because they aren’t relevant to me, but if you’re an educator who has been living under a rock, you may want to read those parts.

Automaticity and Memorization

Skycak says automaticity is “the ability to execute low-level skills without having to devote conscious effort towards them. Automaticity is necessary because it frees up limited working memory.” We all recall asking our teacher why we have to memorize our times tables. Figuring out 6*7 from scratch soaks up a lot of working memory that you need to do more complex operations. If you’ve got it memorized, all of your brain power can go to learning something new. This is part of why memorization is good, actually.

A digression on reading

Phonics has gotten a lot of attention in the last few years. You may have heard reporting about the controversy that schools were teaching kids to read using “whole word”/”whole language” curriculum instead of phonics based curriculum. Phonics (teaching letter sounds and directing children to sound out words) seems to be more effective than “whole word” curriculum (skipping phonics and aiming for sight reading by directing children to use context clues to recognize words on sight) or “whole language” (exposing children to lots of appropriate books without direct instructions and letting them pick it up like speaking, through exposure.)

In a Dick and Jane book, the idea was not for children to sound out the words. The idea was for them to see the same words over and over again and memorize them — store words kind of like pictures in their mind.

Now phonics is popular and fashionable in certain circles (as it should be, imho). However, the people who espoused whole word or whole language did recognize something true: proficient adult readers don’t sound out every word when they read; they read words on sight. They recognize words automatically.

This can lead to funny errors when it comes time to speak aloud a word learned through reading. When I read the Harry Potter books as a child, I didn’t sound out “poltergeist,” but I did add it to my vocabulary. I could recognize the word and understood that “Peeves the Poltergeist” was a mischievous ghost, but when I tried to speak in a sentence, I didn’t know exactly what letters were involved or what order they were in and therefore I couldn’t say it out loud. The whole word/language people are correct that knowing a word and spelling a word are two different skills.

But they are related skills. When phonics is known it becomes automatic, and sight reading is built on top of that. Proficient readers recognize words on sight so their working memory is allocated only to understanding. You can imagine how difficult it would be to understand the meaning of a complex text if you were also using a lot of brainpower to recognize words. Let’s simulate lacking this automaticity in reading by reading a sentence printed right-to-left and answering a question about it (left-to-right translation in footnotes):

.esav eht nekorb t'ndah maiL taht yas t'ndid airaM1

Question: Do we know for certain whether Liam broke the vase?

It’s not a very complex sentence, it’s just got a nested clause, but how difficult was it to grok its meaning?

You can read it, but it wasn’t automatic like normal reading is. If the pre-requisite reading is not automatic and a lot of your brain power is going to decoding the words, you have less brain power to use to understand the meaning of the sentence. You also have to hold everything you decode in your memory, because you can’t immediately understand it printed on your screen. It would be difficult to be creative and write something with this weak foundation.

Back to Math

Sight reading is automaticity applied to reading, like how, if you memorized your times tables, you just know the answer to simple multiplications without doing any mental arithmetic. That’s why you should memorize your times tables. Yes, you can decode a sentence written from right to left letter by letter. Yes, you can re-derive 7*6 by figuring 7*5=35, add another 6, carry the 1… but without automaticity, you won’t ever understand Charles Dickens or do calc.

When I was learning trigonometry, we were presented with trigonometric identities to memorize. I never did.

I thought, “I have a deep understanding of trig, and so if faced with e.g. sin(-θ), I can visualize the triangle in my head and realize that it’s equal to -sinθ. I will re-derive these identities from scratch during a test.” But it never really worked out that way. This is the trig equivalent to decoding a sentence letter by letter on the fly. It takes a lot of memory and brain power, and you can’t spot these patterns in a problem if you don’t know the identities. I always felt it was unfair when a solution relied on a double angle identity “trick.” My virtuous and pure, unmemorized knowledge didn’t seem to be sufficient during the exam2.

Memorization is just knowing things.

“You don’t need to memorize, because you have the entire corpus of human knowledge available via google.” But you can’t build with potential bricks. You have more ingredients available to you at the grocery store than anyone in history, but you can only cook with what’s in your house. You can’t be creative, synthesize things, make connections, without the requisite knowledge. Recall the sweet satisfaction of spotting a reference in a book; you can’t make that connection if you aren’t familiar and comfortable with the referenced text.

I wish my teachers had explained automaticity the way that Skycak does, and valorized memorization instead of denigrating it.

The Knowledge Graph

The Math Academy Way introduces another useful concept: the knowledge graph. It’s quite intuitive that one must know requisite skills to perform a complex skill, that lacking automaticity and confidence with requisite skill makes complex operations frustrating, and that missing those requisite skills makes complex operations impossible. Math Academy has created a map that graphs what math skills are foundational to other skills. For example, in order learn to subtract fractions with unlike denominators, you should be able to add fractions with like denominators.

Of course, if you demonstrate competence in subtracting fractions with unlike denominators, we can assume you are also competent to add fractions to like denominators. This scales from small steps like the graph above to very large scales like saying that calculus demands competence in algebra.

The Math Academy Way of teaching is to provide a very tight scaffold with small steps when students are first introduced to a skill and gradually remove it when practicing so the student does more on their own and must use recall. If a student is unable to come to the correct answer, [either the student is lacking in care for execution or] requisite skills are not understood. The Math Academy software knows the skills that make up each type of question and can find problem areas and target reviews of that material.

It’s with the example of the aspiring portrait artist that we see the broad value of this approach:

“So I’ve discovered that in order to paint portraits in oil, one must first understand portraits and oil paint; wow, genius! Thanks for writing this book review!” But consider it backwards: if your paintings look bad, it could be because the colors are bad, or the figures are bad. If your colors are bad, it could be because you don’t understand hue, or you don’t understand value. Having a detailed knowledge graph gives you a scaffold of skills to practice as you progress forward and a map to look backwards on when troubleshooting.

As an exercise, take some time to make a knowledge graph of something you’d like to learn. It’s like a skill tree in video game, but in real life!

• If I want to be a pro soccer player who scores goals, I need to have good positioning, shooting, touch, and speed. Shooting and speed both require good dribbling. Dribbling and touch require good ball control. Etc, etc.

• If I am struggling to understand a text in Greek, it could be that the concepts are going over my head, but it could also be that I lack automaticity with reading because I don’t understand the grammar, or I can’t read words automatically because I don’t recognize letter forms.

• If I want to do horseback acrobatics at the circus, I need to be able to do a handstand on horseback. To do a handstand on horseback, I need to be able to do a handstand, so first I’ll try to learn a forearm stand… and I need to be able to ride a horse, which has it’s own skill tree.

  

Millions of man hours have been spent pretending to learn things by watching youtube videos. If you draft a knowledge graph, you can make yourself a road map towards actual ability. A scaffolded approach focuses practice hours on discrete skills of appropriate difficulty given your current competences and helps you evaluate your progress.

Methods You Can Use

Sprinkled throughout the book is other wisdom:

• Spaced repetition—or rather, spaced recall—is the most effective way to review something. If you study only in one big long session, your knowledge decays quickly. Re-reading notes doesn’t make you recall something, so it’s ineffective. (In fact, Math Academy doesn’t seem to endorse students making notes at all.) Testing, by contrast, does make you recall by making you use your knowledge without guardrails, so test frequently and don’t use memory aids like notes unless you are stuck.

• “Test anxiety” or any other excuse for test performance to be significantly worse than performance during practice is basically cope for not really knowing the thing you are testing for. To the extent that it does exist, you should recreate the test format and context often during practice.

• One-on-one instruction is far and away the most effective. In a normal classroom, teachers don’t know who knows what, so students uncomfortable with pre-requisites are left behind and students ready to advance are held back. Nor are teachers able to tailor practice of specific concepts to specific students with an optimal period for spaced repetition. Math Academy does this through software; you can do it with Anki, a knowledge graph, and self testing.

• Direct instruction with small intermediate steps is more effective than project based or discovery learning for beginners, but this reverses when you are an expert; take away the scaffold once you have the competence to be creative.

• Learning takes effort; if your practice is too easy it probably isn’t effective. Pedagogical methods that feel hard to students are most effective, and methods that students enjoy are least effective.

• Learning styles are fake, which hopefully you already knew. Some people are smarter than others, but [math] instruction is so poor that students aren’t in danger of hitting their ceiling. Take your talent development more seriously than you are.

Conclusion

Math Academy, as a software for learning math, seems great. I did some online math learning in high school, and it sucked. Being online made it even more terrible than my other (good) public school math classes, which were boring, slow, and not one-on-one. $49/student/month (as of summer 2025) seems absolutely fantastic for something that can take you from adding fractions through linear algebra. I wish such a thing existed 20 years ago. To the extent that The Math Academy Way is a sales pitch for parents and adult learners to purchase Math Academy, I’m sold. Check back in a few years when I have kids. I wish their company a lot of success.

To the extent that the book informs the reader about pedagogy in general, which is more relevant to me, I found it very good. As I hopefully made clear, what works for learning math works for learning. It’s a quick read, with okay density, decent diagrams, and lots of citations (if you care about that sort of thing.) The advice is actionable. My time reading it was well spent.

The Iliad is not really the story of Ilium (aka Troy); they should have called it the Achilliad or something. “Sing, goddess, the wrath of Achilles” The events of story take place during only a few weeks, nine years into the war. Even after knowing the summary, I was continually surprised by the narrow scope: no apple, no Trojan horse, Ajax doesn’t fight with Odysseus, no Achilles’ heel. I realized I've received a lot of knowledge through cultural osmosis for which I don't have a strong foundation in an original text.

The highlights were scenes with the gods. Hera armors up to seduce Zeus. Helen tells Aphrodite if she likes Paris so much she can marry him. The childlike Artemis flees to Zeus' protection after Athena boxes her ears.

I expected it to be ponderous and shakespearean, but it was action packed and enjoyable. The action was good, but the frequent animal similes provide a much needed reprieve from long, bloody and detailed action scenes. In many ways I think this should have been assigned as a school book, but the graphic violence would probably be inappropriate for someone under 15. Homer does a surprisingly good job of managing tension and emotional arousal by transitioning between times of fighting and periods of rest or conversations. Godly drama also gives the listener a break in tension, often for comedy, and humanizes gods who otherwise would be only capricious and sadistic.

The lowlight would be Paris. Achilles’ eventual killer has little showtime - nearly all of it negative - and isn’t present enough to be a villain. He’s selfish and juvenile but doesn’t give the audience the satisfaction of being a punching bag. One frequent point of our discussions was Priam, the king of Troy. He’s got 50 sons and about half of them die during the Iliad. Should he have just pitched Paris and Helen out of the city walls? What obligation does he have to the people of Troy and to his other 49 sons? Should Hector have defected? And would it have helped?

Speaking of punching bags, Helen was unexpectedly good. Good in the sense of a positive portrayal, and also good as in being an interesting character. All of the women were quite interesting; they stand out amongst legions of godlike male heroes who tend to blend together. You get more of a sense of personality from Helen, Athena, and Hera.

It’s a travesty there’s no good adaptation of this. Homer really teas it up for you with some of the pacing and transitions; the “camera” “zooms” in and out to manage the attentions of the audience in a pretty sophisticated way. I think the places to cut for brevity are clear and uncontroversial (hint: not the scenes with the gods). Hector is a very compelling antagonist to Achilles. You love him and feel sympathy for him, but his flaws become apparent and Homer makes it acceptable for the hero to kill him when he does. I think the management of the audience’s feelings for Hector is the most interesting part of the composition of the Iliad.

We really enjoyed discussing the Iliad on our walks and plan to do the same thing with the Odyssey and the Aeneid in the same way.

Should you read the Iliad? It’s very entertaining and better than I thought it would be. On the other hand, I’m benefited more than the average person because Homer is a pre-req for understanding a lot of the ancient literature I’m interested in. If you’re trying to get into “great books,” the Iliad isn’t the first I would recommend. If you’ve considered reading it before now but expect it to be boring or difficult, let me correct your worries: it’s not and you should read it. If you enjoy fantasy books, you should give it a try.

If you happened to choose Anabasis, here are some resources for you.

We used this translation by Wayne Ambler. I really like these Agora Press editions. Of course there are other translations available, and you can find free versions online. Well, you can always find free versions online, but in this case they are also legal.

Here is a link to my slides. You have my blessing to make a copy and edit it however you like!

The first few slides correspond to background information I gave on our first meeting. For example, I put together these two timelines to give an idea of where the book is in history (halfway between Homer and Caesar) and show the scale of how old this work is. There’s also notes on major characters.

For each book, I’ve given a relevant piece of art (just for fun) and a slide with the map marked with Xenophon’s current location and discussion questions. The maps were a big hit.

At the end I give some questions concerning the book overall followed by recommendations of other texts that concern the Cyrus the Younger and a list of other books that Xenophon wrote.

As I mentioned in Part 1, I gave a short speech with background information on the author and subject. I don’t have a transcript of that speech, but my post on The Education of Cyrus overlaps significantly. Even just reading the wikipedia page will make you an asset to your group.

I hope this helps you and encourages you to read Anabasis!

Caveat: I’m not an expert bookclub host. I welcome advice or other stories.

Why you should host a reading group

In the age of the screens, it’s hard to imagine yourself sitting down to read a book unless you are faced with a force even stronger smart phone addiction: peer pressure. Bookclubs are fun and instill discipline through positive social pressure. Do you look at your bookshelves and feel…guilty? Is there a challenging/dense/long book you’ve been meaning to read? Perhaps you want to get around to reading Herodotus’ Histories, or prepare for Christopher Nolan’s 2026 Odyssey movie by reading the original. Perhaps you want to become a subject matter expert by voluntarily reading a textbook. Give yourself the kick in the ass you know you need by kicking your friends in the ass!

Hosting is virtuous and a huge benefit to your community. Nobody hosts these days, so you become a rockstar if you host anything. Make new friends by inviting people you want to know better. You know who thinks bookclubs are cool? Girls. In the current year it’s completely legal to host a co-ed bookclub.

The demand for social reading groups far outstrips supply — at least in my circles.

How you should host a bookclub

The first question is: do you want to host it online or in person? In person is better because people are more focused, less flakey, and the social/community benefits are higher (you are forced to clean your apartment), but online bookclubs are fine too, especially if you want to read something niche. In person we meet for about 2 hours with at least a half hour of non-book chit chat on either side. 2 hours is too long for an online bookclub in my experience; aim for an hour and if people want to keep talking at the end don’t stop them.

Gather the people

You want to have at least four people, plus yourself. Get at least six or seven to agree to do it, because a few will drop.

Decide on a date

Don’t give people too many options!! If you poll, give no more than three options. You may intuitively think that weekends are the way to go, but when your readers are faced with a choice between your nerdy bookclub and literally any other Saturday night plan, you may come in second. I suggest a sedate weekday night. You will know the cadence of your friends’ lives best.

Send out a calendar invite that includes a link to the text. Send out a reminder two days before.

Ruthlessly keep schedule

Not everyone will be able to make it every day. Not everyone will do every reading. Never compromise. Never reschedule. It’s confusing; it hardly every works; it makes the institution seem squishy. Under no circumstances should you move your meeting within the week; if you meet at 7pm on Thursdays, you always meet at 7pm on Thursdays. Just put the chapter you are reading in the title of each calendar invite and let people show up next week.

Fulfill your duties as a host

For Anabasis, we hosted in our apartment. I provided fresh bread (easier than you think!), oil/vinegar/butter, cheese, salami, and usually some kind of seasonal fruit. We used paper plate and disposable cups for hot tea. Participants could bring their own alcohol or other offerings. It cost us around $15 and max two man-hours of prep per week. I think this was pretty reasonable if you consider that we have the bread making down to a science (your oven may vary). Choose something that’s easy for you to prep like charcuterie, chips and dip, or hummus and pita. Expend effort but don’t make it difficult on yourself.

I made it clear that this was not a dinner, just snacks.

You should also create a group chat with all your participants (and only your participants) to send reminders, links, memes, etc.

Do the reading

You, as the host, will always do the reading. Show no weakness. Do your next reading immediately after your meeting. You can always reread later to refresh your memory. Note sections that stand out so you can find them easily later.

I did a brief historical presentation at the first and last meetings to provide context and maps for Anabasis (see part 2). This wouldn’t be necessary for every text, but even reading through the wiki page for your book and author can make you an asset to your group.

Do the leading

I have not perfected the art of hosting bookclub, but this is what I’m currently doing:

• chit chat while people arrive (20 minutes in person, 5 minutes for online)

• Start with a summary - for Anabasis I was very tyrannical about this because the text was sometimes hard to follow literally. For our next book, The Education of Cyrus, which is a little easier to follow, I am just giving four or five sentences of summary.

• Pull out stand out parts - “What stood out to you?” or “I really like the bit where…” Read directly from the text often. Encourage other people to read aloud.

• Ask questions - Sometimes I ask someone to explain something that I had trouble understanding the literally meaning of. Open ended discussion questions can be prepared by yourself or an AI, or you could ask your participants to bring one. I sent out a few leading questions at the beginning of the week. Often the questions I ask take the form of:

  • Did you find XYZ persuasive?

  • What is the author trying to tell us by showing XYZ?

  • Does X here contradict with Y earlier?

• Prepare some overall questions for your last meeting and anticipate a longer discussion as you reflect on the book as a whole.

An online reading group that I participated in recently discouraged references to outside texts. The rationale for this was that the texts we were reading together were what we had in common, and if someone references something only one or two others have read, they often get into a side discussion that other people can’t follow.

I get it but I don’t agree. The members of my group who have read relevant works are a huge benefit in my experience. Maybe that works for discussing philosophy where there are no right answers and the results don’t matter, but if I want to understand the ancient world one single book aint gonna cut it. Even references to pop culture have been fruitful for understanding through analogy.

I really do hope that some readers try hosting a reading group. I’ve made good friends this way. I especially hope that you consider hosting in person; a bookclub is less pressure and more intimate than a party. It’s cheaper than dinner. I cannot emphasize enough how valuable it is to your social group and culture to host.

Memorabilia

Continuing with Xenophon, I finally finished reading and discussion of Memorabilia by Xenophon, translated by Amy L Bonnette. Five stars, of course, but the most interesting thing to come out of reading this was a better grasp of what ideas in Xenophon are Socratic philosophy and which are Xenophontic philosophy. My last two blog posts are on this split.

Memorabilia is frequently funny and sometimes sweet. You might also enjoy some of it’s wisdom. It touches the edges of the 30 tyrants and the death of Socrates, if you have an interest in Athenian history. I especially enjoyed book IV chapter 3, which you can read here; it’s mostly about gratitude:

Think again of the multitude of things beautiful and useful and their infinite variety, and how the gods have endowed man with senses adapted for the perception of every kind, so that there is nothing good that we cannot enjoy; and again, how they have implanted in us the faculty of reasoning, whereby we are able to reason about the objects of our perceptions and to commit them to memory

Plutarch’s Lives

Plutarch’s most famous works are his Parallel Lives, an anthology of short (~10k words each) biographies of famous figures of Greece and Rome. (He also wrote Moralia, a collection of essays on morality. I’ve mentioned some of those essays in my previous post on Oracles.) I’m not reading Lives cover to cover, but I’ve read a handful so far. Recently I’ve had cause to read Alexander and Theseus for various projects.

Theseus is an interesting one because it’s a biography of that Theseus, the mythical hero that slew the minotaur. Plutarch is a pretty down to earth writer, so he gives some suggestions as to how the myth could be squared with reality. For example, the classic telling of the myth is that every nine years, in repayment for the murder of his son, King Minos of Crete sacrificed 14 Athenian youths by locking them in a maze with the minotaur, a fearsome half-man half-bull creature. Theseus, with the help of the Cretan princess Ariadne, defeats the minotaur and escapes the maze.

Plutarch speculates that there was no creature, only Minos’ cruel general “Taurus,” and no labyrinth made by Daedalus, only a dungeon, and that the children weren’t killed but enslaved after being made to fight Taurus in funeral games, until Theseus humiliated him in wrestling.

And verily it seems to be a grievous thing for a man to be at enmity with a city which has a language and a literature. For Minos was always abused and reviled in the Attic theatres, and it did not avail him either that Hesiod​ called him "most royal," or that Homer​ styled him "a confidant of Zeus," but the tragic poets prevailed, and from platform and stage showered obloquy down upon him, as a man of cruelty and violence.

If you’d like to get started with Lives, I recommend you start with Alcibiades or Artaxerxes. Alcibiades is a very interesting, eccentric young Athenian who lived during the time of Socrates. His life would make a good HBO drama. Artaxerxes is a little more exotic, being the king of Persia around this same time, and this is a very exciting Game of Thrones style drama. (If you’ve read Anabasis, he’s the brother Cyrus the younger is going to usurp.)

Book Club(s)

I’m currently in two book clubs; one that I’m hosting on Xenophon’s Anabasis, and the Life of the Mind seminar put on by Catherine Project. It’s a broad survey of western literature from ancient Greece to Flannery O’Connor loosely focused on the themes of scholarship/intellectual life/epistemology. I have mixed thoughts on the program and plan on doing a review which will inevitably contain my thoughts on some of the content we read.

Anabasis will be the second Xenophon book club I’ve hosted and the first in person. To the extent that there’s an art to facilitating a bookclub, I’ve not mastered it, but I do pat myself on the back for being a ~~community organizer~~. Doing something in person is extra nice because you have a captive audience for your powerpoints. Hypothetically.

Movies

Clash of the Titans (1981)

I don’t watch a lot of movies, but I do so enjoy 80s media. Clash of the Titans is a strange amalgam of myths sort of following the story of Perseus, who’s a bit of a himbo. There is no CGI in this movie, which results in some very strange and bad graphics in some places, but your children won’t mind. There’s a robot owl that is a clear facsimile of R2D2! There’s also nudity! Not in sexual contexts, but it still surprised me. Judy Bowker, playing princess Andromeda, was 27 when this was made but looks so young that when they showed her boobs I was worried about the legality.

Social Media

I uninstalled Instagram and Twitter from my phone. I still use Twitter on my computer, but I don’t use Instagram anywhere currently. I’ll use it again in the future, but I’m glad it’s gone for now. Instagram was unrelenting in showing me posts about politics and miscarriages and children dying and animals dying no matter my setting, muting, or feedback. Unfortunately there’s not a good way to allow only a moderate amount of Twitter usage, so the effect of me accessing it only on my computer is that I type a lot faster.

Video Games

It Takes Two

Around Valentine’s Day my love and I played several co-operative video games, the best of which It Takes Two. IT2 is an obligate co-op adventure/puzzle game where a couple who are about to divorce are turned into dolls and forced to go on adventures to return to normal. The trauma of this bonds them back together.

The writing of this game was…bad. The characters are so unlikable and uncharitable towards each other that we were often rooting against them. The writers had to subvert gender roles at every moment, which became predictable.

The level design was great! Each stage has a different visual theme and gameplay gimmick. I give the puzzles a B-, passable. The controls and technical execution were acceptable. If at least one of the two of you is used to playing video games, I recommend it.

Pico Park

Pico Park is another obligate co-op game (2-8 players!). It’s a lean puzzle game with minimalist graphics and terrible music. The puzzles, however, were well done and fun to play. Good puzzles are hard to design, but this modest game hits its target. The controls and execution were simple and well done. My biggest complaint was that the game is quite short, but at $5 you can’t expect too much. We were upset when it was over and now we’re trying to savor each level of the sequel.

“Even so long as it takes me to blink seems to me to be an extremely long time, because I then do not see you, such as you are.”

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Like many people reading the Socratics for the first time, I think Socrates is a bit of a jerk, and I’m anxious to find times when he’s incorrect. Even better: finding where Xenophon thinks he’s incorrect!

In this post, I’m comparing two passages from Xenophon that I believe show Xenophon disagreeing with Socrates. Both passages are about why people do bad things. After I give my literary analysis I’ll discuss their underlying disagreement, because awareness of it may help you discuss understand why people do bad things.

The first passage is from Xenophon’s Memorabilia, a book of anecdotes of Socrates dispensing wisdom to various people. The second is from The Education of Cyrus, Xenophon’s fictionalized biography of Cyrus the Great that he uses to illustrate the ideal ruler. In many instances, we can see Xenophon’s Cyrus—or his advisors—borrowing wisdom from Socrates. It shows Xenophon’s great respect for his teacher, but Socrates was no king, and the places where Cyrus disagrees with Socrates are very instructive. In Xenophon’s vision, what does it take to rule that Socrates didn’t have?

Here’s Memorabilia. In this chapter, Socrates gives definitions of various virtues, like wisdom, justice, madness, envy, etc. He’s trying to answer the question “can someone know what is just, what is right, and still do wrong?”

And [Socrates] did not not distinguish between wisdom and moderation, but decided that one is both wise and moderate who knows and uses the noble and good things and knows and avoids the shameful ones. And when he was asked in addition whether he held those to be wise and continent, who understand what they should do, but do the opposite, he said, "No more than unwise and incontinent: for I think that all, choosing from among the possibilities the things they think are most of their advantage, do those things; I hold, then, those who do not act correctly or neither wise nor moderate.”

And he said that justice, as well as every other virtue is wisdom. For the just things and all the things that are done through virtue are noble and good. And those who know these things would not choose anything else instead of them, nor would those who understand them not be able to do them, but err even if they should try. Thus also as regards what is noble and good, the wise do them, and those who are not wise are not able to, but even if they try, they err. Since, then, it is through virtue that the just things and all other noble and good things are done, it is clear that justice as well as every other virtue is wisdom.

-Memorabilia, 3.9.4-5

So Socrates says no. If you really know right from wrong, you will always do the right thing; if you think you know what is moral, but choose to do the immoral thing, you don’t have real knowledge of morality.

(Personally, I disagree; people can know something is wrong and do it anyway. To say that doing wrong indicates one doesn’t actually know right from wrong retroactively is a No True Scotsman. Socrates also says that all good things are the same thing, and in particular, his special thing: wisdom. Lots of philosophers fall into this, and I say they are wrong. But for a longer treatment of Wisdom and Goodness, you’d have to read Memorabilia. )

Here’s the second passage, from The Education of Cyrus. The protagonist, Cyrus the Great, has just defeated the rebelling Armenian king but spares the Armenian king death after some outstanding persuasion from the Armenian prince, Tigranes. Tigranes, as it happens, was Cyrus’s childhood friend; now that the Armenian king’s head is off the chopping block, Tigranes and Cyrus catch up.

While in the tent after dinner, Cyrus asked, “Tell me, Tigranes, where is that man who used to hunt with us and whom you seemed to me to regard with such wonder?”

“Indeed, this father of mine killed him,” he said.

“After catching him in what injustice?”

“He said he was corrupting me. And yet, Cyrus, he was so noble and good that even when he was about to die he called me to him and said, ‘Tigranes, do not be harsh toward your father because he kills me; he does this not out of malice toward you but out of ignorance. I, at least, believe that the wrongs human beings commit out of ignorance are all involuntary.’”

To this Cyrus said, “Such a man!”

The Armenian [king] said, “Cyrus, those who catch other men consorting with their wives do not kill them on the grounds that they cause their wives to be less sensible; but because they believe that they divert their affection towards themselves, they treat them as enemies. Similarly, I envied him, because he seemed to me to make my son wonder at himself more than at me.”

The wise man — who was killed for corrupting the youth and who tells them on his deathbed not to be mad about it — is widely considered to represent Socrates. This Pseudo-Socrates says he was killed “out of ignorance.” Socrates, in the first passage, says “those who are not wise are not able to” do the just thing.

Xenophon, speaking through the Armenian king, disagrees. He makes it clear that he didn’t act out of ignorance, nor was it involuntary. It’s not that I had a difference of philosophy with Pseudo-Socrates, he says, I hated him out of envy.

Cyrus, the gatekeeper of ideal rulership, replies after this passage that the wrong the Armenian king did was “human,” and tells Tigranes to have sympathy for his father. He doesn’t seem particularly perturbed by the affair.

What does this tell us about Xenophon?

First of all, it tells us that Xenophon didn’t forget about the execution of his mentor. Maybe he forgave the Athenians for killing him, or maybe he just thought he should forgive them, but he included a tribute to him in his greatest work.

Second, Xenophon did not forgive Athens. Pseudo-Socrates defends his accusers by saying that they acted involuntarily, according to their nature. Xenophon has the executioner disagree with that defense. Cyrus understands the reason for the execution, but he doesn’t condone it morally. Maybe the ideal ruler would get over it, but nobody except Pseudo-Socrates thinks it’s not a moral failing.

Xenophon did not agree with Socrates that knowledge of the good is sufficient to act justly. He portrays Socrates as a little naive for it in fact. If it were true, whenever we see someone doing wrong we must believe his moral education to be lacking. If this were true, it would undermine Socrates’ reputation as a teacher, being responsible for educating of disreputable characters like Critias1 and Alcibiades,2 which Xenophon explicitly defends Socrates against.

[D]oes Socrates deserve no praise in the accuser’s opinion for the fact that when they were young and likely to be most lacking in judgment and continence he rendered them moderate? […] And what father, if his son is moderate when he spends time with one person but later becomes wicked when he is in the company of another, blames the first?

(Memorabilia 1.2.26-27)

Mistake vs Conflict Theory

Why do people do bad things?

Mistakes

The mistake theory of wrongdoing is that people do wrong because they are mistaken about what’s right. If they had perfect information or wisdom, they would take a different action. If there is a disagreement between two people, perhaps they want the same thing but disagree how to get it or they don’t know that their goals are aligned.

In a political example, Party A passes price controls on a hypothetical good, against our wishes. We wonder why Party A has done this bad thing. Perhaps they want they hypothetical good to be widely available to the poor, but they don’t understand that price fixing creates shortages. It’s an unintended consequence.

Conflicts

Conflict theory says that people do wrong because they want different things. Even with perfect information, they would act the same. If there’s a disagreement between two people, they can understand the other’s view and still disagree; their goals are opposed — they are in a zero-sum conflict.

In our political example, Party A does know that fixing the price will decrease supply of the good; they want less of that good. Assume that the results of someone’s action was intended.

Taking a Side

For all that my opinion is worth, I don’t think Mistake nor Conflict explanations are universally accurate. Sometimes people are in a zero sum game. Unintended consequences do happen.

But I had a conversation with someone recently who was, when you drilled down to it, a universal mistake theorist. He believed that one benefit of a future Artificial Intelligence would be creating world peace by acting as a perfect arbitrator: with perfect information and immense persuasive ability, all human conflicts would be resolved.

“Do you think that all disagreements are based on miscommunications, so this AI can solve them?”

“Well,” he said, “if we are playing, for example, a game of chess then no, we are really in a conflict, but it takes place within this framework of mutually agreeing to this contest. It’s synthetic. But normal conflicts, yeah, I think there is a positive sum outcome.”3

This is mistake theory applied 100%, and I think it’s the direction that Socrates took, if not the magnitude. Socrates believed in universal morality, and thus universal wisdom. All wise men know what is just,4 and must act that way. If they don’t act that way, they are missing the wisdom component.

Its perfectly plausible to me—and to Xenophon—that someone might know something is wrong and do it anyway. The Armenian King eschews justifying his actions on the moral grounds that his son was being corrupted. It’s not a moral thing; I hated him out of envy. This is perfectly understandable to Cyrus, who doesn’t push back at all. Can Socrates understand the Armenian King? No, he says the king’s actions were involuntary. He wasn’t lucid. He didn’t understand right and wrong.

Can the Armenian King understand Pseudo-Socrates argument? Yes, and he rejects it.

One cannot have an ambition to read and understand Xenophon without touching upon some Machiavelli. Xenophon invented the “Mirror for Princes,” an instruction manual for ruler, and Machiavelli made the form famous. I very much enjoyed Machiavelli’s letter to the diplomat Francesco Vettori from 1513 wherein he describes his daily routine of toiling on the farm, then coming home and changing into court garments to read old books:

I return to my house and enter my study; and at the door I take off the day's clothing, covered with mud and dust, and put on garments regal and courtly; and reclothed appropriately, I enter the ancient courts of ancient men, where, received by them with affection, I feed on that food which only is mine and which I was born for, where I am not ashamed to speak with them and to ask them the reason for their actions; and they in their kindness answer me; and for four hours of time I do not feel boredom, I forget every trouble, I do not dread poverty, I am not frightened by death; entirely I give myself over to them.

Machiavelli and I have a lot in common; we are both Italians with funny surnames, we both read Xenophon, and we’re both a bit dramatic. To increase this kinship further, in accord with this letter, I am going make a chiton to wear when I read the classics.

C.S. Lewis

This essay about reading old books went around recently. It’s short and sweet, like much of Lewis’s writing.

This part I agree with:

But if [the amateur] must read only the new or only the old, I would advise him to read the old. And I would give him this advice precisely because he is an amateur and therefore much less protected than the expert against the dangers of an exclusive contemporary diet. A new book is still on its trial and the amateur is not in a position to judge it.

This part, however, applies well to Lewis’s particular topic of Christian literature but does not apply well to the ancient greek classics:

Often [modern books] cannot be fully understood with out the knowledge of a good many other modern books. If you join at eleven o’clock a conversation which began at eight you will often not see the real bearing of what is said. Remarks which seem to you very ordinary will produce laughter or irritation and you will not see why—the reason, of course, being that the earlier stages of the conversation have given them a special point. In the same way sentences in a modern book which look quite ordinary may be directed “at” some other book; in this way you may be led to accept what you would have indignantly rejected if you knew its real significance.

Modern books on ancient Greece and Persia provide lots of valuable background information that the original texts elide. One reason I read The Education of Cyrus was because it’s an easy entry point. Even so, there are some times when I catch the feeling that I’m missing the other half of some dialogue between Plato and Xenophon.

Paul Gottfried

One cannot have an ambition to read and understand Strauss without touching upon the miserable politics of the 20th century. Whether Leo Strauss was a neoconservative has been on my mind. The impression I have from what little I’ve read is that Strauss is not focused on contemporary politics, but I’ve read so little that I cannot issue a verdict.

In this essay, Gottfried criticizes Strauss and the Straussians.

To me [Strauss’s] publicized turning back to antiquity was largely about reading eighteenth-century rationalism back into ancient texts. Socrates and Plato, as seen through the interpretive lenses of Strauss and his students, can no longer be viewed as pre-moderns, or as thinkers who pointed to those eternal ideals that hover above and render intelligible the material world. Strauss leaves us with a picture of Plato, as a questioning skeptic, which points forward to the modern interpreter rather than backward. Moreover, Strauss's emphasis on "esoteric" readings allows for the unjustified ascription of his attitudes and values to premodern authors, and those "truths" that the Straussians wish us to venerate reveal their own late modern ideological preferences — now decked out as "human rights" — rather than what most of their book subjects were likely to have believed.

This is fine. It may even be true. I can decide for myself. Is “esoteric” reading a valid method in political science? It doesn’t matter, because I’m interested in its literary validity, and the esoteric analysis I’ve read has been very very good.

While Gottfried isn’t wrong to say one “knows the tree by the fruit that it bears,” I care little about the neoconservative disciples of Strauss. My libertarian bona fides are beyond reproach, and I would have to be really deep into my social bubble to loose sleep over being called a neoconservative for associating with Strauss.

From the other (left) side, I’m pretty inoculated against handwringing about if Strauss was sufficiently enthusiastic about “liberal democracy.” Lol. Lmao.

David Gordon seems to agree with me. See also Rothbard’s take on Strauss:

[H]is work exhibits one great virtue and one great defect: the virtue is that he is in the forefront of the fight to restore and resurrect political philosophy from the interment given it by modern positivists and adherents of scientism—in short, that he wants to restore values and political ethics to the study of politics. This is surely a virtue indeed. The great defect is that Strauss, while favoring what he considers to be the classical and Christian concepts of natural law, is bitterly opposed to the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century conceptions of Locke and the rationalists, particularly to their “abstract,” “deductive” championing of the natural rights of the individual: liberty, property, etc.

My point is that libertarians shouldn’t wall themselves off from an interesting thinker because his followers are distasteful. There is no boogeyman here.

Still, I’m not totally immune to social pressure. If anyone notices me advocating for dropping bombs in the Middle East, do stage an intervention.

Xenophon

Excerpts from three of Xenophon’s minor works this week: On Horsemanship, The Skilled Cavalry Commander, and The One Skilled at Hunting with Dogs. It’s not advice on reading, but there’s some there’s some ancient wisdom on pedagogy in Cavalry Commander in particular. These three are only so interesting if you are not living in—or writing a historical novel about—ancient Greece. But Xenophon does have a charming way with words, and Cyropaedia opens with a comparison of ruling men with ruling animals, so his thoughts on teaching animals are always relevant.

The most notable thing about Horsemanship is how modern it sounds. His advice on mounting the horse, riding posture, desensitizing the horse—they all sound exactly like my mom did when she taught me to ride (unfortunately she omitted instruction on throwing lances.)

Xenophon was clearly a huge lover of animals. This comment comes after he has just described the locomotion of wild hares in The One Skilled at Hunting with Dogs (5.33):

So charming is the wild animal that there is no one who, seeing it being tracked, discovered, perused, and caught, would not forget if he was passionately in love with someone.

My best performing tweet in weeks, more fascinating than any ancient philosophy, was a list of dog names that Xenophon recommends:

And here he has some advice for you who enjoy brooding on society’s problems (The Skilled Cavalry Commander 9.1):

Take care that everything one knows to be good gets done. Things that are correctly known do not bear fruit in farming, managing a ship, or ruling, unless someone takes care that they are also carried out thoroughly.

One note from the translator: throughout these essays, philotimia, meaning love of honor, is translated to “ambition”. This isn’t how I typically think of ambition; I thought of it as “wanting something really really bad, most likely social status.” “Love of honor” is a nicer turn a phrase and has a positive connotation, so I’m adopting it.

Other people’s stuff:

On November 8th, Boston College is hosting a webinar about Strauss. I’ll be listening!

The classicist and historian Paul Rahe recently did me, a total stranger, a very nice favor over email when I was researching the 30 Tyrants. He has a new book coming out in November: Sparta's Third Attic War: The Grand Strategy of Classical Sparta, 413-404 BC. If you are interested in the Peloponnesian wars, you should check that out.

If you start designing books…

Well, I always admired Andy Rooney growing up, so try to imagine these critiques of some recent reads in his voice.

The Good

Agora Editions of Xenophon

Published by Cornell University Press

I’ve accumulated a collection of the Agora editions of Xenophon and highly recommend them.

I have only two notes and they are minor: firstly, in the anthologies1 (the green and purple ones), the editor has solicited essays on each work. They are presented after their corresponding work, but I would prefer them before so I can read the text with the essay in mind.

I don’t always read an introduction. Many introductions fail to be either sound or interesting. But in this case, they are worth reading, and so they should be treated properly and put before their work.

Secondly, all of these are printed with end notes. I find myself using two bookmarks: one in the text and one in the corresponding place in the end notes. I would prefer footnotes, but I can accept that this is subjective.

The Bad

The Persian Empire: A Corpus of Sources from the Achaemenid Period

By Amelie Khurt, published by Routledge

Let me start by saying that this book is excellent and none of my criticism is aimed at Amelie Khurt; this is a blog post about publishers, not authors.

I also don’t want to be too harsh on the publisher; this book is 1020 pages long. The book is a collection of all sorts of sources organized by topic with notes and commentary. It contains photographs, diagrams, maps, scans, and obviously written sources with different authors, different translators, and strange accent marks. If you’re into the Achaemenids, this will save you many browser tabs. It’s obviously a huge undertaking to publish something like this. Routledge, your work did not go unnoticed by me.

Also, Routledge, your shoddy work did not go unnoticed by me: did anybody actually try to read this book before it was published?

Here’s an example page. You can see source number 19 in the center of the page, which happens to be an excerpt from Herodotus, followed by some commentary. I’ve circled in red a cross reference to Chapter 4, source numbers 12 and 13 in the notes to the preceding source; if I want to know more, I can go to chapter 4 and find them. Great!

What is missing from this page? Any indication of what chapter I’m in.

This means that when I search for a reference in another chapter, I must navigate to the table of contents to find the page on which that chapter starts, then navigate to that page, then flip forward to the actual source. This is intolerably bad user experience. Worse, it’s extremely easy to fix: put the chapter number in the header.

This tells me that nobody at Routledge actually tried to use the book, nor leant it to anybody to test. This book has a list price of $100 for the paperback, $200 for the hardcover. It’s the size of a dictionary. It is not something you leave on a shelf in the powder room for a bit of light browsing. To not test for user experience on something like this is shoddy work.

I endured a few hours of this and then fixed my copy:

The Ugly

Ancient Persia

by Josef Wiesehöfer, published by I.B. Tauris.2

Another gross and avoidable publishing mishap: I.B. Tauris declined to indent block quotes in this book, leading to an extremely confusing reader experience. This is especially glaring on the first page:

You read the first two paragraphs, then see the attribution and retroactively un-assign that text to the author. Then you do that whole thing a second time in the second block quote. Then you actually get to Wiesehöfer. Block quoted text is slightly smaller, but the effect is too subtle. Give it a different font, add a vertical line, indent it; there are lots of acceptable ways to distinguish a quote and this is not one of them.

Publishing a print book is hard work. It’s just as much ink to publish an ugly and hard to use book as a pleasant and beautiful one. You might as well do it right.

Modern publishers are [aesthetically] conservative. This isn’t necessarily wrong — you are manufacturing an object with a very long history that’s intended to last for a very long time. But you are making an object with a lot of incumbent competition for attention, including objects manufactured a very long time ago. You, the publisher, have an opportunity to distinguish yourself by making your books as feature full as possible.

For an example, look at the Landmark Editions of the classics. What do the reviews of these books focus on? “I love the maps and diagrams.” “The annotations are great.” “The timeline was very helpful.” In the realm of classics, it’s the appendix that distinguishes one edition from another.

Even in modern non-fiction, publishers are too conservative with tables, lists, and diagrams. Things that were once expensive are now cheap to add. Should your book have an index? Does it deserve a provocative guest introduction? You should have fun and thematic ornaments or commission a set of custom drop caps. For heaven’s sake, your dust jacket should at least have a QR code to the author’s site.

That advice goes double for magazines which are by their nature less robust.

I have some bandwidth to take on new projects, so if you have a print book, ebook, manual, or magazine that needs design work, email me.

1

The word anthology comes from the greek word for a collection of flowers. A bouquet of knowledge!

I put together a little introduction for my reading group, cleaned up and reproduced here.

Who is Xenophon?

He was born around 430 BC, near or after the end of Herodotus’ life and a century after the death of Cyrus the Great.

Xenophon was an Athenian, although you’d be forgiven for associating him with the Spartans. He was a military man who is credited with some tactical advancements like flanking and feints, and Cyropaedia contains a lot of detailed cavalry operations. He wrote a biography of his companion and Spartan king Agesilaus ii, a history of Sparta, and several non-fiction books on martial topics. He lived in Sparta after being exiled from Athens2 and his sons were educated in Spartan schools.

In the modern era, however, we consider him a philosopher. He was a student of Socrates and wrote a handful of socratic style works, and you’ll find socratic dialogue woven through Cyropaedia. He’s a contemporary of Plato, and they both wrote an Apology in defense of Socrates.

“They say that Socrates met [Xenophon] in a narrow lane, and put his stick across it and prevented him from passing by, asking him where all kinds of necessary things were sold. And when he had answered him, he asked him again where men were made good and virtuous. And as he did not know, he said, 'Follow me, then, and learn.' And from this time forth, Xenophon became a follower of Socrates.”

-Diogenes Laërtius

Not interested in Socrates or Plato? If you’re a Thucydides guy, Hellenica carries on directly from the end of History of the Peloponnesian War and through Thebes’ revolt against Sparta. Xenophon has a large library. Most relevant to us, though, is Anabasis.

Anabasis

At age 30, Xenophon was part of an army of ten thousand greek mercenaries hired by Cyrus the Younger (iii) in his attempt to seize the throne from his older brother, the king of Persia, Artaxerxes ii.

Cyrus the Younger’s coup was unsuccessful and the Greek leader of the mercenaries was also killed, leaving the Greeks stranded in Persia. Xenophon was elected to lead the ten thousand. Anabasis is the real life odyssey of their escape back to Greece.

What Xenophon knows of Persia comes from his time marching with a Persian army under Cyrus the Younger. The Education of Cyrus is ostensibly about Cyrus the Great, but really it’s about Cyrus the Younger whom Xenophon knew from this campaign. You cannot understand EoC without understanding Anabasis. Inaccuracies by Xenophon should be interpreted as artistic choices; he spent a lot more time in Persia than Herodotus!

Who is Cyrus the Great?

Cyrus the Great (ii) is the first Achaemenid king. He ruled Persia from 550-530 BC and ruled various other kingdoms during that time, like Lydia, which he conquered from king Croesus.

The Achaemenid empire was the first great empire, and he was its first Great King. For more on Cyrus, read my post “So You Want to Read Herodotus.”

Cyrus was the inspiration for future Persian kings, but also inspired people like Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar. They knew of Cyrus from historians like Herodotus and Ctesias, but Xenophon’s book was popular.

The Education of Cyrus

Alexander read it. Caesar read it. Rousseau, Francis Bacon, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson all read it. EoC is not a history, it’s a hagiography.3 Think of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar; you wouldn’t read it to learn the history, but you might learn something just the same. EoC is a piece of literature that covers Cyrus as a boy, through his conquering of Asia, until his death. At the end, Xenophon gives a call to action which Machiavelli imitated in The Prince: notice the terrible leaders we have today, imitate the great Cyrus, and seize the throne of Greece/Asia/Italy.

You don’t need to have read Herodotus to read this book, or really know any of the history, because EoC isn’t a true story. But nothing Xenophon writes is a mistake. Every subtlety you notice in it, he has put there deliberately. I’ve read this twice, and I’m still noticing things. But because it’s a narrative, it kept my interest much more than the dry Prince. The book is short and also very funny. Here’s a testimonial from my bookclub last week: “that was unexpectedly funny.”

Supplements:

I enjoyed listening to the Combat and Classics’ podcasts discussing EoC book by book (the text is divided into 8 “books.”) I have not listened to much else by this podcast so I can’t endorse it, but these discussions helped solidify the reading in my mind.

This book review is what got me to read the book in the first place.

Plato’s Republic is either the question that spurs Xenophon’s Education of Cyrus, or an answer to it. Plato and Xenophon were peers; and if you’ve read Republic you may find Xenophon’s view rewarding.

The most important supplement I can give you, though, is Leo Strauss’s lectures on Xenophon (direct pdf link). This is my first exposure to Strauss except by reputation, and it’s fascinating. It’s — forgive me for saying the obvious — a very Straussian reading of the text. You can’t get by just by letting Strauss think for you, though; you’ll miss all the the bits about Eros. Read the lecture after you’ve read the corresponding book.

If you are a fan of Strauss, he wrote several books that mention Xenophon. The lecture transcripts have been compiled by Christopher Nadon, biographer of Strauss, who has written a book about Cyropaedia. (I am very grateful to him and The Leo Strauss center at U Chicago.) I haven’t read any of these, because if I bought every book that caught my eye I would be destitute.

However, The Education of Cyrus is absolutely worth it, easily the best book I’ve read this year. If you do get it, and you should, get the Wayne Ambler translation.

Next:

As part of my education on this part of the world, I’m reading through Xenophon’s minor works. As part of my education on Xenophon, I’m reading Strauss’s books on him. Expect short notes on both if you subscribe to the blog:

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I’ve been interested in ancient greek oracles for reasons I can’t discuss. Some reviews of what I’ve been reading:

Books:

Greek Oracles by H. W. Parke (1967)

If you want to learn what the Greek Oracles were to the Greeks, this is the book for you. It has the breadth promised in the title, but focuses a lot on the oracle of Zeus at Dodona and of Apollo at Delphi. Parke writes about the roll of Oracles to the ancients as holy books to modern people; they didn’t go to Homer for spiritual guidance. They went to Delphi, and her influence was more than that of the pope today.

The book spans in time from Homer to the Romans and gives attention to the geopolitical significance of the oracles as well as to their daily routine. It’s information dense and straightforward. It was published in 1967, so it’s missing some recent archeology, but it doesn’t go into enough depth at any one site that these omissions become obvious; a book can only be so long, and this one is pretty short.

The Oracle: the Lost Secrets and Hidden Message of Ancient Delphi by William J. Broad (2006)

Let’s say you did want to deep dive into a specific site and learn the more recent archeological discoveries; you might pick up this book. William Broad is a NYT science writer; he’s clearly talented at making a dramatic narrative. This makes his book uniquely inefficient at delivering information.

The book is a work of entertainment. Imagine yourself in the shoes of archeologists and geologists studying the oracle of Delphi to answer the great question: did the prophetess get high? Literally, imagine yourself in their shoes, including all of the twists and turns of bureaucracy to get permits and local color stories. The study of Delphi is considerably less exciting than Indiana Jones, but Broad does an admirable job of keeping it fun and giving a satisfying ending. (Problematically, people continued to study this after 2006, and some of them disagree with this satisfying ending.)

This book is fine, but not for me. I just don’t like these kinds of info-tainment books. Just get to the point, man! I felt the same frustration with Factory Girls by Leslie T. Chang (another journalist); the odd numbered chapters were about life as a factory girl. The even chapters were autobiography of Chang’s personal history as asian-american, or something, and I skipped them.

Didyma: Apollo’s Oracle, Cult, and Companions by Joseph Fontenrose (1988)

Delphi was the most renowned oracle of Apollo in the ancient world. The temple at Didyma, modern day Turkey, might be considered number two.

Didyma was attached to Miletus, a powerful Ionian city-state and the instigator of the unsuccessful Ionian Revolt of 499 BC against the Achaemenid king Darius I1. During the Ionian revolt, the Greeks destroyed an alter of Cybebe in Sardis, which was the seat of Persian power in the West. In retribution, the Persians destroyed the temple of Didyma.

Most of the information we have about Didyma concerns the temple rebuilt in the Hellenistic period and later. Very little is known of archaic Didyma before 499, but everything that can be known is in this book. It’s information dense and well organized. Fontenrose’s doctoral dissertation was on Didyma, and I’m lucky that he returned to the subject after many decades publishing books on other oracles. However, this book was published in ‘88 and some more archaeology has been done at the site since then. If you are looking for detailed diagrams of the layout of the temple, which Fontenrose demurs from, you’ll need to read some papers.

Essays:

Three essays on oracles by Plutarch

On the “E” at Delphi is about an enigmatic inscription on the temple of Apollo at Delphi. This one contains some pretty entertaining numerology, and I recommend it if you are into kabbalah.

Why the Pythia Does Not Now Give Oracles in Verse is a much more beautiful and interesting essay. It’s concerned with the apparent decline in quality of the Oracle; she used to give responses in hexameter, but now her responses are in prose. It’s interesting to see some “conservative” tropes about how great things used to be in such an ancient document.

“Yes, we are sick, Boethus, sick in ear, and sick in eye. Luxury and softness have accustomed us to think things beautiful as they are more sweet, and call them so. Soon we shall actually be finding fault with the Pythia because she does not speak with a more thrilling voice than Glauce the singing-girl, or use costly ointments, or put on purple robes to go down into the sanctuary, or burn on her censer cassia, mastic, and frankincense, rather than her own barley and bay leaves. Do you not see," he went on, "what grace the songs of Sappho have, how they charm and soothe the hearers, while the Sibyl 'with raving mouth,' as Heraclitus says, 'utters words with no laugher, no adornment, no perfumes,' yet makes her voice carry to ten thousand years, because of the God. And Pindar tells us that Cadmus heard from the God 'right music', not sweet music, or delicate music, or twittering music. What is passionless and pure gives no admission to pleasure; she was cast out in this very place, together with pain; and the most of her has dribbled away, it seems, into the ears of men.”

On the Failure of Oracles is concerned with the decrease in the number of Oracles in Plutarch’s time.

Quite the contrary, I propose that you discuss how it happens that the oracle here has not also given out, and Heracles for a second time, or some other god, has not wrested away the tripod​ which is constantly being occupied with shameful and impious questions which people propound​ to the god, some of whom try to make a test of him2 as though his wisdom were an affectation, while others put questions about treasures or inheritances or unlawful marriages; so Pythagoras​ is proved to be utterly wrong in asserting that men are at their best when they approach the gods. Thus those maladies and emotions of the soul which it would be good to disclaim and conceal in the presence of an older man, they bring naked and exposed before the god.

PapersLibraries:

I’ll spare you the details of the papers on Didyma I’ve been reading, but I want to mention that your public library card can get you access to JSTOR. Wow, finally my tax dollars are good for something! The local branch of my library contains mostly race grievance books, but it does make a convenient spot to pick up holds. The Fontenrose book retails for $250 used because it’s out of print, but there is one copy in Texas that could be loaned to my library. You can read it on Archive.org, though maybe not for much longer. With the law going against Archive.org, me and my out of print books are backed into a corner. If only there were some other site one could get free books on… It would have to be even less legal than the Archive…

Conclusion

Imagine the automaton that takes over my body at 1am mechanically flipping pages every 150 seconds, eyes moving left to right and absolutely no information being processed. I must move this off my “to read” list. I must move this off my “to read” list. It’s a waste of precious sleeping time, and it’s such a pain to find out where that creature has moved my bookmark! A little blurb like this should encourage the automaton to only read when I’m really awake.

They won’t all be organized by topic though; I’ve just been reading a lot about oracles.

What is it?

When you are “reading Herodotus,” you are reading a book called The Histories or The Persian Wars. These are the same book, published around 430 BC and usually split into 9 parts. Herodotus was a greek historian from Halicarnassus, but he spend a lot of time in Athens and has pretty Athenian sensibilities. This is basically the first history ever written of anything; it started the genre.

This book covers the rise of the Persian empire starting with Cyrus the Great. Cyrus is featured in another famous book you might have heard of:

Thus saith the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him; and I will loose the loins of kings, to open before him the two leaved gates; and the gates shall not be shut;

I will go before thee, and make the crooked places straight: I will break in pieces the gates of brass, and cut in sunder the bars of iron:

And I will give thee the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places, that thou mayest know that I, the Lord, which call thee by thy name, am the God of Israel.

-Isaiah 43:1-3 KJV

Cyrus is the only gentile ever called messiah. After Cyrus dies in 530 BC, the book details the unstable reigns of his sons, the mad king Cambyses and his younger brother. Eventually, Darius the Great usurps the throne. The story of this struggle and conspiracy is epic, a real page turner and wildly entertaining.

Darius rules the now-called Achaemenid empire through various campaigns, including the Ionic Revolt, where several Greek states in modern day Turkey rebel, another page turner. After he puts down the revolt, he invades Greece proper. When he passes away, his son Xerxes assumes the empire.

You probably know Xerxes as the bad guy with the nose ring in the movie 300, but some of you might remember King Xerxes from another source:

And it was so, when the king saw Esther the queen standing in the court, that she obtained favour in his sight: and the king held out to Esther the golden sceptre that was in his hand. So Esther drew near, and touched the top of the sceptre.

Then said the king unto her, What wilt thou, queen Esther? and what is thy request? it shall be even given thee to the half of the kingdom.

-Esther 5:2-3 KJV

Xerxes’ invasion of Greece is famously defeated at Salamis and the book ends with the end of the second Greco-Persian war.

Why to read it

If that summary is not enough to convince you, I’m not sure what will. These stories are so exciting, so dramatic…

The Histories is not a book of ancient Greek philosophy. Sure, there are some quotable lines, but primarily this is a story. And it’s a story you probably don’t know; the Persian empire doesn’t feature heavily in pop culture, but it was the largest empire to date. Alexander the Great conquered an empire; which empire? This one. Did you know that we get the practice of kneeling and bowing before rulers from the Persians; the Greeks hated it! Darius the Great styled himself as the “King of Kings” 500 years before Christ was born.

The classics are intimidating, in part because there was a lot of garbage philosophy published in ancient Greece and Rome. You can get garbage philosophy anywhere! This is no flimsy philosophy, it’s a narrative story with prophecy and intrigue.

What to Skip

Herodotus includes a lot of anthropological/ethnographic information that is not interesting to people like you and me. I don’t care about the dubiously correct origins of an ancient people that no longer exists. You can skip these parts if you want.

Much book 2 especially, which mostly covers Egypt, is dead boring. (But don’t skip the whole book or you’ll miss the story of the clever thief. )

I give you my blessing to skip the boring parts. They will still be there later if you want to go back to them.

Which Translation

I am not a classics aficionado or any kind of historian, nor do I speak Greek. This makes me uniquely qualified to recommend a translation to you, presumably also a normal person.

• George Rawlinson’s translation - This is the translation I’m reading and recommending. It sounds old, which I like, but the vocabulary is not difficult. I’ve only had to look up some historical or naval jargon. It turns out that this translation was first published in 1858! Surprising, because it sounds really good to me. (I do not have the exact edition linked, so I cannot speak to the introduction or any other content in that book. I just searched amazon for an edition that uses the Rawlinson translation.)

• Landmark Herodotus edited by Strassler - I have not read this, but I have heard very good things about the Landmark series, and this version has lots of maps and notes. People whom I trust like Strassler’s Landmark series, and the next time I buy a book in this genre, I’ll be trying the Landmark edition of it.

• Tom Holland’s translation - I have no opinions on this. After my post, someone messaged me about translations and said the Tom Holland translation sounded casual and they weren’t a fan.

• Robin Waterfield for Oxford World’s Classics - Don’t read this one. I started with this translation and didn’t like it. It sounds very casual to my ear. For example, Waterfield uses the clumsy and stiff non-word “non-Greeks” where other translators use the more natural and colorful “foreigners” or “barbarians.” The sentence structure is simple and it feels modern. I like a little drama; I think that a story more than 2000 years old should sounds…old.

Do you like Game of Thrones? Do you wish it had no explicit sex and slightly less violence? Do you wish it was true? This is the book for you.

Some people claim that cellulose acetate is not plastic. Some people did this on a business account on instagram and then deleted my well-liked comment pointing out that cellulose acetate is plastic.

I just so happened to have been researching the history of galalith the day before I saw this outrageous claim and thus am uncommonly acquainted with the history of plastic right now. 

But first, what is plastic? 

Adjective - a substance that can be easily shaped or molded

Noun - a synthetic or semi-synthetic substance made from a polymer

Taking the first part, the word plastic derives from the Greek πλαστικός (plastikos) meaning "capable of being shaped or molded." You may have heard “young minds are plastic,” or you might be familiar with the engineering concept of elastic vs plastic deformation–deformation that is impermanent vs permanent, respectively. 

The second part of the definition is what some people don’t understand. A polymer is a large molecule with a repeating pattern. Because of this chain structure, polymers have some useful properties like toughness, elasticity, and a tendency not to crystalize. An example of a synthetic polymer–a plastic–would be PVC, Polyvinyl Chloride, the white plastic that is made into pipes. An example of a non-synthetic polymer–a biopolymer2–would be DNA. 

Hopefully that shrinks the scare quotes about “polymer.” 

A brief timeline of man’s use of plastics:

• -1800AD: Naturally occurring rubber, shellac, tortoiseshell, ivory, baleen, and horn are used for a variety of goods.

• 1824: American David Noyes invents the clarifying press to scale the process of clarifying horn by water, oil, heat, and pressure. Clarified horn was used as an inexpensive alternative to tortoiseshell through the 1910s. 

• 1839: American Charles Goodyear treats natural rubber with sulfur to harden it, inventing vulcanizing. 

• 1846: Frenchmen invent Collodion by mixing nitrocellulose, ether, and alcohol. This thin film is used in photography and as a medical dressing.

• 1855: Englishman Alexander Parkes invents the first celluloid by applying nitric acid and solvent to cellulose. He patented this as Parkesine in 1862 and showcased it at the International Exhibition in London. It’s used as a substitute for tortoiseshell.

• 1865: Frenchman Paul Schutzenberger invents cellulose acetate.

• ~1870-1900: At some point in the later half of the 19th century, a process for clarifying horn with hydrogen peroxide was developed, (maybe, or this could be made up.)3

• 1893: Frenchman Auguste Trillat mixes milk protein and formaldehyde to invent Galalith, a hard plastic that was easy to dye and cut, but could not be molded after it was set.4 Galalith was presented at the Paris Universal Exhibition in 1900. It gained popularity in the fashion industry as an alternative to horn and ivory. 

• 1907: Belgian5 chemist Leo Baekeland invents Bakelite, the first synthetic plastic, by combining phenol and formaldehyde. Bakelite is moldable, durable, and an excellent insulator. It is the first commercially viable synthetic plastic and a landmark for the chemical industry. Large scale production in begins in 1910 in the US.

• 1913: Swiss Camille and Henri Dreyfus manufacture a continuous filament of cellulose acetate fiber. Post-war, it met limited success as a silk alternative, but its thermoplastic properties made permanent moiré and pleats possible and became a common fiber in mixed fabrics.

• 1926 Coco Chanel accessorizes the first LBD with galalith costume jewelry.

• 1926: American Waldo Semon develops a new manufacturing technique for PVC (first synthesized in 1872). 

• 1931: German company IG Farben begins manufacturing polystyrene. 

• 1933: Polyethylene is discovered by the British company ICI.

• 1933. German company Röhm & Haas AG brings polymethyl methacrylate to market as Plexiglas (aka acrylic, lucite, or perspex). 

• 1930s: Wartime restrictions make milk scarce and galalith production decreases.

• 1941: British Calico Printers’ Association discovers polyethylene terephthalate. It has become widespread as a replacement for glass, especially in bottles.

• 1944: Styrofoam is patented.

• 1940s: Cellulose acetate replaces cellulose nitrate film. 

• 1954: Dow Chemical invents expanded polystyrene. 

The story of plastics is the shiny, colorful exoskeleton on the history of the industrial revolution. Leave ivory and baleen where they grow; leave the lac on the branch. You are living in the future now.

Can you pick out the bioplastics from synthetic plastics? When you pick up a vintage bakelite tchotchke, do you remember if it’s an organic polymer? Of course, the reason for denying that cellulose acetate is plastic has nothing to do with it’s chemical properties. It’s only the momentary neurosis about being “green.” Lying about your product not being made of plastic is tithing to a recycling symbol sticker.

Some plastics can be recycled by reheating and reforming them. Other plastics (including acetate as I understand it,) are rarely recycled this way and instead are let to biodegrade or burned. Not all biodegradable plastics are bioplastics, and biodegradability is not a desirable property in a material per se. The use of celluloid to make hair combs in the late 19th and early 20th century, for example, has left us enthusiasts with few and fragile examples of the art. 

What is my point?

1. Cellulose acetate is a plastic, and I have the authority to say this because I wrote all that stuff up there about plastic.

2. Man made organic polymers fit into a long history of synthetic polymers, and to separate them out by denying they are plastic is missing both the big picture and the details. To deny it to your consumers is fraud.

3. All the improvements in your conditions via cheap, durable, beautiful, and lifesaving plastics–which you simply take for granted-you owe to the effort of men who are better than you.6

I hope this gives you, the reader, an appreciation for plastic all around you, its unique properties and the chemists that discovered them, and perhaps even its beauty. 

Apropos of this twitter thread that got around, here are some simple tips for developing your eye for AI generated images. The goal here is to tip your confidence towards AI generated or not in 30 seconds. I want you to look for the lowest hanging fruit first. 

1. AI does symmetry poorly. 
   See the arched windows I've underlined in blue. The peaks of their arches are off center, as are the row of windows below. The elaborate window frames are not quite symmetrical. The door's decorative frame is also not symmetrical on close inspection, but it's trying to be. Look for places where the generator is trying to make something symmetrical – like the medallion over the main window – and failing. 

2. AI has a hard time making things straight and square.
   The windows in red and purple are just square ish and horizontal ish. Things that should be parallel aren’t always parallel (though the flat lays are doing a pretty good job). 

3. Ask yourself “would a human build/draw/design it this way?”
   Look at the trim marked in yellow. There's one double and one triple lip. Even those unfamiliar with art nouveau (the aesthetic style imitated) can be confident that a human wouldn't do that. Individually they could pass but side by side they don't. Same with the railings in green. If you see a chair with 5 legs, it could be avant garde, or it could be AI. 

4. AI has a hard time making things identical.
   Look at the windows in red. None of them have identically sized panes. Same with the window frames in purple. Would a human designer do this?
   

   Look at some other examples intended to be a rendering of a flat lay. These logos are supposed to be the same, but aren’t. Any repeating icon or motif is an easy place to check first. Of course, I could simply generate these images and replace the text and logos with my client’s. The repetition you would notice in that case would be evidence of some human touch.

5. Continuity issues
   Often this manifests where a horizontal line in the background goes behind an object in the foreground and fails to reappear on the other side. This issue is less severe in newer models. Here’s an nsfw example from twitter with lines drawn for emphasis.

   

   I would also add that the cat is a bit confused about being in the foreground or background, the roots of her hair are dubious, and her crotch is… a bit strange. To reiterate, the low hanging fruit is the awkward continuity because this is a frequent pattern. This is a technically great generation in my opinion, but we can still spot these issues.

6. Hands
   This is also on its way to being fixed, but you still get issues with extra fingers or toes, missing fingers or toes, or thumbs on the wrong side of the hand. Elbows can be inside out in certain poses. I’ve circled a long thumb in the above example. 

These tells may not be relevant to later generators, but appear common in much of the current content. Some people are working on tools to spot AI generated images, but my point here is to make you the viewer feel less besieged by strange content. 

I’ve used AI generated images for personal use and commercially, and worked with several generation tools. I think the debates between creators about ethics are worth having (by other people), but miss the viewpoint of the person who is worried about unwittingly consuming such content. For now, keep these tools in your toolbox; don’t stress about it, and don’t spend minutes of your day trying to puzzle it out. 

You might have heard that the 911 call and body cam footage from when Paul Pelosi was attacked has been released. For those out of the loop or reading this in the future, Nancy Pelosi’s husband was the victim of a home invasion October 28, 2022. David DePape was charged with assault and attempted kidnapping. The body cam footage from officers on the scene shows DePape hitting Paul Pelosi with a hammer and then being tackled by police. 

I’m not writing this about the attack. I’m actually interested in the meta: people on the online right toyed with conspiracy theories that the intruder was Pelosi’s gay lover. Back in October and November, I thought this was a bit much but didn’t pay it much mind. With the new videos putting the story back in the news, I’m concerned and upset about what is being said and about the unforced errors typical of the right. 

Before I get to that, some caveats: 

• I am aware that the footage had not been released in October

• I am aware that the media has covered up things in the past and that conspiracies exist. In fact I have a lot of sympathy for conspiratorial thinking. 

• I know that most people, even most terminally online people, didn’t buy this and that I am picking on a small number of people. 

• I am familiar with caveat emptor and that people should take Hot Takes Guys with a grain of salt

• I am also familiar with the concept of not punching right; please do not tell me that even if I am correct, I am meta-wrong for writing this

So what meta-happened: the twitter cons and RWers’ theory was loosely that the attacker was engaged in a sexual relationship with Paul Pelosi (perhaps hammers were involved) and had been invited into the home. Maybe it was a tryst gone wrong. Maybe it was insurance fraud. Regardless of the details, the story given by the press was a cover up. 

If we represent the sense making process as Evidence A + Evidence B + ... + Evidence N = Theory, some of the problem involves the addition and some of the problem lies with the evidence itself. The reasons for the theory that were presented were as follows. 

Security footage showed broken glass on the ground outside, which several people found suspicious, including Trump:  “The glass, it seems, was broken from the inside to the out and, you know, so, it wasn’t a break in, it was a break out.” This is an addition type problem; when you break a window, some of the glass falls on both sides. 

SF Police said “officers observed Mr. Pelosi and the suspect both holding a hammer.” Many people thought that he had said “both holding hammers” and thought about embarrassing reasons why two people might have hammers late at night. This is an evidence type problem: people hallucinated that the officer said something he didn’t say. I would rate this not as excusable as thinking the dress was white and gold, but more understandable than the fine people hoax. 

Paul Pelosi was in his boxers when the police showed up that night, which was also suspicious to some. I consider this an addition problem because, while being in your underwear with someone late at night is intimate, people often relax in their boxers late at night when alone. Using this as evidence of a tryst and cover up is a failure of analysis because it’s explained equally well by the official story that his home was broken into when he was alone late at night. (There was a line that DePape was also in his underwear. This would have been more suspicious, but I don’t know if this came from claims that DePape was a nudist, a game of telephone, or something else, so I can’t evaluate if this was reasonable or not. Now that the bodycam footage is out we know that he was not in his underwear, and due to some rough housing with the police unfortunately we can say that he wasn’t wearing any.)

People claimed that the attacker was friends with Paul Pelosi. I’m going to call this an addition problem, even though it's kind of an evidence problem, because I could break this down to ‘it was reported that Paul Pelosi said the attacker was his friend.’ We know now that on the 911 call Pelosi says that DePape said he was Pelosi’s friend, but Pelosi doesn’t know him. In my opinion this is a minor confusion, and I excuse the game of telephone. The question I’m interested in is could you have drawn the correct conclusion given the reporting available (the dispatcher’s communication to SFPD.) I say the jump between ‘dispatcher says Paul Pelosi said the attacker was his friend’ in a vacuum to ‘the attacker was friends with Paul Pelosi’ to ‘the attacker was Pelosi’s lover’ is large and avoidable, but there’s an argument to be made, especially if we try to avoid hindsight (which I am). Could I imagine an innocent reason for Pelosi to have told someone the attacker was his friend? Yeah, I guess. Could I imagine an innocent reason for Pelosi to have told the 911 dispatcher the attacher was his friend. Yes, definitely, and that explanation looks exactly like what we now know occurred. 

There were also two takes about security that people found suspect: first, Trump said that the cops showed up very quickly. I don’t think this is true factually, and I also don’t think there would be anything there if it were true. The second is that it’s weird there wasn’t more security. Were there suspiciously few security measures? I didn’t see that. Just because someone was able to break in doesn’t mean there was nothing trying to stop him, just that it didn’t work. I don’t find myself feeling very surprised that the cops showed up when they did, nor that someone was able to break in. Home invasions happen, and sometimes the people whose homes are invaded are able to call 911. 

The last thing on my mind from when the story first broke is the claim that they are hiding the evidence/footage. In my singular experience with this sort of thing, footage took years to be released. Bodycam footage not being released right away is normal. You really have egg on your face when you declare that they’ll never release the footage and we’ll never know what really happened and then three months later the footage is released and we know what really happened. 

Given those pieces of evidence, is there enough to put your name to claims it was a tryst? That’s not taking into account pieces of evidence against, like the fact that there’s no reason to believe that Pelosi is gay. And also he’s 82. And also the guy had a hammer, and dispatch said he was there for Nancy Pelosi. 

Avoiding It Next Time

One time I was riding a horse, and she knocked over a cairn on the side of the trail with her gigantic horse nose while trying to sniff it. This was frightening, so she spun around and bucked me off. I felt a bit irritated at her afterwards. You scared yourself, stupid! Do not be this horse. 

First of all, don’t go scaring yourself when you sniff around for trouble. I’m asking for footage that isn’t public, and they aren’t releasing it; it’s a cover up. Then the whole thing gets blown up, and there’s more energy in the coverup theory than the original story. 

Second of all, calibrate your level of reaction. Horses are prey animals and thus prone to flipping out at stuff. Just as it is in the nature of the horse to flip out, it is the nature of the reactionary to react. But you should try to own your instincts. Would that the horse could feel embarrassed for bucking me off over three stacked rocks. The conservative, capable of higher thought, should feel embarrassed if he thinks every shadow is a conspiracy. When you have a high strung horse you desensitize her, which means crinkling plastic bags in front of her and rubbing weird stuff on her back. This particular story, with its three month delayed resolution, presented a good opportunity to test our hindsight. 

If a CNN journalist warned you not to step on that rake over there, you shouldn’t step on it out of spite. ‘Democrats say it’s a MAGA guy who attacked Paul Pelosi, so I’m going to make bad faith claims of my own.’ ‘Don’t let anyone who says stupid things shame you into noticing you are saying something stupid.’ That’s not reasonable. 

“Your strength as a rationalist is your ability to be more confused by fiction than by fact.” What I’m observing now is people trying to feel confused by the truth now that it’s out. “The door magically opened when the police got there. Why was he holding a drink can? I’m more confused than ever.” No, you aren’t. I simply do not believe that. Lying to yourself is really really bad. You are better than this. You can be better than this. You should be better than this because you are making the rest of us look stupid by association. 

If you find yourself believing something really strange, double check the transcript. Hallucinating police reports is totally avoidable. Have you ever even heard of a sex act that involves hammers? Are you saying the democrats are so depraved they are doing things that don’t even exist in porn? What do you wear around the house at 10pm? These are all unforced errors. 

The point of the exercise is to show that even without all the evidence, you can avoid making mistakes. This incident is a good one to reflect on because the truth came out 3 months later, so we can check our answers. “I don’t know. I’m going to wait for the footage to be released” is a perfectly good response, but we can go even further to say with some confidence back in November that SFPD was not covering up Paul Pelosi’s gay lover after a hammer sex incident went wrong. If you don’t feel up to that, stick with “I don’t know.” Baby steps.

Why

You are not excused from bad behavior because someone else is behaving badly. We do not accept this excuse even from children. You do not need to accept it from pundits you follow and certainly you should not allow yourself to do it. 

I feel part of my frustration is that in addition to being stupid, it was pointless. Why did boomercon media get caught up in a whirlwind conspiracy that Paul Pelosi was having gay hammer sex with a 40 year old escort? (Challenge: answer without invoking a vast conspiracy to make boomercons look bad!)

Part of my answer is evaporative cooling. On the right, only the dumbest and most talentless grifters survive (unless the pundit reading this is someone I know. You are shrewd and your takes are novel). Part of it might be ingroup signaling; ‘I’m definitely hardcore because I believe the worst of our enemies.’ 

I liked this post by Scott Alexander working with the idea that some conspiracies exist because people work backwards from strong negative emotions: I feel strongly that my enemies are bad. Finally, some story has come out that my enemies are baby eating monsters! Everyone agrees eating babies is horrible so they will finally see that my enemies are bad. But I don’t think that theory applies in this case. Let’s say the guy had actually been a lover. ‘Paul Pelosi attacked by boyfriend.’ What is the drama here? You still make an ass of yourself and it doesn’t really make your enemies look bad. (I suppose there’s a scandalous 40 year age gap…) 

Think of it another way. Suppose I’m a member of the democratic party, and my job is to make right wingers look stupid and evil. With my infinite resources I can just barely scrape together my master plan: release an innocuous true news story where a democrat is the victim of a terrible crime. Only a machiavellian genius like me could mind control the right into saying crazy dumb conspiracy theories about hammer sex. Mwah hah hah.

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