Pausanias is a Greek author of second century AD, probably from Lydia in Asia Minor, who traveled in various parts of the ancient world and has left us a precious book , the first tour guide about we have news, his Description of Greece.
The gods do not send young kings to people whom want to harm
Phrases, sentences, proverbs, maxims Apophthegmata , were in antiquity an effective instrument for moral and civic education of citizens. So they are thousands of Latin and Greek sentences to be found in collections or never complete dictionaries. Besides the ancient world offers tons of material to build and permanently create attractive judgments at all times or to paraphrase or adapt the old they self.
The myth of the ages of man (2)
It is a topic or commonplace in many cultures that human life on Earth began in a time of happiness and absolute serenity, then interrupted by the amoral behavior of man, which since then has continued to get worse. These creations are not only literary, but they are part of the ideas of general cultural imaginary.
The Classical Humanism of Cervantes
World Book and Copyright Day is celebrated on April 23 of every year. Some curious circumstance coincided the day of the death of Cervantes in Spain, of Shakespeare in England, of Garcilaso de la Vega, the Inca, on that day. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco) considered it very suitable to celebrate the existence of books and promote reading; so it has been since 1995.
Platonic Academy (1): “Let none but geometers enter here.”
The tradition says that this phrase was recorded at the entrance of the Academy of Plato.
Philosophy for life
Unfortunately Philosophy does not enjoy the prestige it has enjoyed in the past. It is true that with some frequency, philosophers, some philosophers, have taken refuge in their university faculties or cultural cliques and they have abstracted themselves from society to which they belonged.
Philosophy provides great services to human life (Cicero, Tusculan Disputations V, 2)
The General Conference of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), established as World Philosophy Day the third Thursday of November. We just celebrated it therefore last Thursday. Unfortunately few people have learned of it.
Ornament books
Today thousands of books, thousands of titles and thousands of copies of each title are published. In antiquity the publishing industry was much smaller, but there is an important book trade first on papyrus and then on parchment or skin.
Plato rejects writing by the mouth of Socrates
Frequently hear someone reject the computer as an educational tool for children and youth with the argument that it harms the development of memory or of some reasoning ability. Previously we heard similar arguments in rejecting electronic calculators that would prevent the ability of mathematical thinking. All this reminds me of a famous passage in Plato’s dialogue Phaedrus 274c-277a; Plato in the mouth of Socrates rejects the invention of writing by the same reason that it will end up with memory, essential human faculty.
No book is so bad as to not have something of use in some part of it. (Nullum esse librum tam malum, ut non in aliqua parte prodesset) Pliny Pliny the Younger, Epist.3,5,10
This may be a good phrase to celebrate World Book Day, which according to UNESCO is celebrated on 23 April every year since 1995. On that day, in 1616, Miguel de Cervantes, William Shakespeare and the poet Garcilaso de la Vega, the Inca, died.