Browse Items (12 total)

Besides his Commentaries, bane of so many young scholars, the Divine Julius wrote, as a youth, a tragedy on Oedipus and a long poem praising Hercules. Pompeius Macer, Augustus’ librarian, proposed to the emperor that these works be published in…

This set of twelve biographies, written in the same manner as his Lives of the Caesars, was rather hot stuff: even the Caesars had been pretty racy. Because this book includes biographies of Cytheris, Lais, Aspasia, Thaïs and Rhodopis, it is…

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While he was sniffing around Alexandria, Cleopatra showed Caesar her library. He was impressed: on returning to Rome, he told his friends that Rome should have a library, too, a Roman library. He enlisted Marcus Varro, who wrote the De bibliothecis…

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The Five Classis were basic Confucian texts. They were in use from before 1000 BCE along with a sixth book, now lost, the Classic of Music. This work was lost at the time of the first emperor, Qin-Shi-Huang-Ti, who ordered books to be burned and…

Swans sing before they die – ‘t were no bad thing

Should certain persons die before they sing. - Coleridge.

Maecenas will never be remembered for his poems, but he will have an imperishable home on the side of Mt. Parnassus for being dear…

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The Book of Jasher, also called The Book of the Upright or The Book of the Just Man, is a lost book mentioned in the Hebrew Bible at Joshua 10:13 and 2 Samuel 1:18. The title is a translation of the Hebrew ספר הישר (Sefer ha Yashar). The book is an…

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