Achilles dragging the body of Hector

P21.4 ACHILLES DRAGGING THE BODY OF HECTOR

Museum Collection: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Catalogue Number: Boston 63.473
Beazley Archive Number: --
Ware: Attic Black Figure
Shape: Hydria
Painter: Attributed to the Antiope Group
Date: ca 520 - 510 BC
Period: Archaic

SUMMARY

Side: In scenes from books 22 and 23 of Homer's Iliad, Iris, the winged messenger of the gods, descends to Troy to instruct King Priamos to ransom the body of his son Hektor from Akhilleus. The Greek hero in the painting drags the corpse of the Trojan prince around the tomb of Akhilleus, whose spirit, depicted as a tiny winged man, flits overhead. Old Priamos and his wife Hekabe stand in the palace. The striding warrior before them is perhaps Hermes in the guise of a Myrmidon warrior, ready to lead the king to the Greek camp.
Shoulder: Herakles battles Kyknos (not shown).

http://www.theoi.com/Gallery/P21.3.html

Koru &c [speculative]

...... The koru used by the Kiwis...

.......and reclaimed by contemporary artists...

has its roots in, at least, the 1st Millenium BC...
....as evidenced by this bronze tripod vessel for food from the Shang dynasty, 1300-1050 BC.
M. 60-1953, V & A, London.

A similar design is present in the 3rd Millenium BC on a macehead found in Knowth,

Haile Selassie I addresses university

"[...] leadership developed here should be guided by the fundamental values and moral power which have for centuries constituted the essence of our religious teachings [...] Discipline of the mind is a basic ingredient of genuine morality and therefore of spiritual strength. Indeed, a university, taken in all its aspects, is essentially a spiritual enterprise which, along with the knowledge and training it imparts, leads students into more wise living and a greater sensitivity to life's responsibilities [...]"

"These young people face a world beset with the most effectively organised programme of deceptive propaganda and of thinly screened operations ever known; [...]"

Haile Selassie,
Convocation of Haile Selassie I University
December 19th, 1961

Selected Speeches of Haile Selassie I, 1918-1967
[One Drop Books] [WorldCat]

Einstein notices the source of knowledge

Dr. Einstein told Niccolo Tucci, who interviewed him for the New Yorker (November 22, 1948). Learning that the physicist spent an hour each evening reading aloud in Sophocles, Thucydides, and Aeschylus, Tucci remarked, "So you too, Herr Professor, have gone back to the Greeks?" Einstein replied:

"But I have never gone away from them. How can an educated person stay away from the Greeks? I have always been far more interested in them than in science."

See also letters from Albert Einstein to Constantinos Karatheodori and ensuing debate held in New York in 1992 by members of Imperial College over provenance of theory of relativity.

Charlotte Iserbyt - Deliberate Dumbing Down of the World

Charlotte T. Iserbyt

Hence we will not say that Greeks fight like heroes, but that heroes fight like Greeks.

Sir Winston Churchill

Historical justice forces me to admit that among all the enemies who stand against us, the Greek soldier above all, fought with the most courage. He surrendered himself only when the continuation of resistance was not possible any longer, and when he had no reason not to.

Adolph Hitler

Reichstag, 4 May 1941

ManyEyes

BBC not denying Vatican holds Byzantine texts.

Exploring hundreds of years of history, Richard Hammond embarks on an entertaining travelogue examining the popular and enduring myths and legends surrounding the Holy Grail.

Thought by many to be the very cup from which Jesus drank at the Last Supper, the Holy Grail has haunted public imagination for centuries but left many unanswered questions. Does the Grail exist or not and what exactly is it?

Richard Hammond and the Holy Grail (BBC ONE) is an intriguing 5,000- mile journey to find out.

It is a quest that takes Richard to ancient scrolls in the Vatican's secret archive; medieval knights and hidden treasure in the South of France; Hitler's search for the Grail; holy relics in Constantinople; a psychic in Scotland; a crop circle symposium in Glastonbury; and to Paris where he explores the latest Grail fever phenomenon.

He poses the question: why are so many people intrigued by the Grail and why does it hold such enchantment?

[....] http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2006/01_january/20/grail.shtml

Alexander the Great recounting past link with India.

If it were not my purpose to combine barbarian things with things Hellenic, to traverse and civilise every continent, to search out the uttermost parts of land and sea, to push the bounds of Macedonia to the farthest Ocean, and to diseminate and shower the blessings of the Hellenic justice and peace over every nation, I should not be content to sit quietly in the luxury of idle power, but I should emulate the frugality of Diogenes. But as things are, forgive me Diogenes, that I imitate Herakles, and emulate Perseus, and follow in the footsteps of Dionysos, the divine author and progenitor of my family, and desire that victorius Hellenes should dance again in India and revive the memory of the Bacchic revels among the savage mountain tribes beyond the Kaukasos.

On the Fortune of Alexander
Plutarch, 332 a-b

Evolution of deception

[Rutgers/Trivers] [WorldCat]

Play speech by Robert Trivers ("What do we know?"):

| Download MP3 | Help | Pop!Tech 2005 |

Stop SPP Protest - Union Leader stops provocateurs

Follow up.

LEX VISIGOTHORUM III, 3, 1. [A.D. 654]

III. TITULUS: DE RAPTU VIRGINUM VEL VIDUARUM
I. ANCIENT LAW

If any freeman should carry off a virgin or widow by violence, and she should be rescued before she has lost her chastity, he who carried her off shall lose half of his property, which shall be given to her. But should such not be the case, and the crime should have been fully committed, under no circumstances shall a marriage contract be entered into with him; but he shall be surrendered, with all his possessions, to the injured party; and shall, in addition, receive two hundred lashes in public; and, after having been deprived of his liberty, he shall be delivered up to the parents of her whom he violated, or to the virgin or widow herself, to forever serve as a slave, to the end that there may be no possibility of a future marriage between them. And if it should be proved that she has received anything from the property of the ravisher, on account of her injury, she shall lose it, and it shall be given to her parents, by whose agency this matter should be prosecuted. But if a man who has legitimate children by a former wife should be convicted of this crime, he alone shall be given up into the power of her whom he carried off; and his children shall have the right to inherit his property.

Page 1 extract from Code [Latin]
Page 2 extract from Code [Latin]
Entire Code in Latin

LEX VISIGOTHORUM, trans. by ed. S. P. Scott
[WorldCat]

specialised roubaix

perceptual edge

We are overwhelmed by information, not because there is too much, but because we don't know how to tame it. Information lies stagnant in rapidly expanding pools as our ability to collect and warehouse it increases, but our ability to make sense of and communicate it remains inert, largely without notice.

Computers speed the process of information handling, but they don't tell us what the information means or how to communicate its meaning to decision makers. These skills are not intuitive; they rely largely on analysis and presentation skills that must be learned.

Perceptual Edge focuses on the tools and techniques of visual business intelligence to help you make better use of your valuable information assets.

http://www.perceptualedge.com/

Antiphon on human nature.

"[Those born of illustrious fa]thers we respect and honour, whereas those who come from an undistinguished house we neither respect nor honour. In this we behave like barbarians towards one another. For by nature we all equally, both barbarians and Greeks, have an entirely similar origin: for it is fitting to fulfil the natural satisfactions which are necessary to all men: all have the ability to fulfil these in the same way, and in all this none of us is different either as barbarian or as Greek; for we all breathe into the air with mouth and nostrils…"

Antiphon of Rhamnus (B.C. 480-411)
Quoted in Untersteiner, p. 252

The astute will rightly appreciate the precedence of Antiphon (ironically executed for supporting the anti-democratic coup of B.C. 411) whose observation underlies those formed by Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau and the US Declaration of Independence among others.

To [Hon.] Mr. Jarvis

To [Hon.] Mr. Jarvis,

Monticello, September 28, 1820.

I thank you, Sir, for the copy of your Republican* which you have been so kind as to send me, and I should have acknowledged it sooner but that I am just returned home after a long absence. I have not yet had time to read it seriously, but in looking over it cursorily I see much in it to approve, and shall be glad if it shall lead our youth to the practice of thinking on such subjects and for themselves. That it will have this tendency may be expected, and for that reason I feel an urgency to note what I deem an error in it, the more requiring notice as your opinion is strengthened by that of many others. You seem, in pages 84 and 148, to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions ; a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are as honest as other men, and not more so. They have, with others, the same passions for party, for power, and the privileges of their corps. Their maxim is “boni judicis est ampliare jurisdictionem,” and their power the more dangerous as they are in office for life, and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves. If the legislature fails to pass laws for a census, for paying the judges and other offices of government, for establishing a militia, for naturalization as prescribed by the constitution, or if they fail to meet in congress, the judges cannot issue their mandamus to them ; if the President fails to supply the place of a judge, to appoint other civil or military officers, to issue requisite commissions, the judges cannot force him. They can issue their mandamus or distringas to no executive or legislative officer to enforce the fulfilment of their official duties, any more than the president or legislature may issue orders to the judges or their officers. Betrayed by English example, and unaware, as it should seem, of the control of our constitution in this particular, they have at times overstepped their limit by undertaking to command executive offices in the discharge of their executive duties ; but the constitution, in keeping three departments distinct and independent, restrains the authority of the judges to judiciary organs, as it does the executive and legislative to executive and legislative organs. The judges certainly have more frequent occasion to act on constitutional questions, because the laws of meum and tuum and of criminal action, forming the great mass of the system of law, constitution their particular department. When the legislative or executive functionaries act unconstitutionally, they are responsible to the people in their elective capacity. The exemption of the judges from that is quite dangerous enough. I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power. Pardon me, Sir, for this difference of opinion. My personal interest in such questions is entirely extinct, but not my wishes for the longest possible continuance of our government on its pure principles ; if the three powers maintain their mutual independence on each other it may last long, but not so if either can assume the authorities of the other. I ask your candid re-consideration of this subject, and am sufficiently sure you will form a candid conclusion. Accept the assurance of my great respect.

Thomas Jefferson

Letter to Mr. Jarvis
Monticello September 28, 1820

The Writings of Thomas Jefferson [WorldCat]
Washington, H. A. (Editor)
Vol. VII., Derby & Jackson
New York, 1859

Available via Google Books.

Aurelius on "γνῶθι σεαυτόν."

"Nothing is more wretched than a man who traverses everything in a round, and pries into the things beneath the earth, as the poet says, and seeks by conjecture what is in the minds of his neighbours, without perceiving that it is sufficient to attend to the dæmon within him, and to reverence it sincerely. And reverence of the dæmon consists in keeping it pure from passion and thoughtlessness, and dissatisfaction with what comes from gods and men. For the things from the gods merit veneration for their excellence; and the things from men should be dear to us by reason of kinship; and sometimes even, in a manner, they move our pity by reason of men's ignorance of good and bad; this defect being not less than that which deprives us of the power of distinguishing things that are white and black." *

Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus
Lived A.D. 121 - 180
Reigned A.D. 161-180
Meditations [properly translated as 'To Himself'],
Book II., Para. 13, trans. by Mr. G. Long.

Available via M.I.T. Internet Classics.

* The Greek to be added soon (target before end 2007).

Whither are we Tending: America and Europe? - VR. Dean Inge

THE DRIFT OF CIVILIZATION

XIII

Whither are we Tending: America and Europe?

[...]

America has hitherto been blessedly free from predatory movements, though I doubt whether this immunity will long survive the appearance of a large leisured class, incomparably more wasteful and socially useless than the British aristocracy, who were partly killed off in the war and partly ruined by confiscatory taxation. The anti-immigration laws were very wise from this point of view, but when Lazarus comes to grips with Dives in America, they will not fight with kid gloves.
When the idea of democracy has been stripped of its mystical halo and half-religious sanction, government by universal suffrage is seen to be a mere experiment, and an unsuccessful one. It brings the wrong men to the top, and the arts of climbing into power make them quite unfit to use it. Somehow or other a method of securing competent rulers must be devised, and the powers of the legislature must be limited. It is intolerable that all the worldly goods of the citizens should be at the mercy of a parliamentary vote. But I have no notion how this reform is to be brought about. "Government", says Bernard Shaw, "presents only one problem - the discovery of a trustworthy anthropometric method." The discovery has not been made yet, and I am afraid it will continue to baffle our wisest heads. Let America, the most invulnerable nation, try the experiments.

[...]

Very Reverend William Ralph Inge
Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral, London
(hailed as the most brilliant intellect in the Church of England.)

The Drift of Civilization [WorldCat]
by the Contributors to the
Fiftieth Anniversary Number
of the St Louis Post-Dispatch.
p. 192, George Allen & Unwin Ltd.,
London, 1929

Britannia

Professor G. Droysens Allgemeiner historischer Handatlas. Bielefeld und Leipzig, 1886. S. 14.
Source: http://ancientrome.ru/map/prov/britannia02.htm

Ancient Egyptian racial inequality!

Copy of some figures from the Seti I tomb by Minutoli in 1820.
From left: four Libyans, Nubian, Syrian, and Egyptian.

Source: http://www.geocities.com/enbp/foreigners.html

Military Propaganda for Arms Sales, Anup Shah (June 2003)

1. That the armament firms have been active in fomenting war scares and in persuading their countries to adopt warlike policies and to increase their armaments.
2. That armament firms have attempted to bribe government officials, both at home and abroad.
3. That armament firms have disseminated false reports concerning the military and naval programs of various countries, in order to stimulate armament expenditure.
4. That armament firms have sought to influence public opinion through the control of newspapers in their own and foreign countries.
5. That armament firms have organized international armament rings through which the armament race has been accentuated by playing off one country against another.
6. That armament firms have organized international armament trusts which have increased the price of armaments sold to governments.

— J.W. Smith, The World's Wasted Wealth II, (Institute for Economic Democracy, 1994), p. 224

But, this was not of the arms industry of today. Smith was quoting the League of Nations after World War I, when "Stung by the horrors of World War I, world leaders realized that arms merchants had a hand in creating both the climate of fear and the resulting disaster itself." But it sounds familiar, right? It summarizes quite well the problems of today as well. Justification for arms and creating the market for arms expenditure is not a new concept. The call to war and fear-mongering is an old tradition.

FULL ARTICLE:

http://www.globalissues.org/Geopolitics/ArmsTrade/ArmsPropaganda.asp

Pomponius Mela's ANTICHTHONESI

Reconstruction of the World map according to Pomponius Mela (ca. 40 A.D.)

http://www.henry-davis.com/MAPS/Ancient%20Web%20Pages/116.html