A little bit of light reading on the rails

     Shortly after we were married, we received an advertisement in the mail to join a book club.  We could get 4 free selections if we would fulfill the obligation to purchase a certain number of other books over a period of time.  Desiring to impress the new bride that I was intent on becoming a well-rounded renaissance man, as one of those 4 free titles, I selected the 11 volume tome titled "The History of Civilization" written by Will and Ariel Durant  It seemed like a good idea at the time.

The set has been packed up and moved along with us many times over the long journey through life.  It has moved along with us from Taylorsville, Utah to Belmont, California and back to Provo to finish school.  To Denver, then to Texas and back.  I completed the reading of the first volume, Our Oriental Heritage only last year. 

I decided that I might need to invest a little more time in the task if I'm going to get through the complete set while my eyes and mind are still functioning well enough to get through it.  I've been lugging volume 2, The Life of Greece, onto the bus and/or light rail train and have made a bit of progress.  It's easier to stay alert to read in the morning.  Sometimes it's a challenge to stay focused on the way home in the evening.  I seem to have a pattern of reading Durant for a week or two, then taking a break to read something else. 

A few little gems from my reading:

"…About 590, the fabulous Aesop had been the Phrygian slave of the Greek Iadmon.  An unconfirmed tradition tells how Iadmon freed him, how Aesop traveled widely, met Solon, lived at the court of Croesus, embezzled the money that Croesus had commissioned him to distribute at Delphi, and met a violent death at the hands of the outraged Delphians.  His fables, largely taken from Eastern sources were well known at Athens in the classic age.  Socrates, says Plutarch, put them into verse.  Though their form was Oriental, their philosophy was characteristically Greek. “Sweet are the beauties of Nature, the earth and sea, the stars, and the orbs of sun and moon.  But all the rest is fear and pain,”– especially if one embezzles."  (pg 142)

Upon reaching page 609, this little nugget was found:

Callimachus describing a literary work by another as “A big book is a big evil” which Durant followed with “of whose truth the reader may find an instance at close hand”.

And lastly, a few pages later:

“Aristoxenus was a very serious man, and like most philosophers he did not enjoy the music of his time.  Athenaeus represents him as saying, in words that many generations have heard: ‘We also, since the theaters have become completely barbarized, and since music has become thus utterly ruined and vulgar-we, being but a few, will recall to our minds, sitting by ourselves, what music used to be.’  (pg 617)

One assumes Aristoxenus would not have enjoyed Beatlemania.