2017-08-14 20:59
It seems boys tore the wings off of flies in the 16th century just as some likely do now. Do the gods (still?) kill us for their sport? So thought the Duke of Gloucester in… Read More
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Ciceronianus; Causidus Blog
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A blog about law, history, philosophy, literature, current affairs and living a Stoic life.
2017-08-07 04:11
The Gospel of Mark is thought to be the oldest of the four Gospels which have been accepted by the Church and, it seems, Protestant churches as well. As we know, there are other g… Read More
2017-07-27 23:29
It's unclear whether we're inmates or visitors, but I think we've reached the place. Let us go then, you and I, into Bedlam. It's said Bedlam is another name for Bethlehem R… Read More
2017-07-23 19:07
It's said that successful demagogues grasp more than others the fact that people when part of a group are manipulated not by reason or argument but by an appeal to emotion and the mere repet… Read More
2017-07-13 16:22
These words appear in the final chapter of Edward Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Thus he characterizes what he's described in prior volumes in six words. It s… Read More
2017-07-02 18:25
In the past month or so, I've fallen three times. For no good reason. That's not to say there's ever a good reason for falling, although I suppose that if it's in the course of d… Read More
2017-06-25 19:12
Those of a certain age may remember Rodin's statute, The Thinker, primarily due to the appearance of its likeness on TV, looming over Dobie Gillis as he thought aloud; mostly regarding his m… Read More
2017-06-20 18:42
It's not exactly the cheeriest of poems, but I've always been fond of it. I refer of course to Matthew Arnold's poem "Dover Beach." It's one of those poems high school students w… Read More
2017-06-06 21:16
Last weekend, I attended a performance of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra during one of my solo sojourns to the downtown of The City of Broad Shoulders, the Windy City as it's also called.&nb&hell…Read More
2017-05-29 17:32
I was reading some of the so-called "War Poets" last evening, preparatory I suppose to Memorial Day, or perhaps more properly inspired by it. Those poets were, of course, poets of the… Read More
2017-05-22 15:27
Plato, in the course of describing and justifying his frightening ideal state in his Republic, used as an allegory what's been called ever since the Ship of Fools. The Ship of Fools wa… Read More
2017-05-15 01:34
It's an odd tale, that of Adam, Eve and the Garden of Eden. Odd and disturbingly influential. The doctrine of Original Sin has its basis in this peculiar story which, to some of… Read More
2017-05-04 21:20
Certain ancient Romans had the words of the title to this post inscribed on their funeral monuments (above is one example, using slightly different wording). They may be translate… Read More
2017-04-25 02:53
Pictured above are Jimmy Stewart in his capacity as Elwood, and his pooka friend, Harvey, in his capacity as a very tall rabbit. The image is of course from the film Harvey. It a… Read More
2017-04-16 01:31
I first saw 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1968, shortly after it first came out. I was much younger then, of course. I recall there was some controversy at the time regarding jus… Read More
2017-04-08 22:11
Not all that long ago, a man named Frank McLynn published a biography of Marcus Aurelius. For the most part, the author expressed admiration for his subject. He was not as kind t… Read More
2017-03-25 22:40
Six professors at Wellesley College, members of an entity with the daunting title of "The Commission on Race, Ethnicity and Equity", recently sent to other members of the faculty at that col… Read More
2017-03-20 22:11
Behold, above, "a chronological misplacing of persons, events, objects, or customs in regard to each other"; in other words (or more properly word) an anachronism. In… Read More
2017-03-12 17:39
Perhaps little has changed since Shakespeare's time, or even that of Macbeth. But it's difficult not to recall his words about life in these times, particularly that it is a tale told… Read More
2017-03-06 22:32
I'm unsure whether this is a photo of an actual billboard nor do I know, if it is one, whether it still is up displaying its oddly worded message or has now been replaced b… Read More
2017-02-25 23:35
Bathroom Law, or Lex Lavacrum as I called it in an earlier post, again consumes the nation. The bathroom, specifically the public bathroom (as opposed to the private bathrooms located… Read More
2017-02-18 22:59
I was at first inclined to wonder who would recognize what's depicted in this painting by Richard Estes, but though there likely are very few of them left in the world, it's probable that th… Read More
2017-02-12 20:03
I've read a good deal of Gore Vidal's work, but only recently read his Messiah, though it was published in the 1950s and so has been available for reading for quite some time. There ar… Read More
2017-02-05 02:33
The ancient Romans had a practice called Damnatio Memoriae, roughly translatable as the condemnation of memory. It was a decree issued by the Senate ordering that all likenesses of a p… Read More
2017-01-29 15:20
"Pandemonium" is a word which, by my understanding, was created by John Milton. It was the capital of Hell in his Paradise Lost, to which all demons were summoned to confer by Lucifer… Read More
2017-01-20 23:34
I pause in mourning the advent of this peculiar new presidency and its even more peculiar president to consider the philosophical view called, I believe, "Constructivism." If I underst… Read More
2017-01-13 23:14
We all know Trimalchio. He is an unforgettable character in a surviving portion of the Satyricon of Petronius Arbiter, friend, for a time, of the Emperor Nero. A former sla… Read More
2017-01-03 20:19
While I was attending college, a new professor appeared on campus. Although it was, and still is so far as I know, a small liberal arts college, that in itself wasn't extraordinary or… Read More
2016-12-29 21:54
Every now and then (in fact, more now than then) I think wistfully of what great journalists, essayists and satirists would write of our times. Specifically, I wonder what someone like Menc… Read More
2016-12-15 22:29
We're being told--by the purveyors of news--that we're imperiled by "Fake News." Fake News is, it appears, something which purports to be actual news, but is not. It seems it lur… Read More
2016-12-05 19:40
The immanent God of the universe which is characteristic of Stoicism would seem to be necessarily different from the anthropomorphic God or gods one finds in most religions of the West. Some… Read More
2016-11-30 19:49
I find that I'm overwhelmed by the urge to comment on things which have nothing to do with the increasingly grotesque politics of our Great Republic and the bizarre person soon to become its… Read More
2016-11-17 22:54
An aspiring Stoic is bound to ask himself/herself: What is the appropriate, which is to say Stoic, response to our recent presidential election, its unusual result and its likely effec… Read More
2016-11-10 16:19
My father, an intuitively perceptive man now dead over four years, would remark now and then upon the adage that in mass marketing of all kinds success was achieved by appealing to the "lowe… Read More
2016-11-07 18:01
Well, I couldn't use "Fear and Loathing in America" as a title for this post without entirely dishonoring the memory of Hunter S. Thompson who did a book bearing that title, so I will m… Read More
2016-11-03 19:47
As most if not all of us know, it's written in the Book of Genesis that God made us in his image and likeness. Somewhat strangely, God's portrayed there as speaking to himself prior to… Read More
2016-10-20 20:46
It's difficult to believe this blog has been around for so long a period, but six years ago I wrote a post regarding the decision made by the people of Catalonia in Parliament to ban th… Read More
2016-10-14 22:26
"Esoterica" may refer to things known only to the initiated, a select few. It's specialized knowledge available solely to those who come to be aware of it through means unavailable to m… Read More
2016-10-07 18:41
I've been less adoring of Mark Twain than others for quite some time, and have written of him unkindly in a few posts here in this very blog. It may be that my view of him and his… Read More
2016-09-30 19:16
The Victorian Era is famous, or infamous, for a number of peculiarities. What's been called--rather uneasily, I think--"Muscular Christianity" is one of them, or so I believe."Muscular… Read More
2016-09-26 14:42
One day in 185 C.E., a large group of Christians appeared at the house of Arrius Antoninus, Roman proconsul in Asia Minor, and demanded that he order their execution. It seems he oblig… Read More
2016-09-16 17:37
As I may have mentioned before in some post or other, "zugzwang" in chess (and perhaps in other games as well) takes place in the case where the pieces are in such a position that any move w… Read More
2016-09-08 16:12
I doubt that it's possible to be certain of anything.I don't want to say I know it's not possible to be certain of anything, of course, because in that case I can be accused of claiming I'm… Read More
2016-09-05 11:22
Edgar Poe (it seems he disliked being called "Edgar Allan Poe") wrote a short story with the interesting title The Imp of the Perverse. The narrator is a murderer who seemingly commits… Read More
2016-08-29 22:03
Donald Bartheleme wrote a most amusing story titled At the Tolstoy Museum. It begins with the sentence "At the Tolstoy Museum we sat and wept." The museum is said to display… Read More
2016-08-29 21:59
The University of Chicago has made the news because it has sent to incoming freshman a letter (how quaint!) notifying them that it doesn't favor so-called "trigger warnings" and "safe spaces… Read More
2016-08-09 18:40
"Stalin" was a name chosen in the days before the so-called October Revolution; so-called as it actually took place in November according to the modern calendar subsequently adopted. I… Read More
2016-08-04 15:58
Lex Lavacrum is my best effort to translate into Latin the words "Bathroom Law" or perhaps more appropriately "The Law of the Bathroom." What seems silly in English acquires… Read More
2016-07-29 21:43
The late Hunter S. Thompson described our Great Republic as "The Kingdom of Fear" in the title of a book he wrote, and also in a song he co-wrote with the equally late Warren Zevon which app… Read More
2016-07-25 20:48
He was 28 when he died, at a health spa in the Black Forest of Germany. What had we achieved by that age, reader? For my part, very little. Perhaps you achieved more, or mu… Read More
2016-07-17 20:11
The title to this post is a little play on the title of a work of the philosopher J.L. Austin called How to Do Things with Words. What prompts me to write it are the antics of the unfo… Read More
2016-07-05 19:08
This post addresses the Fabulous Fourth, not the movie sequel, which it seems based on reviews is unworthy of reflection.For two hundred and forty years, our Great Republic has existed… Read More
2016-06-28 16:45
Marcus Porcius Cato, called the Younger to distinguish him from his grandfather, Marcus Porcius Cato the Elder, is not an easy man to like, a grim and dour personality, but has been one that… Read More
2016-06-22 15:14
I know little about dreams and their interpretation. Some, I know, have studied them; perhaps most famously, or infamously, Freud and his not entirely faithful student, Jung.They were… Read More
2016-06-09 15:25
Relatively fresh from a visit to Italy, specifically those cities which seem to be most visited by tourists like myself (Rome, Florence and Venice), I'm inclined to expound on them here--tha… Read More
2016-05-13 15:33
I've noted what I think is a disturbing trend, or tendency, in modern works of history I've been reading lately (mostly regarding ancient Rome, with which I'm fascinated). Each book I… Read More
2016-05-09 16:00
I'm not sure what brings him to my mind, but here he is wandering about it, that most perplexing cartoonist, Al Capp. Liberal in the 1950s, conservative in the 1960s and 1970s, unbeara… Read More
2016-04-19 20:44
I was uncertain just what an "apostolic exhortation" is until the current Pontifex Maximus issued his Amoris Laetitia, which I've seen translated as "The Love of Joy." It's a… Read More
2016-04-07 15:40
Some of us remember the film The Magic Christian, a very silly bit of anti-capitalist, anti-greed satire (using that term broadly) which starred Peter Sellers, Ringo Starr, and a host of oth… Read More
2016-03-28 19:03
Legal rights are, generally, most useful and beneficial. What we think of as rights is a relatively new development in the law. The concept of legal or human rights (as we unders… Read More
2016-03-21 19:15
The belief in a loving deity, one that created the universe and we humans, one that is good, one that responds to prayers, intervenes in the universe and our lives, has always posed a certai… Read More
2016-03-14 17:29
Hearken to the words of H.L. Mencken, the great Sage of Baltimore:“As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. O… Read More
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