The historian Edward Gibbon, in Chapter LII of his history, offers an instructive quotation alleged to have been spoken by the first emir of Cordoba, Abd Al Rahman III. This prince ruled a cons...
It has been said that both courage and cowardice are contagious. This is certainly true, as anyone who has spent time with a group engaged in some kind of enterprise knows well. Courageous or...
https://qcurtius.com/2024/04/06/when-courage-is-needed-someone-always-has-to-go-first/
In Gibbon’s history (Ch. 51), there is an anecdote related to the Arab military campaigns in Persia in A.D. 639 to 640. It concerns a nobleman named Hormuzan, who was, we are told, “a princ...
In a letter to Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV in 1361, the scholar Petrarch included the following lines of advice: The soft sentiments and external warnings of wives, daughters, and average frien...
The Italian scholar Petrarch spent a significant period of time in southeastern France as a boy and a young man. In 1311, when he was seven years old, he moved to Avignon with his family; in 13...
https://qcurtius.com/2024/02/24/there-is-no-place-which-armed-ambition-and-avarice-cannot-reach/
Of all the emotions that palpitate the breast of man, none is so potentially destructive as anger. It comes in many flavors and varieties; but the common thread running through all of them is a...
Anyone who has bothered to open the works of ancient Greek and Roman historians will notice marked differences between them and modern historians. The differences are not trivial. In how they...
https://qcurtius.com/2024/02/10/some-points-on-reading-and-understanding-the-ancient-historians/
We recently discussed some words spoken by the Greek mercenary general Charidamus to the Persian king Darius III on the eve of the Battle of Issus in 333 B.C. But we discussed only a small part...
https://qcurtius.com/2023/12/30/what-you-need-is-strength-equal-to-theirs/
There is an anecdote told about the prelude to the Battle of Issus in 333 B.C. This momentous contest, which involved the armies of Alexander the Great and Darius III of Persia, was to decide t...
In the 1340s the Italian scholar Petrarch composed a long letter to the poet Homer. He enjoyed these imaginary exercises in which he could “communicate” with some of the great literary figu...