Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

Reading this short book has been on my list of books to read since the 12th grade. It's taken me this long to finally finish it! But I'm so glad I did.

Franklin was an amazing man. He was born in 1706 and died in 1790. I would say he was closer to the renaissance than to modernism. He was born over 300 years ago! When he was 18, there were about 15,000 people in all of Boston. That's a very small population. The total population of all the colonies in 1725 was nearly 500,000 people. That's all! This was a relatively tiny place, compared to modern times. A person like Franklin must have made a huge splash.

What I found most interesting from reading his autobiography was his social entrepreneurism and his ability to create good will. His political acumen was astounding, and he made friends wherever he went. He could see the bigger picture that making enemies by confounding people was perhaps pleasurable, but it made too many enemies. So he didn't seek for being right, but for consensus. He was a builder of society.

Franklin was also a believer in God. He was a very practical man that wasn't interested in belonging to a sect because it was the right one. He would attend sermons where friends of his were preaching, but he would quit attending after awhile because the sermons were not about making people a good people, but about being right in abstract doctrines.

He was very interested in doing good. He outlined a chart where he could live by the 13 virtues and keep track of which ones he had not been living, and then he would try to ameliorate his life by working harder the next day with that virtue.

Here is his list of virtues:

1. Temperance - eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.
2. Silence - speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.
3. Order - let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.
4. Resolution - resolved to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.
5. Frugality - make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; I. E., Waste nothing.
6. Industry - lose no time; be always employed in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.
7. Sincerity. Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly; and, if you speak, speak accordingly.
8. Justice - wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.
9. Moderation - avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.
10. Cleanliness - tolerate no uncleanliness in body, clothes, or habitation.
11. Tranquility - be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.
12. Chastity - rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another's peace or reputation.
13. Humility - imitate Jesus and Socrates

Here's two quotes that really stood out to me about his beliefs:

"And now I speak of thanking God, I desire with all humility to acknowledge that I owe the  mentioned happiness of my past life to His kind providence, which led me to the means I used and gave them success."

"I never doubted, for instance, the existence of the Deity; that he made the world, and govern'd it by his Providence; that the most acceptable service of God was the doing good to man; that our souls are immortal; and that all crime will be punished, and virtue rewarded, either here or hereafter."

Franklin was a great example. He's a worthy example. He is someone that, I think, everyone could live up to. It's hard to have Jesus as your life example, because not many people can sell everything they have and work with the poor, like he did. Many of us have families. Franklin offers an alternative way of living life that is industrious and still blesses the lives of many people, including mine, over 200 years after his death.

Franklin is a north star whereby one can find a direction to right their own ship on the sea of life.

It's going to be my goal to have my children read this, perhaps often, to find out how having a good character can make a difference in your life. It also demonstrates what one person can do in helping change society for the better. He lived a great life, and he showed many how to follow in his foot steps. It's a worthy goal.

Here's a short list of some of his accomplishments.

- worked as an apprentice to his father making candles at 12 
- left his family on his own at 17 to Pennsylvania 
- lived in England by himself for 18 months when he was 18 
- started a public library in Pennsylvania 
- started a newspaper and printing company 
- created the first fire station
- started the first fortified defenses in Philadelphia
- started the first academy 
- paved the roads in Pennsylvania 
- honorary mater in arts from Yale college for "improvements and discoveries and electric branch of natural philosophy."
- helped create the first union of the colonies
- he taught himself French, Italian, Spanish and Latin
- much more! 

Here's a list of his writings that I think are interesting:  All of his writings can be found here.

1. His own autobiography
2. Poor Farmer's Almanac.
(I'll update this as I read more from his writings)

Some of Franklin's proverbs:

"It is hard for an empty sack to stand upright"

Latin Phrases in American Government

Whenever I look at an American coin I see some Latin on it, and I always wonder what it means. 

Here is a short list of the Latin phrases found in American government buildings and coinage.

e pluribus unim
from many one, one from many
e = from
pluribus = many, more
unim = one

novus ordo seclorum

A new order for the ages 
novus = new
ordo = order
seclorum = ages, generations, or centuries

If you could do your schooling over again...

Say there was some way you could go back in time, or perhaps you're in school right now, and there's someway that you could start over. What would you do differently?

For me, I would go to the library and never come out. Finding myself towered over by a sea of books on every shelf, I would not have to wonder as to what I would do again for my schooling. I would read! I would read all the best books in that old, forgotten library. Read! Read! Read!

This is what Ray Bradbury said, the author of Fahrenheit 451, said about his education, because this is exactly what he did!

"I spent three days a week for 10 years educating myself in the public library, and it's better than college. People should educate themselves - you can get a complete education for no money. At the end of 10 years, I had read every book in the library and I'd written a thousand stories." - Ray Bradbury

Robert Frost - Dust of Snow

Dust of Snow

The way a crow Shook down on me The dust of snow From a hemlock tree Has given my heart A change of mood And saved some part Of a day I had rued.

College Latin Phrases

I remember getting my high school dipolma, and it had these interesting words on it, Cum Laude. I had no idea what it meant, or even what language it was in. Is that sad?

The fact that degrees are given with Latin words on it, but then no one takes Latin anymore, so who can read their own degree? Or why all the frat houses in college had those funny looking symbols (Greek alphabet)?

I remember reading Harvard's motto, Veritas (truth), and wondering what it meant. The fact is, when Harvard was first started in 1636, all you had to do in order to gain entrance was to read Virgil and Cicero in Latin, and translate Greek texts into english extemporaneously. Here are some pictures of the entrance exam into Harvard nearly 200 years later in 1869, which still required the ancient language qualifications.

It was like an epiphany when I was able to read the words that I use to see everywhere on campus. But that's kinda how far we've come as a culture, I guess, so far gone from the source that we don't even understand the words at the top of the entrance to our own buildings. It's like some kinda twisted dream. We put on the robes of the ancient cultures, but have no idea what they mean, or why they were used. 

Anyway. In some of the research that I've been doing in studying Latin, I found some of these sayings to be interesting. 

alma mater = nurturing/kind mother

mater = mother

alma = nuturing/kind

cum laude = with praises (or distinction, or honor)

cum = with

laude = praises 

magna cum laude = with great praises 

magna = great (like magnus, or mangum)

cum = with

laude = praises 

summa cum laude = with highest praises (honors)

summa = highest, the top of (think of summit) 

cum = with

laude = praises 

Phi Beta Kappa is Greek 

ΦΒΚ

The Greek letters, PBK, or ΦΒΚ, come from the initial letters of a Greek motto philosophia biou kubernētēs ‘philosophy is the guide to life.’

Valedictorian (vale dicer) 
to say farewell (usually in the graduation speech)
Vale = farewell
dictorian (dicer) = to say 

Here are some interesting Latin phrases I liked this past week:

Hannibal ad portas

Hannibal is at the gates 

ad = to, towards

portas = gates 

infinitus est numerus stultorum

infinite is the number of fools

infinitus = infinite

est = is

numerus = number

stultorum = fools

Ego non baptizo nomine patri, sed nomine diaboli*

I do not baptize you in the name of the father, but the name of the devil 

literally: I no immerse you name father, but name devil 

Ego = I

non = not

baptizo = baptize (immersed)

nominie = name

patri = father

sed = but

nomine = name

diaboli = devil 

*a line from Mellville's Moby Dick

That is all for today :) 

We Live in Water

The setting: 

A series of short stories in the lives of modern Americans. 

A bum on the street that has issues with his family. A working man that wonders if his own children are stealing from him. A dead-beat gambler in Idaho that screws the wrong lady and steals from her husband. A white collar convict that has to do community service in a school where many of the students never have contact with a male role model. Two tweakers try to sell a tv to a pawn shop to get enough money to eat. A law school student that never passes the bar and goes to Vegas with his best friend to find his best friend’s sister that has gone into prostitution. And a few more. 

I purchased Jess Walter’s book, Beautiful Ruins, for a song at the library (50 cents!). The library has a bunch of books out for sale when you first walk in, and I saw a picture of Italy on a book. I picked it up. Put it in my pocket. And then paid the librarian for it. 

Another day at the library, and another one of Jess Walter’s books, We Live in Water, seemed to jump out at me as we were wondering around the library. I picked it up. Put it in my pocket. And then I checked the book out from the library and left with the book then sitting their silently in my pullover as I left. 

I read the whole book in one night. 

The book is a pretty interesting, easy read, which was a great break from all the classical literature I have been reading to date. 

What the book is about

We Live in Water is a series of short stories about modern Americans. A couple of the stories struck a chord with me, and I’m looking forward to reading them again. A couple of noteworthy quotes I took from the book:

“Conversational Suburban” - a bum that has to make small talk with the foster parents of his son in a suburb says that speaking with the people in the suburb is like speaking another language. 

“Whole worlds exist beneath the surface.” 

“I guess remembering is better than living.” (Is this why I take so many pictures?) 

There are roughly 50,000,000 Americans currently on food stamps, and I haven’t read too many stories about what it means to live on food stamps, even though there are so many that are doing so every day. We Live in Water reminds me of the ol’ muckrakers, like Upton Sinclair, that try to shed light on the usually under reported perspective of an American life in poverty. 

The title was pretty interesting, We Live in Water, and was one of the reasons I checked this book out from the library. The analogy of struggling underneath water, never really being able to get out of it, always existing just below the surface, or right at it, seemed a propos for the genre. 

But really, the title comes from a story in the book about a dead-beat gambler in Idaho that messes up and has to make amends with a bookie. Things go badly for him. For some reason, he brought his son to the house where he met the characters, and the son, who was six, was looking at an 8 foot aquarium and noticed the fish moving back and forth, without much thought about where they were, or if the fish could ever leave their little life. The kid turns to his dad and asks, “Do we live in water?” Seeing the parallels to the fish swimming back and forth without questioning his surroundings and the people the kid saw in his life that acted the same way, it wasn’t too wrong of a question.

The reality is we do live in a type of water. It’s not as dense, but oxygen has mass. When you move your arm from side to side, you can feel the air move around your hand, like a fish that moves in water and can feel the water flow around his body. So in a way, we kinda do live like the fish in the aquarium.  

I liked the book and would recommend it to be read. 

What is Classical Education?

I had a friend ask me what a classical education was. The answer is much more complex than it seems. 

Isocrates born 436 BC died 338 BC

Classical education depends on which date you ask the question. St. Augustine was classically educated, but he died around 400 A.D., so he could never have studied any author past that date, and yet he still had a ‘classical education.’

It gets even more interesting when you consider that people that actually lived during the ‘classical’ time period, really the Hellenistic age of Greece, roughly between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the rise of the Roman Empire in 31 BC, had varied views on what it meant to be educated. 

Some thought the first order of education was to establish character (virtue), others thought education should be about helping to form a perfect state with perfect citizens, while others thought it meant to live the good life and to find sound judgement. And that was just in their own time period! Renaissance educators would change the idea of what classical education meant in their own time, and then even further out, the likes of Thomas Jefferson in 1785, had his own ideas, too. 

So where do you start? 

Let's first define what a classical education means. Classical education is classical emersion into the classical culture. And what was classical? Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. 

They are not classical because they were old. They were classical because they achieved a standard that has never been matched. 

Plato thought an education must be based on virtue, and it can’t be about the group, but about the individual. Isocrates, a contemporary of Plato, thought that virtue could not be taught, but it may come about through the learning of literature. Isocrates thought the end goal of education was to have ‘sound judgement’.

I lean more towards Isocrates. 

Isocrates was the real source of a classical education. It was he that would have his students read the best literature. For in the best literature, you had the best values, ideals, stories, and insights into what it actually means to be a human being. 

And there was more. It was not enough to just read these eloquent ideas. You also had to compose them yourself. That’s what being a man of ‘letters’ meant. You could read the Greek and Latin for yourself, the letters in that language, but you could also compose letters to others where you could eloquently state your mind and your opinion. 

"Letters are the beginning of wisdom, letters standing for knowledge of language, the ability to convey the complexity and subtlety of thought and sense with words."

"The cultivated man was, in a real sense, the literary man, the man of words."

You were a cultivated and civilized human being, the one real trait that separated us from brute animals and barbarians, you could read the thoughts of others, and you could write your own thoughts. Barbarians could not do this. Barbarians could not read, and they could not write. They were not civilized. In fact, the ancient Germani, the ancestors of the German people today, did not write their own history. Tacitus and Julius Caesar did, because they had a culture that valued reading and writing. 

"Culture meant books, because from books we learned about what is best."

Isocrates taught that to be educated meant to read books, the best books, and their own culture's books, before they were called civilized.

That’s where I would place my chips if someone were to ask me what the point of a classical education was and how to attain it. Classical education meant to read the best books from the best authors, and then write like they did. Finally, the point of all that education would be to acquire sound judgement. 

Sound judgement comes when you have a broad context of experience from which you can draw upon your own conclusions. Without this context, how do you know if your decision is wise? How do you know if this experience really warrants these actions? 

If all we have to drawn upon is our own experience, our well of experience is very shallow indeed! 

By reading the best books from the best cultures, we expand our well. We dig deeper where the water is purer, clearer, and healthier. Our context expands to include not just our own understanding of our modern times, but also the circumstances and understanding of the past, the deep past where human beings had life so much harder than we do today. 

From that deep well, we draw the water of life’s experience from the source. That’s why we read classical texts. 

"so that descendants will not be left to rediscover human truths already endured and expressed by eloquent forbearers”

Here are the authors to read to get a classical education, double plus points if you read them in their own language, Latin or Greek:

History:

Livy, Sullust, Caesar, Cicero’s epistles, Suetonius, Tacitus, Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Anabasis and Memorabilia, Cicero, Baretti, plutarch, 

Poetry:

Virgil, Terence, Horace, Anacreon, Theocritus, Homer, Euripides, Sophocles. Read also Milton’s Paradise Lost, Shakspeare, Pope’s and Swift’s works, Epictetus, Xenophontis Memorabilia, Plato’s Socratic dialogues, Cicero’s philosophies, Antoninus, and Seneca

Rhetoric:

Marcus Fabius Quintilianus, Aristotle, 

Reading list that will help you on your quest for a classical education (kindle books that are mostly free)
1. Tacitus on Germany: Get a taste of how an ancient author writes about the ancient people of Germany, the tribes of the Germani. Great insight into how the Germani lived and what type of character they had.
2. Julius Caeser's Gallic War - You can get a sense of the past by reading Juluis' writings about the ancient Gauls. 50,000 slaves sold in one sale.
3. Livy - history of Rome 01-08
4. Sallust - Conspiracy of Catiline and the Jurgurthine War 
5. Cicero's letters - on friendship and old age, on the gods and the commonwealth, the orations, his letters, 
6. Epictitus - lots of great wisdom
8. Seneca -
9. Marcus Aurelius 
10. Suetonius - the life of the Caesars

I’ll update the list as I find more classical authors to read.

One more note

It's not really possible to understand the ancient classics until you've read the modern classics from your own culture. Doing this will help you in two ways:

First, it will help you to understand the major currents in your own culture. Each modern culture writes about themes that are important to them, which have consequently shaped the culture you are in now. It also provides a mirror to see what the values are in the society you are in. For instance, if you read To Kill a Mockingbird, you'll see how much the values of justice, equality, racism, and childhood are all themes in that story.

Second, reading your own culture's classics will help you understand if they are actually worth the paper they are printed on. Do these cultures stack up with those of the past? Do they give you more insight into who you are as a person? In one word, it gives you context. Context to judge. Context to see what is really good and what is not so good. 

Literary Pattern - Transcendence

I'm starting to notice a pattern in the books I read. It's called the pattern of Transcendence. I just made that up.

The Literary Pattern of Transcendence:

1. The characters start out in a hard place, usually they're at the bottom of their respective place.
2. They rise up to get out of their place, but they are challenged and beaten back down.
3. Finally, after enduring hardship and learning of their place, and their inner strength, they overcome their place, their boss, their nemesis, their enemy, something that blocks them from ruling their place.
4. After finally getting to the top of their place, they then go beyond the bounds of that place, and they go from place leader to myth.
5. After becoming a myth, they later turn into a god.

I'll just put that there and then make a note of it whenever I read it.

Call of the Wild:
1. Buck, the dog, is taken from a good place to a bad place and is in the lowliest of spots.
2. But tries to rise up out of his place with his strength, but is literally beaten down by the man in the red sweater and by Spritz, the lead dog of the dog sled team.
3. Finally, after enduring much hardship and learning, he kills Spritz and takes his place as the lead dog of the dog sled.
4. After finally getting to the top of his place, he then, eventually, is leaves his place and finds himself in the wild, where he becomes a mythic creature that runs in the wild as an 'evil spirit,' which the Indians understand him to be.
5. He is now a myth to the Indians that turn tell his legend to all. And we read a book about his life journeys.

Call of the Wild

Jack London wrote the Call of the Wild when he was 27 years old. The book was published in 1903, over 100 years ago!

I didn’t think I was going to like this book. For some reason, I read this when I was in High School, or watched the Disney movie like it, The Journey of Natty Gann, which I remember vaguely being about the love between a young girl and a wolf. Something like that.

This book was nothing about Natty Gann. It was a much deeper book than I thought it was going to be, and it’s one of my favorites, next to Robinson Crusoe. Both books are about a return to a long-forgotten world. 

The Setting

The setting takes place during the Yukon Gold Rush in the late 1800s. And the whole book takes place from the perspective of a dog, Buck. Buck was in California, then he was kidnapped and he was taken to the Yukon, a very cold land in Canada next to Alaska. Buck had to work his way through a barbaric life as a sled dog where he moved mail back and forth between tundra territories. 

Theme of the Book

So what exactly was the 'Call' in the Call of the Wild? It was a call to return to our primordial selves. A return to instincts. A return to an environment that we existed in for countless lives. A displacement from civilization to privation. 

The call of the wild is the return of the wild instincts that lay dormant - "biologists use the term atavism to describe the reappearance in an individual of certain characteristics of a distant ancestor that have been absent in intervening generations. Buck exhibits atavistic characteristics when his instincts and memories of an impossibly distant past "call" him and reassert themselves into his behavior."

"The instincts, which were but the memories of his ancestors become habits, which had lapsed in later days, and still later, in him, quickened and become alive again."

It was Buck’s introduction to the primordial law that had me really intrigued. He had been suddenly jerked from the heart of civilization and flung into the heart of things primordial. I found myself nearly in identical situations while attending the 7th grade. 

"Here was neither piece, nor rest, nor a moment's safety. All was confusion and action, and every moment life and limb were in peril. There was imperative need to be constantly alert; for these dogs and men were not town dogs and men. They were savages, all of them, who knew no law but the law of club and fang."

This book tells us there is something greater in ourselves, something we’re not using, that has perhaps lost its luster in the womb of Time, but it’s still there. And we can still hear the call that comes to us in the mid night when the moon is bright and far above us. 

Many times in the book Buck gets lost in a dream, a time when he reverted back to being with another human, but this human was hairier and more fearful than his future progeny. Buck was dreaming about being next to the first Homo Erectus. It’s that genius from the book that I really liked, a flickering glimpse into the real past of humans, where they really came from, what life was really like for them. 

Through the life of the dog, London showed us our own lives. Through the struggle of the dog to make sense of the world he lived in, to make sense of the new rules he found himself in, and to make sense of his own body and its own natural inclinations and how those inclinations fit exactly with his environment, is the genius of this book. 

It’s only 80 pages, but it’s the only book I’ve read, so far, that offers a real look at where we came from. The distant past was not so distant. 

In one of my readings, I found the quote that 'without knowing our past, we have no culture.' 

This book has helped me understand my past, and has helped me make sense of the sometimes barbaric world I find myself in. A world where at times, the rule of might is the rule, and at other times, the rule of law is the rule. 

"He must master or be mastered; while to show mercy was a weakness. Mercy did not exist in the primordial life. It was misunderstood for fear, and such misunderstandings made for death. Kill or be killed, ear or be eaten, was the law; and this mandate, down out of the depths of the time, he obeyed.”

Like one of Dante’s level of hell, Buck found himself taken by force from a world he was comfortable in, to another world, a darker world that nearly brought him to death’s door numerous times. 

The first ritual of being born into this new world was being clubbed on the head by a man in a red sweater that was there to break the new dogs. After many smacks on the head with the club, Buck learned. He learned the primordial law. 

"That club was a revelation. It was his introduction to the reign of primitive law… A man with the club was a lawgiver, and a master to be obeyed, though not necessarily conciliated."

That’s what this book was for me, a understanding of the rules of that primitive place, that distant land we came from.  

The ‘Call’ that Buck heard, was a call to revert back to where his ancestors thrived. A call that took him out of the new world of civilization, into an old world of struggle. But in the struggle, there was freedom and excitement. There was a place where his whole body felt alive. Each muscle, each instinct had a purpose, and it was finally being used to the maximum. 

London makes a myth out of this primitivism. But it’s only a myth. Generations of our ancestors yearned to be free of the confines of the struggle. That’s why there’s civilization at all! Because people were sick to death, literally and figuratively, from the struggle. Yes, it could be good, if you were the top dog, but not so much if you weren’t. 

Besides, there’s no chocolate in the primitive world, so really, what’s the point.

One Last Thing

Another interesting pattern from the book was the creation of the God/Spirit myth. Buck went from his familiar surroundings and eventually took his place in the wild, but he was more than just a wolf, he had transcended the normal confines of the wolf, and had become something greater than the wolf. A mythic wolflike god, or spirit.

In the book, the Indians had killed one of Buck’s masters, John Thornton, separating buck at last from the world of man. Buck came upon the scene of death after having spent a week in the wild hunting a great Bull Moose. As he saw his master’s party shot to death with arrows, Buck flew into a rage and slashed the throats of the Indians, one of the throats belonged to the chief of them. The indians were terrified and ran into the woods, scattered and afraid, not meeting back with each other for a week.

After that, Buck became totally wild, and he roamed the wild with a new wolf pack. The wolf pack would come into contact with the Indians every now and then and kill some of them. A great legend of the white wolf was passed down from the Indians, and they would not enter a valley that Buck had claimed for his own.

It’s not hard to see that from their respect to this great spirit, then future generations of Indians, too, would venerate that particular valley, and perhaps even bring offerings to it to appease it, or to praise it, or to gain some of the spirit’s power for themselves. And this is the birth of a god. 

The god was very particular to the specific location, those specific woods. In fact, Tacitus said the same things of the ancient Germani; they too would go to battle with the emblem of certain gods on their shields, gods that came from specific valleys and forests, where they would then give the Germani special power to overcome their enemies.

"They consecrate whole woods and groves, and by the names of the Gods they call these recesses; divinities these, which only in contemplation and mental reverence they behold." 

Isn’t Christ the same? Didn’t Christ exist in a particular location, from which he completely changed the nature of power in his location, going beyond the bounds of a mere human, to creating a myth of power and greatness out of his own mortality? Do we not still pray to that Great Spirit to gain some of his strength in our own daily struggles? And does it not work! At times, it certainly does.

Today's progess with Latin

I found a pretty nifty saying today while doing some of my Latin studies. It’s a quote about truth being a better friend to you than even Plato:

Amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas.

(literally: Plato is a friend, but truth a better friend.)

Here are the translations:

amicus = friend

plato = plato

sed = but

magis = more

amica = friend

veritas = truth

Now that you know the vocabulary, you can translate it yourself. How would you translate it?

Here are some variations from others that translated the saying:

Plato is my friend, but truth is a better friend

Plato is a friend, but more of a friend, truth

Plato I love, but I love truth more.
Plato draws near and gives us good, but truth stands alone and is always giving good (artistic license, of course). 

I also found another interesting Latin Maxim:

Ad fontes

ad = to, towards

fontes = sources

Renaissance men would hold this saying in esteem because it meant to go to the sources of the original Latin and Greek texts. 

Sed in primis ad fontes ipsos properandum, id est graecos et antiquos.

(Above all, one must hasten to the sources themselves, that is, to the Greeks and ancients.)

Tacitus on Germany

I finished reading this today on my kindle. It’s free. And it’s awesome. 

Publius (or Gaius) Cornelius Tacitus wrote about the Germans around 100 AD. germane (german) was the term used for the germane cisrhenani. The original Germani Cisrhenani include the Eburones, the Condrusi, the Caeraesi, the Segni and the Paemani, which is the same group who apparently later came to be collectively referred to as Tungri.

That’s alotta tribes, man! And that’s not even the half of it. Tacitus mentioned so many I lost count. So what I was reading about the early Germans varied widely. Some were very war hungry, in fact their whole social order depended on war and pillaging, and some were peaceful and did not seek war. For instance,

"They cannot otherwise than by violence and war support their huge train of retainers." 

"For maintaining such liberality and munificence, a fund is furnished by continual wars and plunder."  

"This is their principal state, this their chief force, to be at all times surrounded with a huge band of chosen young men, for ornament and glory in peace, for security and defense in war."

and some tribes had rituals where the young men would grow out their beards and hair and never cut it until they killed another man in battle:

"As soon as they arrive to maturity of years, they let their hair and beards continue to grow, nor till they have slain an enemy do they ever lay aside this form of countenance by vow sacred to valor.” 

"Over the blood and spoil of a foe they make bare their face." 

"They allege, that they have now acquitted themselves of the debt and duty contracted by their birth, and rendered themselves worthy of their country, worthy of their parents.”

Seems a bit melodramatic, but whateves. And on the other hand of maintaining your tribal order through war and pillage, there was the Chaucians. They were above all that. They relied on justice, not violence. 

"a people of all the Germans the most noble, such as would rather maintain their grandeur by justice than violence. They live in repose, retired from broils abroad, void of avidity to possess more, free from a spirit of domineering over others. They provoke no wars, they ravage no countries, they pursue no plunder. Of their bravery and power, the chief evidence arises from hence, that, without wronging or oppressing others, they are come to be superior to all." 

What did the ancient Germanic people eat: 

He commented on what they ate: 

"Their food is very simple; wild fruit, fresh venison, or coagulated milk,” and "For their drink, they draw a liquor from barley or other grain; and ferment the same so as to make it resemble wine,” and 'They are all nourished with the milk of their own mothers, and never surrendered to handmaids and nurses.”

Tacitus commented on the blonde hair and blue eyes of the early Germanic peoples: 

"I concur in opinion with such as suppose the people of Germany never to have mingled by inter-marriages with other nations, but to have remained a people pure, and independent, and resembling none but themselves. Hence amongst such a mighty multitude of men, the same make and form is found in all, eyes stern and blue, yellow hair, huge bodies, but vigorous only in the first onset. Of pains and labour they are not equally patient, nor can they at all endure thrift and heat. To bear hunger and cold they are hardened by their climate and soil."

Rare amongst them is the use of weapons of iron, but frequent that of clubs. - Tacitus

Their wives:

For some of the tribes, they were monogamous their whole lives: 

"for they are almost the only Barbarians contented with one wife, excepting a very few amongst them; men of dignity who marry divers wives, from no wantonness or lubricity, but courted for the lustre of their family into many alliances.”

And their wives were not spared from fighting. Once they were married, the wives would follow the husbands into battle and cry to them if they were being overrun to give the men strength:

"Moreover, close to the field of battle are lodged all the nearest and most interesting pledges of nature. Hence they hear the doleful howlings of their wives, hence the cries of their tender infants."

"That the woman may not suppose herself free from the considerations of fortitude and fighting, or exempt from the casualties of war, the very first solemnities of her wedding serve to warn her, that she comes to her husband as a partner in his hazards and fatigues, that she is to suffer alike with him, to adventure alike, during peace or during war."

Their religion:

This was pretty interesting. Tacitcus said that the early Germans worshipped Hercules, 

"They have a tradition that Hercules also had been in their country, and him above all other heroes they extol in their songs when they advance to battle."

and that many of the Germanic tribes that they decrescend from Uylsses, from the Ancient Greeks! 

"Besides there are some of opinion, that Ulysses, whilst he wandered about in his long and fabulous voyages, was carried into this ocean and entered Germany, and that by him Asciburgium was founded and named, a city at this day standing and inhabited upon the bank of the Rhine"

That some of their ancient tombs were inscribed with greek letters:

"upon the confines of Germany and Rhoetia are still extant certain monuments and tombs inscribed with Greek characters."

WTF! I’ve not heard of the Greek ancestors of the germanic tribes before, so that’s a very interesting side note to reading Tacitus’ writings on the subject. 

There’s many more interesting things he talks about in his writings, which I could write on all day, but it’s only 30 pages long, and you can download it free on the kindle! 

If anyone has ancestors that come from the ancient Germania, this is definitely a must read. It's also a good read for anyone interested in the historical waring between the Germanic tribes and the Romans, this would be a great addition to their library. 

The humanity of Kafka

Some thoughts on Kafka’s Metamorphosis

It’s been a few months since I read this short story, but I just wanted to jot down some things I thought were interesting to me while reading it.

How exactly do we find ourselves here? How did we end up with the people we call our family? Kafka explores this reality, a sense that the main character was born into this family, from this role in his birth he had certain duties and obligations, and that he fulfilled those duties as best he could.

Until he started changing.

He started to change into a non-person. And has he changed into a non-person, the people he was living with, his family, started to change their perceptions towards him. 

He thought like a human being, sort of, and he thought he still had a human mind, but most of his family members only treated him as a member of the family out of the remembrance of who he was before he was a giant insect. 

One-by-one, the family members started to turn against him, as all of his humanity was lost to them. In the end, even his sister, his only real ally and last connection to humanity, did not want to help him any longer. She, too, could no longer connect to him, even with her strong loyalties. 

And that’s how it ended for him. He starved to death as a big bug in his room, and no one really cared. For the family, they had moved on. They stopped seeing the big bug as their son/brother/friend a long time ago. So when it died, no one cared. It would be the same as if a cockroach died in the kitchen. Would you care? I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t care about a cockroach, because it’s not human. It’s a pest. A non-human.

Kafka showed us that our loyalties and our humanity are only extended so far, about as far as yourself, because only when we see ourselves in others, do we extend a helping hand. Only when we see ‘them’ as ‘us’, do we lift a finger. Otherwise, we lift the boot and squash it.

This is what Kafka said towards the end of his life:

Reading in Latin

I’m starting to learn how to read and write in Latin. I found this incredible app for my iPhone called Memrise, and I’ve already gone through about 10 hours on it learning all these different Latin vocabulary terms. Here are some interesting words I’ve learned so far:

video = I see

audio = listen 

domini = Lord

canis = dog

magnus = great

maximus = the greatest

domus = house

alba = white

ego = I

sum = (I) am

cogito = I think

ergo = therefore

multi = many

deus = god

ad = to, towards

anno = year

aut = either, or

disco = learn

inferno = hell

nihil = nothing

verbum = word

lego = I read 

Domus alba est = house white is

Cogito ergo sum = I think, therefore I am

Anno Domini = year lord

disco inferno = to learn in hell

aut Caesar aut nihil = either Caesar or nothing

Codex Vaticanus - new testament in greek from 325 a.d.

I’m also really interested in studying ancient greek. The Roman alphabet was taken from the Greek. I’d like to read the New Testament in the original Greek, because that’s what the New Testament authors wrote in, Koine Greek. The original apostles wrote in greek because the land they lived in was conquered by Alexander the Great in the 300s B.C. 

I found this book that I’m going to get, The Greek New Testament for Beginning Readers, and there’s also some great little lessons on the memrise app to study greek. 

I’m very excited to read the original writings, as far as they were preserved by monks in the desert, in greek and then to read Cicero in his own words in Latin would, I think, be quite exceptional. 

The monks would sit all day and copy and recopy these writings in Latin for over 1000 years, long before the invention of a printing press. The Bible was translated by St. Jerome from old Latin passages into the people’s bible, or the vulgate Bible. Vulgar is latin for ordinary, or common, so a bible for the common people (that’s vulgar!).  

Vulgate Bible - from the 1200s

I’d like to buy a Vulgate Bible to study, but I haven’t found one I can purchase just yet. 

To help me read Latin, I downloaded this awesome app, Biblium, that is the Vulgate Bible. If you click on the New Testament passages, they start with some incredible chants. St. Augustine commented about how he enjoyed the chanting of the scriptures by the monks in the late 300s. It’s a tradition that has been going on for nearly 2000 years, and after seeing some of the cathedrals in France and listening to the monks chant their scriptural passages inside, it was a very moving experience, something I hope I get to experience again in the next 10 years.  

Check out this amazing video of these singers signing in Latin in a cathedral. The words have been translated into English so you can read them. It is quite moving to think that people had preserved these latin texts for 1000s of years, and then they would sing them in their most sacred structures. 

Miserere Mei Deus = Have mercy my god

Miserere mei, Deus: secundum magnam misericordiam tuam.

Have mercy upon me, O God, according to your great mercy

Et secundum multitudinem miserationum tuarum, dele iniquitatem meam.

According to the multitude of Thy mercies, blot out my transgressions

Amplius lava me ab iniquitate mea: et a peccato meo munda me.

Wash me throughly from my iniquity: and cleanse me from my sin.

Quoniam iniquitatem meam ego cognosco: et peccatum meum contra me est semper.

For I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is ever before me.