Salve!

“PARVA DOMVS, MAGNA QVIES.”

Motto on the organist’s house at Exeter Cathedral in England

“Ad mea, decepti ivvenes, praecepta venite, qvos svvs ex omni parte fefellit amor. Discite sanari, per qvem didicistis amare; vna manvs vobis vvlnvs opemqve feret.”

Remedia Amoris

P. Ovidi Nasonis

Welcome!

This is another web site where you can read about Ancient Greece and Rome. I am a passionate admirer of those times. I'm obsessed, fascinated and perplexed by the men and the way of living, of thinking of that era. The sources are not that many, really. A new fragment every once in a while. I cannot promise originality; whatever you may read here, you may have read already somewhere else. Also I am a silicones admirer, and therefore I am possibly exaggerating or perhaps idealising things. I can assure the reader— I don't know to what degree— That I am well-intentioned.

I'll try to be a good librarian, a good recopilator, or with some luck, anthologist of data, so the curious (I wouldn't dare to importunate serious investigators), may inform himself about classic culture.

The site has mainly two big sections: The Greek Hall and The Roman Hall. I also included a library, where I would gladly add any link or post reviews and comments about books and music related with the greco-roman universe. Some pages would have Orange words that are linked to explicative notes on the top of the right column; click on the word again to close the note. I have rather limited web-design skills, but I am always eager to learn, and excellence is my ideal, but unfortunately, not always my reality. I've designed this site for firefox browsers(though it doesn't look bad on IE 7); with a screen resolution of 1074×768. I have not tested other browsers. You can send me all your angry letters here.

A rather discredited philosopher, —in the english-speaking universe, at least— Friedrich Nietzsche wrote in 1871:

Almost every age and cultural stage has at some time or another sought in an ill-tempered frame of mind to free itself of the Greeks, because in comparison with the Greeks, all their achievements, apparently fly original and admired in all sincerity, suddenly appeared to lose their colour and life and were reduced to unsuccessful copies, even caricatures.

The Orange links when clicked would show you an explicative note at the top of the right column (this is an example).

And so a heartfelt inner anger constantly kept breaking out against that arrogant little nation which dared throughout time to define everything that was not produced in its own county as “barbaric”; Who were these Greeks, people asked themselves, who had achieved only an ephemeral historical glitter, only ridiculously restricted institutions, only an ambiguous competence in morality, who could even be identified with hateful vices, yet who had nevertheless taken a pre-eminent place among nations for their valve and special importance, something fitted for a genius among the masses? Unfortunately people were not lucky enough to find the cup of hemlock which can do away with such a being, for all the poisons they created —envy, slander, and inner anger— were insufficient to destroy that self-satisfied magnificence.

Hence, confronted by the Greeks, people have been ashamed and afraid. It seems that an individual who valves the truth above everything else might dare to propose as trove the notion that the Greeks drive the chariot of over cloture and every other one, but that almost always the wagon and the horses are inferior material and cannot match the glory of their drivers, who then consider it funny to whip such a team into the abyss, over which they themselves jump with a leap worthy of Achilles.

Magister Lvdi