I like Plutarch Phal. I read him a lot when I was a teenager. His 'Lives of Rome' was my introduction, more or less, into Roman history. What's so sad about ancient authors is that so much was lost, so so much, I've read so many histories that just cut off halfway, with an italicized explanation that the rest of the history was lost.
I'm really glad Herodotus wasn't though, we all got lucky there. I've been meaning to reread his histories, it's been about fifteen years, I think it would be worth a reread, though I rarely reread things outside of Brautigan and occassionally Tom Robbins (it's just comforting to me sometimes I guess).
evmdimples, I'm sorry, you're too late, I've discovered my beautiful eschaton, but it's nice to know there's someone who shares my passion for dusty literature. I know what you mean about the 'when you need that book' thing. That's happened to me TOO many times!
But, with all the moving I do, always alone and always thousands of miles away from my previous bivouac, it is just impossible to keep ALL the books I acquire. If i did I would have well over a thousand in tow by now, I have about five hundred right now, and I came here, a year ago, with not more than 250, I'm fairly sure. I'm too hungry, it's really just as hard, or even harder for me to stay out of bookstores as it is to stay out of bars, and, if I DO go in, I won't walk out with less that five or six. I just wish there was more napoleonic stuff, it seems like there's none of it lately, and I'm hungry for original accounts, maybe I should just learn french, some of them aren't even translated yet. Oh well.
Eleanor Rigby statue heh? Weird. I think lonliness is such a modern side effect. A western specific one too. There were always recluses, the old man living in the cave on the mountain, but never so much as now, here, in a society that is so supra connected through electronic immediacy. We've truly constructed a world where people can be completely alone amongst millions. We should be so proud of our 'progress' shouldn't we? What crap. When we lost alchemy science was lost. When we lost nature, evolution was lost. When we lost each other, hope was lost. I don't think it's cynical, I think it's the tragic truth. Society, a word that means nothing anymore, a metallic construct we must form to, not the other way around. Community, family, tribe, what does any of that mean anymore? We have about as much emotional attachment to our society as an air guitar has to the philharmonic. We've lost tandem, purpose, we allow the least amongst us to 'lead', we allow our emotions to be controlled by light and shadow play, burned into our eyes and brains through billboard-television-magazine-media. Our thoughts no longer contemplated, but fed to us brand named and cold, unloving, directed with purpose of profit not health. We are a sick society, we've been sick for a long time, and the final separation, between the machine and the slaves, is coming soon. Yet, inside the greater patterns we are still able to form subcontext, still able to break free from the sinister purpose of corporation-governments, still allowed to feel and think, just disuaded from doing so. I don't know where I'm going with all this, just blabbering like an idiot, per usual, I'll stop now, I'm depressing myself...