“For the men and women of those days were just wonderful children”! Fantastic! Can you imagine the trouble you’d of been in with her if you didn’t finish your greens? I hope our times get off as lightly. “Children”’perhaps but more likely “narcissist and spoilt adolescents”?
That one really did make me shudder! I’ve often come across the ancient (and specifically ‘pagan’) world being cast as primitive and/or savage – but writing off whole civilisations (the book is pretty wide-ranging) as ‘children’…? That takes a truly impressive level of smugness.
If she were alive she should apply to be PM of New Zealand.
As you say how can you read any classical author and think “child”? Most remain extremely sophisticated and challenging after thousands of years. That said what words are we to use (if not savage etc) about, to take just one example, the crowd pleasing entertainments in the colosseum?
Classical Studies Support 
“For the men and women of those days were just wonderful children”! Fantastic! Can you imagine the trouble you’d of been in with her if you didn’t finish your greens? I hope our times get off as lightly. “Children”’perhaps but more likely “narcissist and spoilt adolescents”?
LikeLike
That one really did make me shudder! I’ve often come across the ancient (and specifically ‘pagan’) world being cast as primitive and/or savage – but writing off whole civilisations (the book is pretty wide-ranging) as ‘children’…? That takes a truly impressive level of smugness.
LikeLike
If she were alive she should apply to be PM of New Zealand.
As you say how can you read any classical author and think “child”? Most remain extremely sophisticated and challenging after thousands of years. That said what words are we to use (if not savage etc) about, to take just one example, the crowd pleasing entertainments in the colosseum?
LikeLike