Here is Caesar and all the line of Iulus soon to venture under the sky’s great arch. Here is the man, he’s here! Time and again you’ve heard his coming promised-Caesar Augustus! Son of a god, he will bring back the Age of Gold to the Latian fields where Saturn once held sway, expand his empire past the Garamants and the Indians…”(Fagles, 208). Virgil’s writings serve as a tool that Augustus can use to speak to the public.
Its meaning is equally disputed, and celebrations of the “cosmopolitan” can suggest an unpleasant posture of superiority toward the putative provincial” (68). He also says that the term cosmopolitanism dates back to the Cynics (4th century B.C). They first used the expression “citizens of the cosmos” (68). When they say citizens of the cosmos, they mean citizens belonging to a city that they own loyally (68-69). And the big picture from the cynics was that every person belonged to a community among many other communities.
When we landed on the moon it created a rehabilitated sense of patriotism in Americans, and that is what Krauthammer is striving for. That feeling of “wonder” and “glory” that we Americans have left behind in the last few decades. He is pushing us to realize we should not be content with mediocrity and we should strive as a country to learn everything we can about any subject possible, and open grand new possibilities for ourselves. Some of these possibilities may be a space station on the moon. It may be impractical , but most everyone loves seeing new exotic views, and nothing can be more bizarre than taking an outside look at your home planet.
Hiren Patel 10/13/14 FYOS Review of “The Space Merchants” The Space Merchants was written in 1952 and it was well ahead of its time. You might expect this book, set in "the future", to be hopelessly trite and dated, but it holds up remarkably well. If anything, many of the issues in the book resonate more today than they may have when it was first published. I enjoyed this cynical and satirical science fiction novel. It's about Mitchell Courtenay, a high-ranking ad exec in a futuristic American society dominated by advertising.
We can listen to the wisest of philosophers, mathematicians, and scientists. Reading classical literature, we can know the adventures and endeavors of the explorers that shaped what we now know of the world. We can read the stories, dreamt by candlelight, written by the most creative minds – minds such as Homer, Virgil, Ovid, Dante, Shakespeare, Chaucer, etc. The writings that some say we should throw out, encase many of the ideas that have helped to form our nation. Where would we be without those writings?
THE IMPORTANCE OF JANUS IN ROMAN ANTIQUITY Commonly referred to as the god of beginnings and the originator of all things, the Roman god Janus bears quite an interesting story. Born a mere mortal, Janus managed to achieve the status of king and eventually came to be known as one of the oldest and most important immortal gods in Roman antiquity. The worship of the great deity has been observed and it appears that Janus was not only a god important to Rome’s general public, but a god just as important in the Roman household. Rumored to be a son of the great god Apollo, Janus’s claim to fame is his involvement in civilizing the people of the Roman Empire. He is claimed to be the eldest of the native kings of Italy and is praised for having taught his people correct customs and the proper way to worship gods.
The plot forces the audience to question whether humans can control the technology they create and if our desire to continually make advancements in technology might be to humanity’s detriment. The novel, ‘Black Hole’, written by Geraldine Stowe, is set on a star colony called ‘Estra’ in the year 2305 where technology has become so advanced that nearly anything is possible. The social comment reminds the audience that even though we live in world full of advanced technology, our negative traits remain the same. This is presented through Dante and what he is forced to go through abuse just because he is different from his society Examples of futuristic and advanced technology are interspersed throughout, ‘I, Robot’, placing the film easily in the science fiction genre. Detective Del Spooner is employed to investigate the apparent suicide of Dr Alfred Lanning who “practically invented robotics.” During Spooner’s quest to uncover the truth, he stumbles upon Lanning’s “unique” creation, Sonny.
In his ‘The Life of Nero,’ 25, he describes how Nero enjoyed and wore ornaments or accessories that are considered as useless and abusing. With sentence like “Returning from Greece, since it was at Naples that he had made his first appearance, he entered that city with white horses through a part of the wall which had been thrown down, as is customary with victors in the sacred games. In like manner he entered Antium, then Albanum, and finally Rome; but at Rome he rode in the chariot which Augustus had used in his triumphs in days gone by, and wore a purple robe and a Greek cloak adorned with stars of gold, bearing on his head the Olympic crown and in his right hand the Pythian, while the rest were carried before him with inscriptions telling where he had won them and against what competitors, and giving the titles of the songs or of the subject of the plays. His car was followed by his claque as by the escort of a triumphal procession, who shouted that they were the attendants of Augustus and the soldiers of his triumph.” Suetonius also criticized Nero for not doing anything for the soldiers, in ‘The Life of Nero,’ 25. “Returning from Greece, since it was at Naples that he had made his first appearance, he entered that city with white horses through a part of the wall which had been thrown down, as is customary with victors in the sacred games.
The Ancient Cities of Petra and Palmyra: How Architecture Depicts Religion Over the course of history, few cities have had the ability capture the imagination of mankind like the ruins of the ancient caravan cities of Petra and Palmyra. Hundreds of years ago, these 2 cities were main centers of commerce and religious mixing along the Silk Road. Traders, merchants, soldiers, and many others would find themselves walking along Petra’s or Palmyra’s streets, surrounded by glorious structures and magnificent buildings whose architecture of both was uniquely indicative of the cultures and religions housed within the city walls and, through the massive temples representative of Palmyra and simple betyls and extravagant burial tombs typical of Petra, demonstrated each cities various religious views. Today, the architectural design of these mysterious cities offers historians and archaeologists a glimpse into the prosperously bustling centers of spirituality they once were. Ultimately, the caravan cities of Petra and Palmyra, were once great and imposing centers of trade that architecturally displayed their religious beliefs; Petra through its betyls and burial tombs, and Palmyra through the Great Temple of Bel.
‘The arcades, a rather recent invention of industrial luxury,’ so says an illustrated guide to Paris of 1852, ‘are glass-covered, marble-paneled passageways through entire complexes of houses whose proprietors have combined for such speculations. Both sides of these passageways, which are lighted from above, are lined with the most elegant shops, so that such an arcade is a city, even a world, in miniature (Benjamin 36)’”. It was in these arcades that the flaneur found a home. He could stroll around this labyrinth, gazing and Observing everything under the pretext of “shopping”, mingling about with the crowd of customers. This was a new idea of