Most Important Books

In class today [CLA 310] Omar mentioned two books as being 'the most important' he had read before beginning his study of the Greek and Roman classics. These were: Aldous Huxley, BRAVE NEW WORLD George Orwell, 1984 In that spirit, I mentioned that I would create a blog post where each of you could contribute your own reading suggestions under this heading. To keep it manageable, and not too much of a project, let's limit everyone's contributions to two or at most three titles. (Omar, this means you can suggest one more if you like!) Bear in mind, as we said earlier, that this is not necessarily the same as your 'desert island' books -- the ones you would most want to have with you to read and re-read for the rest of your life. (Not necessarily; they might of course be the same. But we will save that question for a separate post.) I'm very much looking forward to your contributions!

BEWARE THE IDES OF MARCH.

on this day i like to revere the memory of my father, who every year at this time took an impish delight in quoting the famous shakespeare line, 'beware the ides of march.' in general he was at pains to conceal his essential bookishness, but on such occasions he could not help himself. and this citation from JULIUS CAESAR highlights a literary element that particularly appealed to my father -- moments of portent, moments of the *unheimlich*, moments where the supernatural impinged [or appeared to impinge] upon the quotidian world.

though i did not realize it at the time, from the childlike gleam that appeared in his eye every 15 march i learnt several things, including
--- that it was OK, and more than OK, to like shakespeare [and thus both literature and drama]
--- that the world of the ancient greeks and romans was one of massive interest [and ongoing relevance] to us today
--- that you actually had to *know something* in order even to understand the sentence the soothsayer was uttering here.

a' propos of the latter: precisely because it is a somewhat technical [and for most people, extremely recondite] detail of roman history, it is worth noting that the 'ides' is not invariably the 15th of the month. the ancient roman calendar had several days in each month that were semiotically marked by special names, and that themselves served as what i call 'marker days' to indicate the progress of the month. these were the 'kalends,' the 'nones,' and the 'ides.' the kalends are always the first of the month. the other two are more variable, but are always eight days apart. the nones usually occur on the 5th of the month, and in those months, the ides will then occur on the 13th. but, as the old rhyme has it,

in march, july, october, may
the nones fall on the seventh day

and in *those* months -- which are also, by virtue of this anomaly, semiotically marked -- the ides will then fall on the 15th. march, as the rhyme indicates, is one of these semiotically-marked months, indeed the first of them in the calendar year.

the other days in each month were named according to their relationship to the 'marker day' following it. thus, for example, 14 march was the 'day before the ides of march,' and 13 march was 'three days from the ides of march' [*three* because, not having the concept of zero, the romans began counting with the ides itself].

much more could be said about this complex issue, but on this fateful day it is enough to bear in mind that julius caesar, among the many many other massive effects he had on roman [and thus world] history, himself ordered a substantial overhaul of the calendar that had been used in rome up to that point. his reformed version is in fact known as the 'julian calendar,' and remained the most widely-used calendar in western europe until the subsequent reforms of pope gregory xii in 1582 [the so-called 'gregorian calendar,' which is still in use today].