Overview

This is a book of quotations and citations that differs from standard books of its kind in a number of important ways. Its main aim is to educate and amuse the reader through great quotations selected on the basis of strict qualitative criteria. The quotations and citations have been arranged in a generally chronological order and they have been provided with copious annotations, explanations, comments and collateral information to make them as meaningful as possible. The book tries to provide an interesting and thought-provoking kaleidoscope of the mind, culture, life and manners of Classical Rome. It endeavors to aid comprehension as much as possible by providing the all-important historical and personal contexts that make quotations and citations come to life. They can thus talk to the reader and can provoke his own responses. Roman culture is one of the most pivotal cultures of the world. Classical Rome had largely assimilated and extended the genius of Greece and has been the cradle, the fertile ground on which Christianity had grown and flourished. It has been the bridge through which an enriched Greco-Roman culture was transmitted both to Western and to Eastern Europe, through the Holy Roman and the Byzantine empires, respectively. It has provided, the basis and inspiration for the flowering of the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and also for the French, the American and the industrial revolutions and for the political, the literary and the scientific advances of the modern world. The influence of Classical Rome on Christianity and hence on the world is much greater than is commonly realized or admitted. Many of the Roman quotations have Greek antecedents and many of the same and other quotations have a quite Christian flavor, mainly as a result of the widespread Stoic philosophy that many Roman writers, teachers and politicians adopted as a form of secular religion, especially during Rome's imperial times. A culture which produced intellectual stars of the luminosity of Terence, Cicero, Lucretius, Catullus, Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Seneca, Petronius, Lucan, and Tacitus cannot but form an essential part of the mental equipment of any truly cultured person today. This book will appeal to people who enjoy delightful conversation, subtle thinking, important history and culture, fine language, and the company of absorbingly interesting people of another time and place. Jane Austen's idea of good company was the company of clever, well-informed people who had a good deal of conversation. Her idea is eminently satisfied by the contents of this collection.

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9781523733651

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Sofron A. Sofron, M.A., Ph.D., M.Sc., holds degrees from the University of London King's College, University College, and the London School of Economics. He held academic posts at the Middlesex Polytechnic in London and the University of Indianapolis. He also worked at the World Service of the BBC. He is President Emeritus of the University of Nicosia in Cyprus.

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