A good essay must draw its curtain round us, but it must be a curtain that shuts us in, not out.'
According to Virginia Woolf, the goal of the essay 'is simply that it should give pleasure...It sh ... Read more
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I wish to remain single, for I have made a vow of virginity.'
This is the remarkable story of the twelfth-century recluse Christina, who became prioress of Markyate, near St Albans in Hertfordshire ... Read more
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I thought you'd do what the common run of slaves normally do, cheating and tricking me because my son's having an affair.'
Terence's comedies have provided plots and characters for comic drama fro ... Read more
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I will do as the Senate decrees.'
These words from one of Rome's opponents encapsulate the authority Rome achieved by its subjugation of the Mediterranean. The Third Macedonian War, recounted in t ... Read more
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Lorca brought an understanding of the paradox that was Spain - sensuality chafing under a rigid moral code, individual desire at war with tradition.'
Manuel Duran Federico Garcia Lorca is perhaps ... Read more
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Jean Racine (1639-99) remains to this day the greatest of French poetic dramatists. Britannicus (1669), the first play in this volume, takes its themes from Roman history: the setting is bloody and tr ... Read more
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Men, the enemy troops you can see are all that stands between us and the place we have for so long been determined to reach. We must find a way to eat them alive!'
The Expedition of Cyrus tells ... Read more
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You know how to win a battle, Hannibal; you do not know how to use the victory!'
Livy's great history of Rome contains, in Books 21 to 30, the definitive ancient account of Hannibal's invasion of ... Read more
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a Greek gentleman in a straw hat, standing absolutely motionless at a slight angle to the universe'
E. M. Forster E. M. Forster's description of C. P. Cavafy (1863-1933) perfectly encapsulates th ... Read more
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you'll find another man to harvest, Glycerion: let this one go'
The Greek satirist Lucian was a brilliantly entertaining writer who invented the comic dialogue as a vehicle for satiric comment. H ... Read more
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