Read the article first and then my response below.
It's sad that our society as a whole is so ignorant as to warrant an article about someone making a reference to ancient roman history. There was a time when the phrase "alea iacta est" was one of hundreds of phrases memorized, along with the historic or literary stories behind them. This knowledge enriched and enlightened our lives, and public discourse as well. Take the phrase, written by Horace: "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori," which means "it is a sweet and honorable thing to die for one's country.". Horace was being literal when he wrote this. Now when Wilfred Owen, a soldier in WWI, was in the trenches, he thought of Horace and thought "how wrong that old coot was.". Owen then used Horace's phrase as the basis for a poem about the horrors of war and how senseless all the killing was. I make two points: this is much more effective than "Bush lied, people died." And huzzah for a Colgate man making reference to the Rubicon. A small victory but a victory nonetheless.
1 comment:
Now there is a Middlebury connection to this whole situation. The Packers have hired Middlebury and KDR alum Ari Fleischer to advise the Packers in this whole thing.
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