Gwen Minor

Click here for direct link to audio podcast Episode #59.

Click here for link to previous audio podcast episodes.

Alas, my trusty Compaq laptop went the way of all flesh and is no more. I lost 3 hours of work, a completed episode, when the blue screen of death appeared. Rushed the patient to Piers, computer physician extraordinaire, but it was too late.

Upon examination, contents of insides revealed a massive hairball from our kitty Thetis, Achilles’s mother. See how guilty she looks!

…Our final installment in our series on Coriolanus. Today, you will meet his mother, Volumnia, and see what lengths she is willing to go for her country! Enjoy! And then go track down your Shakespeare version!

Today’s episode from Plutarch’s Lives for Boys & Girls, retold by W.H. Weston, and illustrated by W. Rainey, published in London & Edinburgh in the early 1900′s.

Click here for direct link to audio podcast Episode #58.       

Click here for link to previous audio episodes.

Sorry to be so long out-of-touch! Summer travels and beginning a new school year have kept me busy, but my classes are now dialed in and the stress of the first weeks has fallen away.

In an effort to understand these historic economic times, I’ve been watching documentaries on what happened in 2008. To hear the voice of the Roman man in the street through Plutarch’s Lives and compare it to the voice of an Occupy Wall Street protester is one of the many benefits we reap when we look at ancient writings, for these times are those times.

Scarcity of food, factious orators, a tumultuous mob of commoners, and the struggle between patrician and plebeian, all mark this episode in Plutarch’s life of Coriolanus. A gift of corn stores from the King of Syracuse arrives in a famine-wracked Rome and the elite 1% consider selling it, rather than giving it away to the citizens. And on which side of the issue did our Marcius speak out? Find out today in our second of three episodes on Caius Marcius Coriolanus, Plutarch’s tale of the ruin of a noble nature by pride.

Enjoy today’s episode from Plutarch’s Lives for Boys & Girls, retold by W.H. Weston, and illustrated by W. Rainey, published in London & Edinburgh in the early 1900′s.

Click here for direct link to audio podcast Episode #57.

Click here for link to previous audio episodes.

London was amazing, as usual, and I couldn’t have done more in the 2 weeks I was there. There is much to tell you about my trip, but I am still organizing all the notes I took and will make them available in some form soon. In the meantime, here is the first of two parts of Plutarch’s Coriolanus, who most of us know from Shakespeare’s play. You will be interested to know that Shakespeare got most of his information on the ancient world from Plutarch’s Lives. This fall you will be hearing the retelling of Plutarch’s life of Julius Caesar, the historical personage who most interested Shakespeare, judging from the many references and allusions made to him across the entirety of Shakespeare’s work. Enjoy today’s episode from Plutarch’s Lives for Boys & Girls, retold by W.H. Weston, and illustrated by W. Rainey, published in London & Edinburgh in the early 1900′s.