Gwen Minor

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.