No. 2: 2023.08.11

Cervantes/Chaucer/Dante/Emerson/Horace/Kant/Livy/Newton/Rabelais/Socrates/Sterne/Virgil

Here’s some things people have been writing:

Dante’s characters from Inferno—the three-headed dog Cerberus and Charon the ferryman of the dead—are hot picks for the naming of European heat waves. Harpers

Newton was working from home in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire hiding from plague when he sat under that apple tree, which still stands. Economist

Emerson, Socrates, Kant, and others were right to think little of travel. New Yorker

Rabelais, Sterne, and Cervantes shaped Milan Kundera, a world-minded novelist who died on July 11th. Economist

Horace, Virgil, Tacitus, and Livy thought of Rome’s early public libraries as the Emperor’s private space where the public were guests—with all the censorship that entails. Aeon

Chaucer’s tales are source material for the most beautiful book ever printed. Open Culture

Reference works:

• Dante’s Divine Comedy

• Emerson’s Essays

• Plato’s Dialogues

• Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales