It was someone here, in fact - maybe you? - who recommended The Business of May Next to me. Madison’s “Notes” is more like the original scripture to me, almost sacred, but May Next is the key that unlocks the whole process.
I never enjoyed Herodotus as much as I felt I ought to, but I may simply have had a bad translation - I think getting a really good translation is key to the old classics unless one is truly conversant in the Greek or Latin oneself. This is one of my complaints about the Great Books collection that someone mentioned here: yes, those ARE the great books, but the translations and the horrible, horrible publishing - typesetting/font, page layout, paper, etc - made them into a chore to slog through.
I have a quote about the Meditations that I’ve always liked - I think comes from Clifton Fadiman in his “Lifetime Reading Plan”:
“Through the years the Golden Book of Marcus Aurelius, as it has been called, has been read by vast numbers of ordinary men and women. They have thought of it not as a classic but as a wellspring of consolation and inspiration. It is one of the few books that seem to have helped men directly and immediately to live better, to bear with greater dignity and fortitude the burden of being merely human. Aristotle one studies. Marcus Aurelius men take to their hearts.”
It’s the ancient psychology in Herodotus that I thought would have interested you. I love histories for what they reveal of the “memes” of the time it’s written in- not the time written of. Man never changes.
I recommend The Business of May Next every appropriate opportunity, It’s gratifying that I may have found a fertile recepetion... so let’s assume.
That’s a great quote on The Golden Book. It’s much the advice a father would work in while working on a car with his son: practical and straightforward. Wish fervently that I’d read it when a teenager or a father to a teenaged son instead of in my dotage.