#Thomas Cahill

[quotesfrommyreading]

Athenian democracy was different from the much later American form, not only because it was the expression of a single city-state but because it was a direct, rather than a representative, democracy. To us, looking backwards, it may seem imprudent to invite on all major initiatives, but Solon was right to appreciate that no Athenian freeman could allow himself to be let out of anything.

The continual buzz of conversation, the orotund sounds of the orators, the shrill shouts from the symposia – this steady drumbeat of opinion, controversy, and conflict could everywhere be heard. The agora (marketplace) was not just a daily display of fish and farm goods; it was an everyday market of ideas, the place citizens used as if it were their daily newspaper, complete with salacious headlines, breaking news, columns, and editorials. For more formal occasions, there nested beside the Acropolis the hill of the Pnyx, where thousands of citizens voted in their Assembly. They faced the bēma (speaker's platform) and, behind the speaker, the ever-changing backdrop of Athens itself. Though there were wooden benches, set into the steps of the hill, participants were too taken up by the proceedings to bother to sit down. The word the Athenians used for their Assembly was Ekklēsia, the same word used in the New Testament for Church (and it is the greatest philological irony in all of Western history that this word, which connoted equal participation in all deliberations by all members, came to designate a kind of self-perpetuating, self-protective Spartan gerousia – which would have seemed patent nonsense to Greek-speaking Christians of New Testament times, who believed themselves to be equal members of their Assembly).

Ten thousand men could be accommodated comfortably, fifteen thousand umcomfortably, on the Pnyx, where the Assembly convened forty times a year, each meeting lasting but a couple of hours. Six thousand citizens constituted the quorum necessary for ratification of many of the decrees. Imagine many of your fellow citizens – at least twenty percent of them, sometimes as many as fifty percent – squeezing forty times a year into an open-air stadium, listening to debates, noisily electing magistrates (including the ten stratēgoi chosen annually to conduct the city's wars), voting on decrees by a show of hands, impaneling jurors. On each of the popular courts, called dicastēria, 201 to 501 citizens served as both judges and jurors, the number of citizens depending on the seriousness of the matter under consideration. Once a year, the citizens voted on whether or not they should hold an ostracism. If the majority voted yes, each member of the Assembly then wrote on an ostrakon (potsherd) the name of the person he felt the city could do best without. Whoever turned up on the most ostraka was banished for ten years, after which time he could return, his property still intact. In this way, would-be tyrants – and not a few other nuisances – were eliminated. (If at first the primitiveness of this procedure shocks you, consider for a moment what benefits it could bring to your city.)

Athens, the world's first attempt at democracy – a Greek word meaning “rule by the people” – still stands out as the most wildly participatory government in history. Never again would such a broadly based, decidedly nonrepresentative model be attempted. And, given the compactness of Athens, the theatrical extroversion of its citizenry, and the consequent excitement of their meetings, it worked.

  —  Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter (Thomas Cahill)

[emvisual]

Lo que me acaban de regalar. Un librín de esos que no se encuentran fácilmente.

De como los irlandeses salvaron la civilización Thomas Cahill ISBN: 978-84-7774-269-2

[knickknackgalore]

39 Clues Card 091

Secret: Kremlin Surveillance

[geopolicraticus]

Friday 04 October 2024

Grand Strategy Newsletter

The View from Oregon – 309

Noticing Patterns in History and Pretending not to See Them

…in which I discuss Thomas Cahill, the Irish, Cú Chulainn, heroic ages, Pangur Bán, fleeing scholars, idea diffusion, pattern recognition, imperfect repetition, intersecting patterns, and unpredictable complexity…

Substack: https://geopolicraticus.substack.com/p/noticing-patterns-in-history-and

Medium: https://jnnielsen.medium.com/noticing-patterns-in-history-and-pretending-not-to-see-them-91112ffa608a

Reddit: https://new.reddit.com/r/The_View_from_Oregon/comments/1fxmzrh/noticing_patterns_in_history_and_pretending_not/

[hypkigoodquotes]

things we would never have known without the bible

We can read the Bible (as do postmodernists) as a jumble of unrelated texts, given a false and superficial unity by redactors of the exilic period and later. But this is to ignore not only the powerful emotional and spiritual effect that much of the Bible has on readers, even on readers who would rather not be so moved, but also its cumulative impact on whole societies. The Bible’s great moments…

[tristansherwin]

GRAVE TO CRADLE | STONES & GOAT'S MILK (EX. 20:22-23:33)

GRAVE TO CRADLE | STONES & GOAT'S MILK (EX. 20:22-23:33) 'As bookends to this whole passage, both laws carry the principle of not causing the means of life to be an agent of death.'

Here’s my longer sermon notes from this morning’s Metro Christian Centre service (dated 2nd June 2024), session twelve in our series journeying through the book of Exodus. You can also catch up with this via MCC’s YouTube channel (just give us time to get the video uploaded). ‘The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.’ –Dr. Martin Luther King Jr[i] ��No one after…

[clove-pinks]

Daguerreotype portrait of William Frank Cahill (1830-1886) by Thomas Easterly, c. 1855.

[famousdeaths]

Thomas W. Cahill was one of the founding fathers of soccer in the United States, and is considered the most important administrator in U.S. Soccer before World...

Link: Thomas Cahill (soccer)

[politicaldilfs]

New Jersey Governor DILFs

Richard J. Hughes, Robert B. Meyner, Jim McGreevey, Donald DiFrancesco, Brendan Byrne, A. Harry Moore, Richard Codey, Walter Evans Edge, Alfred E. Driscoll, William T. Cahill, Thomas Kean, A. Harry Moore, Jon Corzine, James Florio, Phil Murphy

[minnesotafollower]

State Court Imposes Sentence of 57 Months Imprisonment on Tou Thao for Aiding Manslaughter of George Floyd

When George Floyd was killed on May 25, 2020, Tou Thao was a Minneapolis police officer who was in charge of monitoring and restraining the large nearby crowd of bystanders while observing fellow officers Derek Chauvin, Thomas Lane and Alexander Kueng physically restraining and killing George Floyd on the nearby pavement. On August 7, 2023, Thao was sentenced in state court to 57 months…

[danbenzvi]

On The Jukebox: Olly Murs - “Remixes 1″

[Part one of a two part collection of remixes.  Whoever sequenced this collection made some...choices.  Part one runs two and a half hours while part two is only 25 minutes.  Track listing follows:

“Heart Skips A Beat (MNEK’s gimmeabeat Mix) (featuring Rizzle Kicks)”

“Heart Skips A Beat (PokerFace Lyndsey Club Mix) (featuring Rizzle Kicks)”

“Dance With Me Tonight (Billionaire Remix)”

“Dance With Me Tonight (Cagedbaby Remix)”

“Oh My Goodness (Cagedbaby Club Mix)”

“Troublemaker (Cutmore Club Mix) (featuring Flo Rida)”

“Troublemaker (Cutmore Radio Edit)”

“Troublemaker (Wideboys Radio Edit) (featuring Flo Rida)”

“Troublemaker (Wideboys Club Mix) (featuring Flo Rida)”

“Right Place Right Time (Thomas Gandey Remix) (Radio Edit)”

“Right Place Right Time (Max Sanna & Steve Pitron Radio Edit)”

“Right Place Right Time (Thomas Gandey Club Mix)”

“Army Of Two (Westfunk & Steve Smart Remix)”

“Army Of Two (KatKrazy Remix)”

“Hand On Heart (LuvBug Remix)”

“Hand On Heart (Moto Blanco Remix)”

“Wrapped Up (Cahill Radio Mix) (featuring Travie McCoy)”

“Wrapped Up (Westfunk Radio Mix) (featuring Travie McCoy)”

“Beautiful To Me (JRMX Club Mix)”

“Beautiful To Me (JRMX Edit)”

“Kiss Me (The Alias Club Mix)”

“Kiss Me (Aevion Tropical Mix)”

“Stevie Knows (7th Heaven Remix)”

“Grow Up (TIEKS Remix)”

“Grow Up (Martin Jensen Remix)”

“Grow Up (Danny Dove Remix)”

“Grow Up (TIEKS Extended Club Mix)”

“Years & Years (Jack Wins Remix) (Radio Edit)”

“Years & Years (Jack Wins Remix) (Club Edit)”

“Years & Years (Nick Talos Remix) (Radio Edit)”

“Years & Years (Nick Talos Remix) (Club Edit)”

“Unpredictable (Duet Version) (John Gibbons Remix) (featuring Louisa Johnson)

“Moves (Wideboys Remix) (featuring Snoop Dogg)”

“Moves (Sebastian Perez Remix) (featuring Snoop Dogg)”

“Excuses (Kia Love Remix)”

“Feel The Same (Billy Da Kid Remix)”

“That Girl (Ye Remix) (featuring Veegee)”

[quotesfrommyreading]

In Homer's epic every age since has found relevance to its own time. For us, Achilles may resemble nothing so much as a pouting adolescent whose extraordinary physical maturity has far outstripped his judgment. The contemporary military historian Victor Davis Hanson has even compared Homer's descriptions of his heroes' exploits to rap lyrics that “glorify rival gangs who shoot and maim each other for prestige, women, booty, and turf.” Surely the audiences for both forms of entertainment have much in common, especially a need to be flattered about their aggressive attitudes. Homer's patrons, after all, were down on their luck and had been for many generations: they were eighth-century aristocrats living in a transitional time – at the end of the Dark Age but revering memories of heroic ancestors who had lived in a better age, the heroic age of Agamemnon, Menelaus, and the other chieftains who had won everlasting glory in legendary battle.

  —  Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter (Thomas Cahill)

[whencyclopedia]

Book of Kells

The Book of Kells (c. 800) is an illuminated manuscript of the four gospels of the Christian New Testament, currently housed at Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland. The work is the most famous of the medieval illuminated manuscripts for the intricacy, detail, and majesty of the illustrations. It is thought the book was created as a showpiece for the altar, not for daily use, because more attention was obviously given to the artwork than the text.

The beauty of the lettering, portraits of the evangelists, and other images, often framed by intricate Celtic knotwork motifs, has been praised by writers through the centuries. Scholar Thomas Cahill notes that, “as late as the twelfth century, Geraldus Cambrensis was forced to conclude that the Book of Kells was “the work of an angel, not of a man” owing to its majestic illustrations and that, in the present day, the letters illustrating the Chi-Rho (the monogram of Christ) are regarded as “more presences than letters” on the page for their beauty (165). Unlike other illuminated manuscripts, where text was written and illustration and illumination added afterwards, the creators of the Book of Kells focused on the impression the work would have visually and so the artwork was the focus of the piece.

Origin & Purpose

The Book of Kells was produced by monks of St. Columba's order of Iona, Scotland, but exactly where it was made is disputed. Theories regarding composition range from its creation on the island of Iona to Kells, Ireland, to Lindisfarne, Britain. It was most likely created, at least in part, at Iona and then brought to Kells to keep it safe from Viking raiders who first struck Iona in 795, shortly after their raid on Lindisfarne Priory in Britain.

A Viking raid in 806 killed 68 monks at Iona and led to the survivors abandoning the abbey in favor of another or their order at Kells. It is likely that the Book of Kells traveled with them at this time and may have been completed in Ireland. The oft-repeated claim that it was made or first owned by St. Columba (521-597) is untenable as the book was created no earlier than c. 800, but there is no doubt it was produced by later members of his order.

The work is commonly regarded as the greatest illuminated manuscript of any era owing to the beauty of the artwork and this, no doubt, had to do with the purpose it was made for. Scholars have concluded that the book was created for use during the celebration of the mass but most likely was not read from so much as shown to the congregation.

This theory is supported by the fact that the text is often carelessly written, contains a number of errors, and at points certainly seems an afterthought to the illustrations on the page. The priests who would have used the book most likely already had the biblical passages memorized and so would recite them while holding the book, having no need to read from the text.

Scholar Christopher de Hamel notes how, in the present day, “books are very visible in churches” but that in the Middle Ages this would not have been the case (186). De Hamel describes the rough outline of a medieval church service:

There were no pews (people usually stood or sat on the floor), and there would probably have been no books on view. The priest read the Mass in Latin from a manuscript placed on the altar and the choir chanted their part of the daily office from a volume visible only to them. Members of the congregation were not expected to join in the singing; some might have brought their Books of Hours to help ease themselves into a suitable frame of mind, but the services were conducted by the priests. (186)

The Book of Kells is thought to have been the manuscript on the altar which may have been first used in services on Iona and then certainly was at the abbey of Kells. The brightly-colored illustrations and illumination would have made it an exceptionally impressive piece to a congregation, adding a visual emphasis to the words the priest recited while being shown to the people; much in the way one today would read a picture book to a small child.

Continue reading...

[gyllenhaallsjake]

Jake Gyllenhaal as Thomas "Tommy" Cahill. BROTHERS (2009) directed by Jim Sheridan.

[primordialsoundmeditation]

Each one of us is alone in the world. It takes great courage to meet the full force of your aloneness. Most of the activity in society is subconsciously designed to quell the voice crying in the wilderness within you. The mystic Thomas a Kempis said that when you go out into the world, you return having lost some of yourself. Until you learn to inhabit your aloneness, the lonely distraction and noise of society will seduce you into false belonging, with which you will only become empty and weary. When you face your aloneness, something begins to happen. Gradually, the sense of bleakness changes into a sense of true belonging. This is a slow and open-ended transition but it is utterly vital in order to come into rhythm with your own individuality. In a sense this is the endless task of finding your true home within your life. It is not narcissistic, for as soon as you rest in the house of your own heart, doors and windows begin to open outwards to the world. No longer on the run from your aloneness, your connections with others become real and creative. You no longer need to covertly scrape affirmation from others or from projects outside yourself. This is slow work; it takes years to bring your mind home.

JOHN O'DONOHUE

Excerpt from the book, Eternal Echoes

Ordering Info: https://johnodonohue.com/store

Connemara Cottage, Ireland

Photo: © Ann Cahill

#johnodonohue #johnodonohuequote

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Connemara Cottage, Ireland :: Photo: © Ann Cahill

* * * * *

Each one of us is alone in the world. It takes great courage to meet the full force of your aloneness. Most of the activity in society is subconsciously designed to quell the voice crying in the wilderness within you. The mystic Thomas a Kempis said that when you go out into the world, you return having lost some of yourself. Until you learn to inhabit your aloneness, the lonely distraction and noise of society will seduce you into false belonging, with which you will only become empty and weary. When you face your aloneness, something begins to happen. Gradually, the sense of bleakness changes into a sense of true belonging. This is a slow and open-ended transition but it is utterly vital in order to come into rhythm with your own individuality. In a sense this is the endless task of finding your true home within your life. It is not narcissistic, for as soon as you rest in the house of your own heart, doors and windows begin to open outwards to the world. No longer on the run from your aloneness, your connections with others become real and creative. You no longer need to covertly scrape affirmation from others or from projects outside yourself. This is slow work; it takes years to bring your mind home.

-JOHN O'DONOHUE

Excerpt from the book, Eternal Echoes