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A Few of My Favorite Things
Jun. 5th, 2016 04:14 pmI probably should give more of my reading time to nonfiction. Counting by books, only about 10-20% of my reading these days is nonfiction. By word count, the percentage is probably higher - the entirety of Pepys' Diary counted as one book last year - but even so, the numbers should be better.
Every so often, I get a real treat, a book that enlightens me - introducing me to a new field of study, providing me with new tools for thinking, or giving me a framework on which to hang information in some topic. Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class, McCawley's Everything that Linguists Have Always Wanted to Know About Logic, Barfield's The Perilous Frontier - these are books that I treasure.
Fustel de Coulanges' La Cité Antique is bidding fair to be one of those books. Yeah, it's over 150 years old (published 1864), and it's probably had holes poked in it in the years since, but I don't see any indication that it's been outright refuted, so.... I found a copy on Project Gutenberg, in French. My French is creaky, but good enough that I think I'm getting the gist of it. Kindle says I'm 38% through, and I won't put it firmly in the Treasures class until I'm much further in, but so far it's been a delight. Right now, I'm reading his discussion of (among other things) the relation between the words "census" and "censor", the basic function of the censor, and the reason the Romans found such an office necessary. Just fascinating.
By the way, I've read many historical novels set in Greece or Rome, and many fantasies set in variants of those, but - if FdC is right - none of them capture the essentials of Greek and Roman life - the role of the family altar, the extreme pluralism (one pantheon per household, per clan, and per city!), the reason why Aristotle used the term "idiot" for those who did not take part in the life of the city.... (OK, he actually wrote "idion", but "idiot" is directly descended from that word.)
I think, after I finish this book, I'll have to look for other works by Fustel de Coulanges and his disciples and disputants.
Every so often, I get a real treat, a book that enlightens me - introducing me to a new field of study, providing me with new tools for thinking, or giving me a framework on which to hang information in some topic. Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class, McCawley's Everything that Linguists Have Always Wanted to Know About Logic, Barfield's The Perilous Frontier - these are books that I treasure.
Fustel de Coulanges' La Cité Antique is bidding fair to be one of those books. Yeah, it's over 150 years old (published 1864), and it's probably had holes poked in it in the years since, but I don't see any indication that it's been outright refuted, so.... I found a copy on Project Gutenberg, in French. My French is creaky, but good enough that I think I'm getting the gist of it. Kindle says I'm 38% through, and I won't put it firmly in the Treasures class until I'm much further in, but so far it's been a delight. Right now, I'm reading his discussion of (among other things) the relation between the words "census" and "censor", the basic function of the censor, and the reason the Romans found such an office necessary. Just fascinating.
By the way, I've read many historical novels set in Greece or Rome, and many fantasies set in variants of those, but - if FdC is right - none of them capture the essentials of Greek and Roman life - the role of the family altar, the extreme pluralism (one pantheon per household, per clan, and per city!), the reason why Aristotle used the term "idiot" for those who did not take part in the life of the city.... (OK, he actually wrote "idion", but "idiot" is directly descended from that word.)
I think, after I finish this book, I'll have to look for other works by Fustel de Coulanges and his disciples and disputants.
