And they all lived happily ever after . . .

For the record, I would not suggest The Iliad as bedtime reading . . .

That is unless you enjoying entering your cycle of sleep with imagery of Greek warriors being skewered by . . . well, let's just say that some of them experience a little . . . uhh . . . discomfort.

I've now moved on to Thucydides' recounting of the Peloponnesian War. I have an exam on Friday, so I'm trying to get all of the -ideses, -ians, and -iuses straight. I actually just finished reading Pericles' Funeral Oration (for those Athenians who died in the first year of the war). I remember being assigned to read it during my first semester here, but I'm pretty sure that I didn't appreciate it nearly enough. It's great stuff! Here, for instance, is a blurb from one of Pericles' earlier speeches:

" . . . You must know that of necessity war there will be; and the more willingly we embrace it, the less pressing we shall have our enemies, and that out of the greatest dangers, whether to cities or private men, arise the greatest honors. For our fathers, when they undertook the Medes, did from less beginnings, nay abandoning the little they had, by wisdom rather than fortune, by courage rather than strength, both repel the barbarian and advance this state to the height it now is at. Of whom we ought not now to come short but rather to revenge us by all means upon our enemies, and do our best to deliver the state unimpaired by us to posterity."

Here, here! (or is it "Hear, hear!" ?. . . I've never quite known for sure . . .)