Charles de la Fosse (1636-1716) was a French artist born in Paris. After studying in Italy he did a lot work at Versailles. His paintings never grabbed be but these drawings are wonderful.
A snippet from Scottish nobleman Thomas Urquhart's translation of Gargantua and Pantagruel by Rebelais. Here the cake-bakers of Lerne fulminate against the shepherds in Gargantua’s kingdom:
prattling gabblers, lickorous gluttons, freckled bittors, mangy rascals, shite-a-bed scoundrels, drunken roysters, sly knaves, drowsy loiterers, slapsauce fellows, slabberdegullion druggels, lubberly louts, cozening foxes, ruffian rogues, paltry customers, sycophant-varlets, drawlatch hoydens, flouting milksops, jeering companions, staring clowns, forlorn snakes, ninny lobcocks, scurvy sneaksbies, fondling fops, base loons, saucy coxcombs, idle lusks, scoffing braggarts, noddy meacocks, blockish grutnols, doddipol-joltheads, jobbernol goosecaps, foolish loggerheads, flutch calf-lollies, grouthead gnat-snappers, lob-dotterels, gaping changelings, codshead loobies, woodcock slangams, ninny-hammer flycatchers, noddypeak simpletons, turdy gut, shitten shepherds, and other suchlike defamatory epithets.
And now it has happened again. Of course, the Louvre also got robbed recently in a similar smash-and-grab style, so big museums are not entirely safe. But they are much safer than small musuems are.
Matt Yglesias' history of the "Great Awokening".
On Twitter/X, a story about potential issues with US Treasury bonds. Via Marginal Revolution.
Seventeenth-century papercuts found under the floorboards.
Does the universe evolve in a way analogous to how life on earth evolves?
Sabine Hossenfelder buries commercial quantum computing, 5-minute video.
Short article on the transformation of the Ukrainian military between 2014 and 2022, by Mark Hertling.
People fighting change: "In Tillman's case, neighborhood activists were able to block his project [75 apartments] for years by demanding he perform studies on the historic significance of his laundromat (turns out there wasn't any) and ensure the shadows cast by his project wouldn't stunt the growth of children at a nearby school (they'll be fine)."
Article on an archive of interviews with Black participants in the great migration out of the South, with sample interviews.
Outsiders love the pink dolphins of the Amazon, but some natives hate and fear them.
Dragon and phoenix symbols in ancient Chinese tomb.
Relics of London's St. Paul's from before the Great Fire.
The mad blogger at Old European Culture takes on the snakes of Göbekli Tepe. I think this guy is a monomaniac, but he knows a lot and I often find his takes intriguing.
Polling on people's public vs. private feelings about capitalism. (Marginal Revolution)
Luke Burgis interviews Luke Collison about aesthetics and why our own art is so discouraging. (Twitter/X)
How wyrd, and Anglo-Saxon word for "fate," became our word "weird."
Review of a new biography of 20th-century Jewish philosopher Franz Rosenzweig, made me curious about him.
My entire fantasy novel, The Voice from the Darkness, is available now on Royal Road. I am planning to publish this on Amazon for fans of physical books.
Since Shakespeare's time we have mostly associated Hecate with magic, witchcraft, and the moon. But one of the striking things about ancient paganism, once you delve into it, is how many different powers a goddess might have. Hecate was associated, at various times, with household economy, dogs, keys, doorways, weasels, torchlit processions, crossroads, ghosts, wealth, childbirth, maidenhood, good fortune, the entrance to the underworld, and victory in battle.
So far as I can tell, Hecate *was* strongly associated with magic and the moon in western Europe by late Roman times, and it was certainly how Europeans saw Hecate in the Renaissance. But farther east, and further back in time, she seems to have been seen quite differently.
Hesiod's Theogony (c. 700 BC) includes a long passage called The Hymn to Hecate. This begins with a description of her lineage among the titans
And Asteria conceived and bare Hecate whom Zeus the son of Cronos honoured above all. He gave her splendid gifts, to have a share of the earth and the unfruitful sea. She received honour also in starry heaven, and is honoured exceedingly by the deathless gods. For to this day, whenever any one of men on earth offers rich sacrifices and prays for favour according to custom, he calls upon Hecate. Great honour comes full easily to him whose prayers the goddess receives favourably, and she bestows wealth upon him; for the power surely is with her. For as many as were born of Earth and Ocean amongst all these she has her due portion. The son of Cronos did her no wrong nor took anything away of all that was her portion among the former Titan gods: but she holds, as the division was at the first from the beginning, privilege both in earth, and in heaven, and in sea. Also, because she is an only child, the goddess receives not less honour, but much more still, for Zeus honours her. Whom she will she greatly aids and advances: she sits by worshipful kings in judgement, and in the assembly whom she will is distinguished among the people. And when men arm themselves for the battle that destroys men, then the goddess is at hand to give victory and grant glory readily to whom she will. . . .
Which makes Hecate seem like something much more than the shady goddess of crossroads and sorcery we read of later. Everything about Hesiod is disputed, but he may have been born east of the Aegean in Anatolia, and as I already suggested, Hecate's cult may have been different in the Greek east than the Roman west. In classical Athens Hecate still seems to have been an impeccably respectable deity, listed as one of the four protectors of the household and supplied with a small triangular temple adjacent to the Agora.
One theory is that Hecate's identity gradually shifted because she merged with a Thessalian goddess called Enodia (meaning "traveller"), who wandered the earth with a retinue of ghosts and could be met at remote crossroads. Some things about Hecate's iconography, such as carrying two torches, seem to derive from older images of Enodia, so there certainly could be a connection. Enodia was associated with the Moon, and Hecate was often invoked alongside Artemis, another Lunar deity, so it is hardly surprising that Hecate was increasingly invoked via the Moon.
The magical papyri from Egypt and Syria invoke her often, usually for black magic but also sometimes as a protectress. Here is one, from the first century AD:
Lady Hekate of the heavens, Hekate of the underworld, Hekate of the crossroads, Hekate of the triple-face, Hekate of the single-face, cut the hearts of the thief or the thieves who took the items contained in this deposition. And let the earth not be walkable, the sea not sailable; let there be no enjoyment of life, no increase of children, but may utter destruction visit them or him.
Be bound before Hermes of the underworld and Hekate of the underworld… and just as this lead is worthless and cold, so let that man and his property be worthless and cold. And those who are with him who have spoken and counselled concerning me.
She became a goddess of ghosts, of necromancy, and the moon; Her torchlight no longer a symbol of life alone, but of traversal between life and death.
The Mausoleum of Constantina was built in the 4th century AD for Constantina, the daughter of the emperor Constantine I. It later became a church known as Santa Costanza. It is one of the best preserved buildings from Late Antiquity left in Rome. Not much on the outside, as you can see.
The glory of the place is the wonderful mosaics, especially those in the ceiling of the ambulatory.
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During the 17th century, the Mausoleo is the meeting place of a bizarre association of Dutch and Flemish artists called Bent-vogels (birds of the band). Every time the group was enriched by a new member, a baptism party was celebrated with abundant libations, in a tavern on the Via Nomentana. After a night of debauchery the Bent-vogels made a last solemn toast in the temple of Bacchus in front of the porphyry sarcophagus, considered the sepulchre of the god. The feast could last up to three days and three nights. In 1720, Pope Clemente XI forbade this custom because it profaned the ancient Mausoleo. The names of some of these Bent-vogels, engraved in the niches of the ambulatory, are still visible today.Cool.
As my readers know, I have always maintained that we are not unhappy because of anything to do with economics. We are the richest people in history by a wide margin, and if money could make us happy, we would be drowning in happiness. It must be something else.
I go back and forth in my own mind between thinking that it must be something else about our society that saddens and angers us – mass media, rigid schedules, the decline of religion, living in huge, diverse cities, what have you – and thinking that we are just not wired for happiness.
Here is Noah Smith on this subject:
Every time a policy wonk thinks about some measure that would increase GDP by 0.4%, or create 200,000 jobs, or lower inflation by 40 basis points, they need to think about the unpleasant reality that Americans may simply not care very much. That doesn’t mean it’s bad to help people economically, but it means that economics may ultimately not be the lever we need to pull if we’re going to make the people of this country happy and satisfied again.
We should therefore think about whether our primary social problems are actually about material scarcity. The vast majority of Americans now possess not only the basic necessities of life, but a degree of economic security unimaginable to their forebears a century ago. It seems plausible to think that a great many Americans have climbed to the higher rungs of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs — that instead of where to get their next meal or how to save for retirement, they’re thinking about how to feel like they belong in their society, or how to get more status and respect.
A large contingent of Americans may now simply care less about adding to their bank accounts than about questions like “Who are the real Americans?”, or “Does one race deserve special treatment in the eyes of the law?”, or “Why do some of the people I went to college with have 10,000 times as much wealth as I do?”. As long as those questions remain unanswered, boosting Americans’ economic fortunes could have little effect on their happiness. . . .
Neither the discipline of economics nor our typical policy discourse is set up to deal with issues like belonging, social status, or respect. There’s no market for these things; people with wealth might be more respected, but you can’t buy respect on Amazon. And some of these psychological needs are positional goods — for the status of one person or group to be higher, someone else’s status often has to be diminished. . . .
And yet like it or not, this may now be the world in which we find ourselves. Just as the great challenge of the 20th century was to provide broad-based material plenty, the great challenge of the 21st century may be to make everyone feel high-status at the same time — or at least to create a world where status differences don’t lead to mass resentment.
I am sometimes baffled by the tendency of Americans to see all problems in terms of economics, when it seems obvious to me that money is the least of our worries.
From an interview in the NY Times with Priya Parker, an expert on corporate communications:
You used the term “unhealthy peace,” which could feel like an oxymoron, because what’s unhealthy about peace? Can you explain what you mean?
I’ll start with a personal story. I’m half Indian, half white American, and both of my parents are very conflict-averse. When my parents separated and then divorced, everyone was shocked because they never fought. So I learned from a young age that there’s great loss in avoidance. I’m actually a third-generation conflict-avoidant person. When heat rises, we just stick our head in the sand and hope it will pass. And unhealthy peace is the idea that if we just pretend this conflict is not there, if we just shove it under the rug, everything will be fine. But actually, when we don’t have meaningful conversations, the relationship can end. Often you hear in the culture, “It’s not my labor,” “It’s not my burden,” “There’s too much baggage” — as if friends are supposed to just be fun. But because we’re so conflict-averse, we exit before we’re actually willing to engage. Our communities and our families are fracturing, in part because we’re not taught the skills of how to have those fights.
I don't much care about corporate communications, but I think this is an important dynamic in more personal spheres. That is, I think one reason there is so much less romance among young Americans is fear of conflict. I have heard dozens of stories about people who left relationships rather than try to fix them, because that would involve conflict. "He kept doing this and I couldn't stand it." Did you consider asking him to stop? Um, no.
If you are afraid of conflict, you can't have a truly deep and important relationship with another person, and I see a lot of conflict avoidance among young Americans.
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Noto, near the southeastern corner of Sicily, is an ancient place. It was already old to the Romans, and local legend had it that Daedalus stayed in the city after his flight over the Ionian Sea. It was conquered by Arabs in 866 and prospered under their rule; it fell to the Normans in 1061, the last prominent place on the island to be retaken by Christians. One assumes this left quite a legacy of old buildings.
But in 1693 Sicily was struck by a terribly destructive earthquake, thought by some modern geologists to have been the most powerful in Italian history. At least 60,000 people were killed and 70 towns and cities destroyed, including Noto.
It was decided – no online source says by whom – to rebuild the city on a new site across the Asinaro River from the old town center. This meant building all the major public buildings (cathedral, palace, parish churches) anew. Because of this, the city boasts a remarkable collection of buildings from the 1695 to 1800 period. The style is probably best described as Baroque.
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Shame about all the lost Roman and medieval buildings, but rebuilding the town in this consistent style did leave a remarkable monument to a certain period of Sicily's past.
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