Excurses

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

William Shakespeare
From The Tempest, Act 4 Scene 1

“The beauty of the world and the orderly arrangement of everything celestial makes us confess that there is an excellent and eternal nature, which ought to be worshiped and admired by all mankind.” Cicero

The people were amazed at his teaching, because he taught them as one who had authority, and not as the teachers of the law.

“And he who would proceed rightly should begin in youth to visit beautiful forms and first, if directed by his instructor, to love one such form only—out of that he should create fair thoughts; and soon he will himself perceive that the beauty of any bodily form is akin to the beauty of another; and then if beauty in general is his pursuit, how foolish would he be not to recognize that the beauty in all visible forms is one and the same!”

Maps for Peloponnesian War