Nikolas Kozloff
Antinous the Gay God🪷 On 7 April 331, #AlexandertheGreat founded #Alexandria, the Egyptian city that has correctly been hailed as "the most lasting of all his achievements". Greek author #Plutarch of #Chaeronea recorded the event. The main street is aligned to the sun on the 20 July birthday of Alexander. 🪷
Vegan FTA
BongolianJoe Mathews: Newsom won’t stop quoting #Plutarch, an ancient Greek historian. It’s a telling reference.
#history #civics #politics #GavinNewsom #California
https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/gavin-newsom-plutarch-21957868.php
Liberal Konservativ Lesen [Unofficial]Mary W. Shelley, Frankenstein oder Der moderne Prometheus (1818/30)
https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://liberalkonservativlesen.de/mary-w-shelley-frankenstein-1818-30/
Alan J. CainMax Dehn (1878–1952) said that Archimedes’ (c.287–212 BCE) discovery that the surface area of a sphere was four times its great circle was the one of the most beautiful results of Greek mathematics.
Archimedes himself had a high opinion of this result and two others in his two books ‘On the Sphere and the Cylinder’: that the volume and surface area of a sphere and a cylinder exactly circumscribing it are in the ratio $2 : 3$. One can add a cone fitting inside the cylinder to have ratios $1 : 2 : 3$ (see 1st attached image).
It has been suggested that Archimedes’ conjectures for these ratios may have been guided by a conscious or unconscious search for beautiful integer ratios between geometric configurations. There is no direct evidence for this motivation, but Archimedes’ work seems to exhibit a preference for small integer ratios.
According to Plutarch, Archimedes desired that his tomb should be marked by a cylinder enclosing a sphere and an inscription of the ratio of the one to the other; Cicero related how he had sought out Archimedes’ tomb and found a column just so inscribed (see 2nd attached image).
[Each day of February, I intend to post an interesting story/image/fact/anecdote related to the aesthetics of mathematics.]
1/2
#MathematicalBeauty #HistMath #Archimedes #Plutarch #Cicero #geometry #aesthetics
Joshua KadenPlutarch could be writing today: “They exulted in monstrous insolence, and reaped from their strength a harvest of cruelty and bitterness, mastering and forcing and destroying everything that came in their path. And as for reverence and righteousness, justice and humanity, they thought that most men praised these qualities for lack of courage to do wrong and for fear of being wronged, and considered them no concern of men who were strong enough to get the upper hand.”
the roamer#Plutarch #ParallelLives
#Alcibiades 15/
But when Lysander robbed them of their freedom, and handed the city over to thirty men, then, their cause being lost, their eyes were opened to the course they would not take when salvation was yet in their power.
They sorrowfully rehearsed all their mistakes and follies, the greatest of which they considered to be their outburst of wrath against Alcibiades.
[Section 38]
#Plutarch #ParallelLives
#Alcibiades 14/
And it would seem that if ever a man was ruined by his own exalted reputation, that man was Alcibiades.
His continuous successes gave him such repute for unbounded daring and sagacity, that when he failed in anything, men suspected his inclination; they would not believe in his inability.
Were he only inclined to do a thing, they thought, naught could escape him.
[Section 35]
#Plutarch #ParallelLives
#Alcibiades 13/
For now he had taken the city when she was almost banished from the sea, when on land she was hardly mistress of her own suburbs, and when factions raged within her walls, and had raised her up from this wretched and lowly plight, not only restoring her dominion over the sea, but actually rendering her victorious over her enemies everywhere on land.
[Section 32]