"...the place is called gymnasium..."

[weiss1967]

reading Lucian's Anacharsis. You can find it here http://lucianofsamosata.info/Anacharsis.html. Wanted not to start a debate, but share the great reading.


************************
4
An. Wherever you look, every one busy - rising on his toes, jumping up and kicking the air, or something.

5
Now I want to know what is the good of it all. To me it looks more like madness than anything else. It will not be very easy to convince me that people who behave like this are not wrong in their heads.
...
7
But would you mind giving a name to all this? What are we to say they are doing?

So. The place is called a gymnasium...

36
...(So) It is the thought of having to strip before such a crowd that makes them take pains with their condition; they do not want to be a shameful spectacle, so each does his best to deserve success. And the prizes, as I said before, are not small things — to be applauded by the spectators, to be the mark of all eyes and fingers as the best of one’s contemporaries. Accordingly, numbers of spectators, not too old for training, depart with a passion thus engendered for toil some excellence. Ah, Anacharsis, if the love of fair fame were to be wiped out of our lives, whatgood would remain? Who would care to do a glorious deed?

[ElrondHubbard]

reading Lucian's Anacharsis. You can find it here http://lucianofsamosata.info/Anacharsis.html. Wanted not to start a debate, but share the great reading.


************************
4
An. Wherever you look, every one busy - rising on his toes, jumping up and kicking the air, or something.

5
Now I want to know what is the good of it all. To me it looks more like madness than anything else. It will not be very easy to convince me that people who behave like this are not wrong in their heads.
...
7
But would you mind giving a name to all this? What are we to say they are doing?

So. The place is called a gymnasium...

36
...(So) It is the thought of having to strip before such a crowd that makes them take pains with their condition; they do not want to be a shameful spectacle, so each does his best to deserve success. And the prizes, as I said before, are not small things — to be applauded by the spectators, to be the mark of all eyes and fingers as the best of one’s contemporaries. Accordingly, numbers of spectators, not too old for training, depart with a passion thus engendered for toil some excellence. Ah, Anacharsis, if the love of fair fame were to be wiped out of our lives, whatgood would remain? Who would care to do a glorious deed?

I don't know if this exchange is history or legend, but there is wisdom there regardless.

I recently began reading the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, and I'm thinking this kind of material should be much more widely read and discussed.

[Irvine405]

Ten bucks says LWW will expound on this subject ad nauseam ..


p.s. ad nauseam kind of rhymes with gymnasium

[OldFartTom]

Ten bucks says LWW will expound on this subject ad nauseam ..


p.s. ad nauseam kind of rhymes with gymnasium

Lucian was a homo and communist.. FACT!
If he'd done high rep squats he'd never have hung out in gymnasia (and I know what that word means, filthy behaviour!)

There you go, saved you guys the wait

Come on LWW, you biting the bait?

[andy0w]

In Germany the high school is called gymnasium.

[steffo99]

I recently began reading the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, and I'm thinking this kind of material should be much more widely read and discussed.

After using space documentaries, I switched to audiobooks on youtube like this one and other similar stoics to comfortably listen and then fall asleep to Got this book and others like it last year but never seem to get around to reading them.