Nothing beats cuddling up with in bed like a good book !! Well , maybe there is something else..... but I 'll save that for another blog. Anyways the " good book " I am referring to is but one of eleven volumes I hope to read between last September and the hearse's rumble......... This 11-tome series is entitled The Story of Civilization by Will Durant ...... the son of French-Canadian immigrants to the US during the late 19th century. In my humble opinion his wealth of historical knowledge and insight plus his masterful penmanship , humour and scholarly approach catapult him right up there on a pedestal alongside my two other favourite historians , Salvador de Madariaga and Hilaire Belloc.
Back in September I decided to start with Vol. 3 , Caesar and Christ ( History of Roman Empire and beginnings of Christianity ) ...a book of some 700 pages ..... and four months later I am barely half way through...... and here is the reason why !! Durant has injected so many cross-references from Roman authors ( Cicero , Caesar , PlinyElder and Younger , Suetonius , Sallust , Gellius , Horace , Seneca , Virgil , etc into his chef d'oeuvre to back up what he says about people , things and events that I have become bogged down reading all of them .... and then some !! .... and not in the English translations but rather in the original Latin.......... and therein lies the fun for me !! Maybe now my "wasted years " in a Catholic seminary back in the late fifties and early sixties doing my philosophy and theology in Latin will start paying off in big dividends.
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