Eleven Eleven Eleven

Feed the Children on when I came home..then...The Book of Daniel, the Last Battle for Planet Earth...sheesh...I just read the passage in Matthew about false prophets and such last night...maybe this silliness is what it refers too!

Daniel is an interesting book, however, which I haven't read that closely...it seems to set out a stratagem which ancient Israel could use to survive being surrounded by hostile neighbors.

In a discussion I tried to get a grasp of how just wide spread monotheism was in the Middle East at that time in history...I've come to think that Israel commanded a much larger territory...or had like thinking neighbors...than the general impression of a little country surrounded by pagans and idolaters..which would explain the intensity of the latter rebellions against Rome...but I dont know.

..both these shows are angling for money...I have no idea what country the African children are in, or why no Africans are pitching the story...and I have no idea why the UN, which does yeoman work helping children all over the world, is lambasted as evil incarnate in the Daniel story...I dont know what I'm watching now...something else anyway...

Now, it's Veterans Day and I was thinking of Robert Graves and the War to End Wars...and it's the title of his book, Goodbye to All That, that I've been meaning to source...lemesee if I can find it...brb...well...hooey...I thought to find it in the old Greek play Agamemnon...a Herald appears who tells of retrun from Troy, and in the play I read once he says 'I've said goodby to all that' or some such thing with reference to soldiering...but it's somewhere else...or a different translation...or a different character!!...I should have jotted notes down of everything!...

But Grave's wrote a fine personal biography...but certainly not a definitive tale of the WW1...and as for that tale, here's a quote from the play...

quote

For Ares, lord of strife,

Who doth the swaying scales of battle hold,

War's money-changer, giving dust for gold,

Sends back, to hearts that held them dear,

Scant ash of warriors, wept with many a tear,

Light to the band, but heavy to the soul;

Yea, fills the light urn full

With what survived the flame-

Death's dusty measure of a hero's frame!

Alas! one cries, and yet alas again!

Our chief is gone, the hero of the spear,

And hath not left his peer!

Ah woe! another moans-my spouse is slain,

The death of honour, rolled in dust and blood,

Slain for a woman's sin, a false wife's shame!

Such muttered words of bitter mood

Rise against those who went forth to reclaim;

Yea, jealous wrath creeps on against th' Atreides' name.

And others, far beneath the Ilian wall,

Sleep their last sleep-the goodly chiefs and tall,

Couched in the foeman's land, whereon they gave

Their breath, and lords of Troy, each in his Trojan grave.

unquote

The Greeks could really write, and this was written in 400 BC or so...lemesee when Daniel was written...brb

605-562 BC

...and the Fall of Troy...brb...

Twelfth or Eleventh Century BC....

The ancient Mediterranean and Middle East..oh, the complexity and richness of these cultures....their size and scope...has been kinda shrunk.

Oh, the news has it a hiker perished on Cathedral...hypothermia likely.

DavidDavid

Tree in the Door

Nov. 11, 2007