Update

I have added a comparison of Frederick Myers and C.S. Lewis on “lacrimae rerum” to my post on Virgil.

Style, R.L. Stevenson, and the Pauline Epistles

John Bergsma has an excellent post (the comment box of which I can’t seem to get to work) comparing the variations in style in Plato’s works to those in the Pentateuch and the Pauline Epistles. On the later:

Several of Paul’s epistles are dismissed as “deutero-Pauline” because of differences in style. Are these differences more dramatic than the differences between Plato’s compositions? Could Paul’s style have changed with age and circumstance?

I have often thought the same thing with reference to Robert Louis Stevenson; surely there is more variation of style between A Child’s Garden of Verses and the The Master of Ballantrae than between Romans and 2 Timothy.

Empire II: Herodotus, Aristotle and Jokes

If Virgil is in some ways a follower of Plato, Plato would certainly not have agreed with him on the need for world empire. Like most of the Greeks Plato thought that a limited population was necessary for a good political community. The Greek view seems to have been formed by the experience of the war with Persia. In book VII of Herodotus’ Histories Demaratus famously tells Xerxes that the Greeks will win for,