Book 2 of De rerum natura begins with “It is sweet on the great sea to watch from the shore other people drowning.”
The words were found on a wall on a house in Pompeii. Perhaps someone sweetly watched from a perch opposite Vesuvius as the lava flow swallowed up the town, and that house. Such are the ironies of Epicurean indifference.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
The Church in the Age of Therapy
In 1966, Philip Rieff wrote in The Triumph of the Therapeutic that “Religious man was born to…
Canada’s Deadliest Blind Spot
On September 20, the Daily Mail ran a story with the provocative headline, “Our 83-year-old Christian grandmother…
The Faithful Joy of Dolly Parton and Fulton Sheen
Dolly Parton and Fulton Sheen seem to have had little in common. She favored rhinestones; he wore…
