<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: Must Read for those who love the Classics
Review: If you are a history buff and you love the classics, this is a must read for you. I could not put this little volume down once I got started reading it - Vergil covers just about every topic in history, philosophy and theology that one can think of. Reading this book is more like listening to a great master historian talk to you about ideas that interest most educated people.This is an awesome series - if you are interested in the roots of Western philosophy, this is a good place to start.
Rating:
Summary: Must Read for those who love the Classics
Review: If you are a history buff and you love the classics, this is a must read for you. I could not put this little volume down once I got started reading it - Vergil covers just about every topic in history, philosophy and theology that one can think of. Reading this book is more like listening to a great master historian talk to you about ideas that interest most educated people. This is an awesome series - if you are interested in the roots of Western philosophy, this is a good place to start.
Rating: 
Summary: Good for the feeling of the times, but not too informative
Review: Vergil's "On Discovery" (1499) is considered the first work dealing with the history of science, but before this dual language edition it was not readily available to those without a firm grasp of Renaissance Latin. Having read it, I would say while it indeed is useful for getting the feeling of the Renaissance, it is difficult to take Vergil's arguments seriously which nearly all go like the following: "The Greeks claimed to have invented X, as Herodotus wrote. But various clergymen have written that the Hebrews did it first, so they must have". The point isn't that in many cases this may have been in fact true -- after all, the Hebrew civilization predates even Homer, but I'm stunned that a Renaissance man like Vergil would be so constrained by submission to Church authority.
Rating:
Summary: Good for the feeling of the times, but not too informative
Review: Vergil's "On Discovery" (1499) is considered the first work dealing with the history of science, but before this dual language edition it was not readily available to those without a firm grasp of Renaissance Latin. Having read it, I would say while it indeed is useful for getting the feeling of the Renaissance, it is difficult to take Vergil's arguments seriously which nearly all go like the following: "The Greeks claimed to have invented X, as Herodotus wrote. But various clergymen have written that the Hebrews did it first, so they must have". The point isn't that in many cases this may have been in fact true -- after all, the Hebrew civilization predates even Homer, but I'm stunned that a Renaissance man like Vergil would be so constrained by submission to Church authority.
<< 1 >>
| 
