A thank you, mea culpa and suggestion

Ever since creating this website so that I could write up the Glossary I have been wondering how to make the best use of it; I must confess that to date, I still don’t know. My current intention is to start writing three types of blog post on a regular basis - the short stories, Camp Notices and another post the form of which I have not yet decided upon - starting from Alexander’s accession and continuing from there to tell his story in three different genres (fiction/comedy/X). Given that Alexander has well over a thousand followers on Twitter it seems a great shame not to develop this blog further.
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In the meantime, there is this post. I do not like imposing myself upon the blog as it distracts from the great man but I have done so before to blog about one or two things and have decided to do so again to make up for a couple of blogs that I did not write even though I should have done.
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Men Can’t Cry
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Last December I was kindly given a copy of her short biographical story Men Can’t Cry by Miss Dimitra Ekmektsis (whose blog Dimitra’s Confessions can be found here, and who tweets @D_Ekmektsis). The book describes Miss Ekmektsis’ work as a dominatrix in Switzerland. I am not familiar with erotic literature so am not in a position to make any kind of judgement upon how well Miss Ekmektsis portrays the S&M business but it was certainly a very interesting read. My only criticism of it is that it was too short.
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The reason I am mentioning the book here is that Miss Ekmektsis is a proud Macedonian Greek and indeed, she very pleasingly mentions him in her text. Alexander is not really your go-to man for information about the sex lives of the ancients (he is supposed to have once said, rather disparagingly, I feel, that sex and sleep were the only two things that made him feel mortal) so I don’t know what he would have made of S&M behaviour; however, I doubt anything that we do today does not have an ancient antecedent somewhere or other.
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PHDiva
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Last January, I visited the Wallace Collection to hear Dr Dorothy King speak on the subject of Ancient Athens through the ages. I took notes but appear to have either deleted or mislaid them, which is rather vexing. I’m rather disappointed in myself for letting this happen as it was a good talk with lots that was of interest to anyone interested in that great and ancient city. If you would like to read Dr King’s excellent blog you may do so here; she tweets @dorothyking.
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McGrath on Lewis
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By-the-bye, a month or so ago, I was able to hear Professor Alistair McGrath talk about the famous classicist, English teacher and - of course - Christian apologist, C. S. Lewis. Prof McGrath has just published a new biography of Lewis so the talk was in support of that.
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It too was a good talk, although I disagree with McGrath’s apparent assertion that Lewis was not very good with women and that Mrs Moore helped him develop as a person. Lewis could certainly be rather sexist at times, but he was also a very kind and outgoing person - the image of him in Shadowlands is not correct. Here is Professor McGrath’s website. I hope I can read his biography at some point to read his thoughts in greater detail.
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C. S. Lewis died on 22nd November 1963. As the fiftieth anniversary of his death approaches we will no doubt hear a lot about Lewis the apologist, and Lewis the writer of the Narnia books; he knew his ancient Greek and Latin, though (he even corresponded with an Italian priest in Latin and wrote an underrated book called Till We Have Faces about the myth of Cupid and Psyche) and it would be good if the fact of his grounding in the ancient texts of Greece and Rome got a mention.

AOS

Categories: Of The Moment | 4 Comments

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4 thoughts on “A thank you, mea culpa and suggestion

  1. Well, as always what you write is interesting. I doubt the ancients could learn anything dealing with S&M from us. There’s (the ancient world) knew the same lusts but had no boundaries. Life was cheap and I doubt the ‘safe=word’ was a concept. Selfishly, I hope you do continue to post here. It is a bright spot on a rather dull landscape. I do not twitter, I do not Facebook. I find the whole idea of ‘social networking’ to be and intrusion that we allow into our lives as if creating out own big brother. The fact that so many feel the need to accumulate ‘fiends’ is a statement on a fear of being left out of smothing. Mark twain said,”When ever I find myself in the majority, I must pause and think…”

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  2. Hi, annotating60, I agree that the ancient Greeks could learn something about fetishes from us. When I started reading the Classics (as a balance for all the erotic stuff I read), I realized that their minds were limitless in regard to sexuality.They were truly “free”. I am just sad that society has lost this freedom, and I hope that I will help a few people get theirs back by reading my books. Being a Greek Macedonian, I’m hoping some of the ancients’ perversions is still in my genes. I hope you will read my book and let me know what you think - oh, and great to meet you via King Alexander! 😉

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  3. ..ooops! Small typo in my “Reply” above: It should have been “I agree that the ancient Greeks could teach us something about fetishes.” I just get confused sometimes when I travel 2500 years back. :0

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  4. Dimitra,

    Not to worry. It happens to the best of us.

    AOS

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