The Schedule (In Progress)

DISCLAIMER:  this post is currently incomplete.

Greetings!  Thought it prudent to make a post that lays out plainly the schedule for all these readings.  Written posts for each of the readings will not adhere to this outline.  Written posts will be posted whenever I get to them since the readings need to be allowed some time to process in the mind before being written.  Also, this post will be updated after each reading with the most recently completed reading being moved to the bottom of the post in order to keep the next reading at the forefront.

The format is:

• #) Author:  What to Read (Date to have it finished)
• Number of pages/ Time to read (rounded up)/ Number of days to read (rounded up)

Reminder:  Reading times are estimates based on a rough word count of 800 words per physical book page read at a rate of 300 words per minute for at least 10 minutes of reading per day.

Note:  The Great Books set does not include the Bible due to its ubiquitous nature in the Western World.  I've chosen the Douay-Rheims Bible.

The reading plan started with The Great Conversation by Robert M. Hutchins on May 7th, 2018. I set aside six days to read this for the group I was working with. The official reading plan started on May 13th, 2018.

The Schedule:

YEAR ONE:  

NOVEMBER:

12)  Shakespeare:  Hamlet (November 9th, 2018)

• 44 pages/ 119 minutes/ 12 days

13)  Locke:  Concerning Civil Government [Second Essay] (November 25th, 2018)

• 57 pages/ 154 minutes/ 16 days

14)  Rousseau:  The Social Contract [Book I-II] (November 30th, 2018)

• 19 pages/ 52 minutes/ 5 days

DECEMBER:

15)  Gibbon:  The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire [Ch. 15-16] (December 15th, 2018)

• 55 pages/ 149 minutes/ 15 days

16)  American State Papers:  (December 19th, 2018)

• The Declaration of Independence
• The Constitution of the United States

• 15 pages/ 41 minutes/ 4 days

JANUARY:

17)  Hamilton, Jay, Madison:  The Federalist Papers (January 1st, 2018)

• 1-10
• 15
• 31
• 47
• 51
• 68-71

• 47 pages/ 127 minutes/ 13 days

17)  Smith:  The Wealth of Nations [Introduction-Book I, Ch. 9] (January 14th, 2018)

• 48 pages/ 130 minutes/ 13 days

18)  Tocqueville:  Democracy in America [Vol. I, Part II, Ch. 6-8] (January 21st, 2018)

• 25 pages/ 68 minutes/ 7 days

19)  Marx-Engels:  Manifesto of the Communist Party (January 26th, 2018)

• 19 pages/ 52 minutes/ 5 days

FEBRUARY:

20)  Ibsen:  The Master Builder (February 6th, 2018)

• 35 pages/ 95 minutes/ 10 days

21)  Schrödinger:  What is Life? (February 19th, 2018)

• 48 pages/ 130 minutes/ 13 days

MAY:

1)  Plato:  Apology, Crito (May 19th, 2018)

• 20 pages/ 54 minutes/ 6 days

2)  Aristophanes:  The Clouds, Lysistrata (June 2nd, 2018)

• 51 pages/ 138 minutes/ 14 days

JUNE:

3)  Plato:  The Republic [Book I-II] (June 8th, 2018)

• 29 pages/ 54 minutes/ 6 days

4)  Aristotle:  Nicomachean Ethics [Book I] (June 14th, 2018)

• 10 pages/ 27 minutes/ 6 days

5)  Aristotle:  Politics [Book I] (June 17th, 2018)

• 11 pages/ 30 minutes/ 3 days

JULY:

6)  Plutarch:  The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans (July 13th, 2018 )

• Lycurgus, 
• Numa Pompilius, 
• Lycurgus and Numa Compared, 
• Alexander, 
• Caesar
• 96 pages/ 260 minutes/ 26 days

7)  New Testament (August 2nd, 2018)

• The Gospel According to Saint Matthew, 
• The Acts of the Apostles

• 74 pages/ 200 minutes/ 20 days

AUGUST:

8)  St. Augustine:  The Confessions [Book I-VIII] (August 23rd, 2018)

• 77 pages/ 208 minutes/ 21 days

SEPTEMBER:

9)  Machiavelli:  The Prince (September 3rd, 2018)

• 39 pages/ 106 minutes/ 11 days

OCTOBER:

10)  Rabelais:  Gargantua and Pantagruel [Book I-II] (October 7th, 2018)

• 127 pages/ 343 minutes/ 34 days

11)  Montaigne:  The Essays (Audio)(October 28th, 2018)

• Book I - Chapter 22:  Of Custom, and not easily changing an accepted law; 
• Book I - Chapter 24:  Of pedantry; 
• Book I - Chapter 25:  Of the education of children; 
• Book I - Chapter 26:  It is folly to measure the true and false by our own capacity; 
• Book I - Chapter 30:  Of cannibals; 
• Book I - Chapter 40:  That the taste of good and evil depends in large part of on the opinion we have of them; 
• Book III - Chapter 5:  On some verses of Virgil
• 76 pages/ 205 minutes/ 21 days

"Lycurgus" from "Lives of Noble Grecians and Romans" by Plutarch

TL;DR - Lycurgus made Sparta into the legendary city and people that we remember.  He made it strong and austere, if only for a time.

Lycurgus is the legendary law maker of Sparta.  He succeeded his brother as king until his sister-in-law gave birth to a son.  He continued in place of the boy until the boy came of age to rule.  Though Lycurgus fled after becoming aware of some people thinking him planning to murder the young boy to take the throne for himself.  

While abroad he visited many places where acquainted himself with different systems of law and cultures.  He then returned to Sparta to install what he thought to be a far superior system than what was already in place.  He started with bringing friends to support his cause.  Then while armed they approached the current king, his nephew, who fled for his life. Afterward Lycurgus convinced him that they were not after his life.  Lycurgus told the king about his new system and won the king to his cause.

Lycurgus established the Senate consisting of 30 men, 28 of whom were chose form among men above the age of 60 and of the two Spartan kings.  This group of 30 was established to balance the tyranny of both the populace (i.e. anarchy) and the monarchy.  This group was known as the Gerousia.  

Lycurgus exchanged all the gold and silver currency for poorly wrought and heavy iron.  This was to discourage the accumulation of wealth.  And a consequence of this practice was the decline of outside labor and craftsmen since payment was inefficient.  So Spartans learned to do for themselves, but Lycurgus forbid elaborate and ornate craftsmanship.  

In order to create a sense of equality people were to take dinner in public with groups of fifteen rather eating dinner at home.  Those who ate before coming and didn't partake of the public dinner were shamed.  And each man had to take turns giving food to be consumed at the public dinner.  This food came from the equal tract of land that Lycurgus allotted to each Spartan man to keep and grow food for himself.

After birth, Spartan children were washed with wine and examined.  If deemed weak they were discarded.  But if after seven days they survived the exposure they were allowed to live.

At the age of seven each male boy was taken by the military to begin training.  The boys even learned such things as stealing whilst in the military.  They would have to steal in order to provide food for themselves.  And the penalties for being caught stealing were so harsh that it is said that a boy allowed himself to be disemboweled by a fox he'd stolen which was hidden under his clothes rather allow his superiors to catch him having stolen something.

The boys around twelve years of age sometimes had an older Spartan man who took an interest in them and developed an intimate relationship and sponsorship.  

Marriage involved a woman getting her head shaved and put on clothing similar to male clothing.  She would wait in a dark room for the man to come and perform.  This would go on for sometime until a  pregnancy occurred.  Monogamy was not something that was aspired to seeing as husbands and wives had the option to have the wife sleep with another man for the prospect of having strong children.

Lycurgus' story ends with leaning Sparta to consult the Oracle.  He has the city promise to never change the laws he established until he returns.  Upon hearing the positive message that the Oracle has for him, he resolves to allow himself a respectable death; perhaps by starvation.  And some say that his bones/corpse was never returned to Sparta for fear that the city would take that to mean they could change the laws.  In the end the laws seem to have either failed to uphold the city, or the city did go against the wishes of Lycurgus.  Sparta is no more.

I doubt I got even a third as much from this chapter as I should've.  Lycurgus is an interesting character.  He has conviction, and commands great respect in others.  One man who, being opposed to Lycurgus' Rhetra (i.e. laws), knocked out one of Lycurgus' eyes with a stick became one of Lycurgus' greatest supporters afterwards do to Lycurgus' treatment of him after the offense. He certainly inspired to the best in people.

Though it seems as if for all his goodness and justice that he turned the Spartans more into cogs in a machine rather than properly developed individuals, but in fairness to him he was more interested in creating citizens to form a stable and strong commonwealth that could defend itself.  I always try to keep in mind that I keep perspective when comparing modern society to ancient society.  It's not to condone the past, but to remember that things were different.   

Something that I find particularly odd about Lycurgus is his strictness with allowing in foreigners and letting citizens go abroad.  It was his going abroad that allowed him the opportunity to observe other cultures and their practices which became synthesized into his Rhetra.  So it seems odd that he became so worried about bad influences destroying what he had built.  

Sources:

The Book Chapter

Video #1:  this is short summary by another who followed the Great Books reading plan.

Video #2:  this goes into pretty good detail of the Spartan Constitution.

Video #3:  another following the Great Books reading plan.  This individual is currently in progress.

Video #4:  talks a little about the doubt that some historians have about Lycurgus' existence.

UPDATE: Study Materials

Okay.  I've been lazy with the study notes.  The General Grammar section of Sister Miriam Joseph's The Trivium felt particularly taxing at times.  But I'm happy to say that I have reassessed how I'll be approaching the matter.  It can be a bit difficult to track down quality guides and study materials, but I think I've found some solid sources to at least give a bit of guidance.  Here's Source #1, Source #2, and Source #3.

I'm currently only working with Source #1, but Source #2 has some really cool texts I'm eager to read. I'm on my final review of Chapter 3: General Grammar of The Trivium.  I can attest that rereading has certainly helped to embed the material much better in my mind than I would've previously thought considering the struggles I had attempting to comprehend it the first time through.

After I finish the final read of Chapter 3 I'll probably attempt a post more-or-less from memory about the basics of General Grammar: Categorematic words, Syncategorematic words, Substantives, Attributives, Copulas, etc.

As for Lycurgus, hope to have that out tomorrow.  I decided to take some extra time to re-read it since I'm finding it difficult to wrap my head around Plutarch's text.  I think I've gotten a bit more the second time around.

Well, that's all for now.  Bye!

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