Areopagus Volume LXXXI

Seven short lessons every someday.

Welcome one and all to the eighty first volume of the Areopagus. Yesterday I was caught up in a shattering thunderstorm the like of which I haven't seen for years. But "seen" is almost the wrong word; I felt the thunder shaking the earth, the skies, and my bones. The great Epicurean poet Lucretius wrote about such storms over two thousand years ago — it was his words that came to mind:

Lest, perchance,
Concerning these affairs thou ponderest
In silent meditation, let me say
'Twas lightning brought primevally to earth
The fire for mortals, and from thence hath spread
O'er all the lands the flames of heat. For thus
Even now we see so many objects, touched
By the celestial flames, to flash aglow,
When thunderbolt has dowered them with heat.

But the storm has passed — and in its wake another Areopagus begins...