The battle of Salamis can be dated with a high degree of certainty. Probably about the time of that battle, Cleombrotus was at the Isthmus, constructing the defences there . At some point while building the wall, he considered giving chase to the Persian army. When his sacrifice was answered by a solar eclipse, he took this as a bad omen and immediately returned to Lacedaemon . The eclipse visible to Cleombrotus could only have been that of 2 October 480. (...) Now it is generally supposed that Cleombrotus would not have thought to abandon the construction of the wall and pursue Xerxes unless the latter had just begun his retreat from Athens. Thus, as Herodotus says that a few days () after the battle of Salamis Xerxes withdrew from Attica , the battle of Salamis probably occurred before 2 October 480. (shrink)

The battle of Salamis can be dated with a high degree of certainty. Probably about the time of that battle, Cleombrotus was at the Isthmus, constructing the defences there. At some point while building the wall, he considered giving chase to the Persian army. When his sacrifice was answered by a solar eclipse, he took this as a bad omen and immediately returned to Lacedaemon. The eclipse visible to Cleombrotus could only have been that of 2 October 480. Now it (...) is generally supposed that Cleombrotus would not have thought to abandon the construction of the wall and pursue Xerxes unless the latter had just begun his retreat from Athens. Thus, as Herodotus says that a few days () after the battle of Salamis Xerxes withdrew from Attica, the battle of Salamis probably occurred before 2 October 480. (shrink)

Eunapius, pagan historian of the fourth century, wrote a history of the contemporary Roman Empire. Scholars have understood Eunapius'animosity toward Christianity as coloring his judgment and supplying him with a purpose for writing. Though his history did reflect contemporary religious tension, it is primarily shaped by traditional approaches to historiography. Eunapius attempts to analogize and explain human behavior in terms of the natural laws which pervade the history. His message is founded on classical values independent of current concerns; Eunapius inculpates (...) an apparently innocent pagan to prove one point. He was not only participant in the sectarian struggle which divided the Empire; he was also part of a thousand-year-old culture that served to unify it. (shrink)

What I take to be the consummation of rhythmic music, which music parlance describes as "being in the groove", is here regarded as an experience that symbolically manifests a "highest good" which is a perennial theme in western metaphysics. This Good is a contemporaneity between terms of fundamental oppositions that constitute the human condition. From Kant's critical project, this ideal is traced from its origins in Socratic dialectic, through Schelling's principle of "Identity", and into Kierkegaard's notion of "resting transparently." Musical (...) performance is successful, I argue, to the degree to which it manages to play this "both-at-once.". (shrink)