Longing For Wisdom: The Message Of The Maxims

by Allyson Szabo

Know yourself. Nothing in excess. Give a pledge and ruin is near. These are the words inscribed on a stele just outside the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. Stunning in their simplicity, these Maxims have survived the test of time. Even today, they cause the reader to pause and think about what such short, poignant phrases mean. For those who study Hellenic Polytheism, either in historical or modern religious context, the Delphic Maxims are of great import because they hold a key to understanding early Greek thought. Delving into both the history and the current application of 34 of the Maxims to the creation of personal ethics and morals, Allyson Szabo provides us with a path to personal growth and understanding of the world around us.

Genres: Nonfiction

154 pages, Paperback

First published June 27, 2008

About the author

Allyson Szabo has long had an interest in writing. Over the years, she has worked as a telephone operator, a data entry clerk, a blog writer, an author, and as a mom. She began writing in her early teens, inspired by authors such as Piers Anthony and Robert A. Heinlein. Her family puts up with her, encourages her, and locks her in her office during November (National Novel Writing Month can be scary for authors). She is Mom to one, Mei Mei to two, auntie to countless kids, and "Grand-Mei-Mei" to her grandson. She spends her weekdays writing, home schooling her kids, and running her home. Weekends, you can find her at assorted Renaissance Faires throughout the New England area, presenting life in the 1300s to eager patrons.

Reviews

[tiph · Rating 2 out of 5]

While reading this book, I went back and forth a lot as far as my opinions towards it. It was a roller coaster of appreciation and love for the words written, followed by an abrupt, harsh distaste - and sometimes anger - for the ideas being presented. I even wrote a fairly lengthy, scathing review before I wrote this one; some of it I will likely copy and paste here, but not all.

The process of me reading the book mostly went like this:
-Begin to read a section
-Be mildly interested or bemused by the commentary on the maxim
-Feel frustrated that there wasn't more actual content
-Get annoyed that the content that was there was, while well-meaning, mostly out-of-touch and sometimes downright terrible advice.
-Become angry that this advice was yet another tangent on "kids these days" and how this generation is going to shit, in the classic generational woes of an older person.
-Get to the end of the section, and become bewildered at the usage of footnotes. 
-Start another section.
-Upon reading, feel moved to conviction or a sense of purpose about the maxim.
-Get to the end, feel confused about why relevant passages from historical resources weren't cited, whereas a bunch more weird footnotes show up again.

And the process continued.

The sections on Worship the Gods, Test the Character. and Do Not Wrong the Dead were, for me, a kind of nudging. The author touched on important subjects (not just in those three, I'm just using those as an example) that brought up modern issues - Have Respect for Suppliants, for example, acknowledged that in this culture we do not have a society to back us if we are wronged while we show hospitality, and therefore must rectify the practice of xenia and common sense and safety.

But then there were many other maxims where the author seemed to use her platform for questionable purposes: telling people they must spank their children (in the maxim Cling to Discipline is where it first comes up, and is referenced elsewhere), or give people who you disagree with the "silent treatment" until they stop.

When it came to actual content, it was surprisingly lacking. The section on prayer was mostly platitudes with the vague reminder that "No" counts as an answer to prayer, which was then left at that. That's true, of course, but this was one of the main parts where I bemoaned the lack of substance. The Iliad has a great example of the Gods hearing our prayers and sometimes saying no: When Achilles cried out to Zeus, asking that the battle be won and Patroclus be spared, Zeus grants the one and not the other. There is precedent for this! We are not alone in being told No! It would have been a perfect example, and would have given cause to use a footnote for its proper use! 

The footnotes were bewildering and often pointless or used as padding: One footnote on a fairly innocuous statement cited a "Personal Interview." Another defined what a Family Game Night is, while a couple of others explained what the GMATs and the SATs are, as if the book were written for someone without a basic understanding of modern culture. Some were not sources or explanations at all, but just a rephrasing of the sentence that had just been notated. This wasn't exactly a huge issue, but added to the whole, it was quite weird.

All in all, I can't really give this book more than 2.5 stars. It was too all over the place, too few meaningful parts, and too much flat out bad or pointless advice from a book that had purported itself as a book on reflections of the maxims.