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Virtues of persons generally, and citizens. Forms of government, true and perverted.

What is a state? A composite of citizens. What is a citizen? Someone who shares in adjudication or administration of justice. When does a state change? It can change independent of its citizens.

Just finished On Interpretation. I need to go read the cliffs notes. Seems like he’s laying out some basic logical building blocks, but it’s hard to follow.

The narrator again attempts and fails suicide. He coughs blood (presumed due to TB), becomes addicted to morphine, and begins an affair with the crippled, widowed pharmacist who supplies him. He contemplates suicide again, but Horiki and Flatfish intervene and enroll him in an asylum.

As before, the narrator begins his marriage happily and productively. The catalyst to ruin it is Horiki, who takes him drinking. Playing ghoulish word games on the roof, Horiki finds the narrator’s wife, Yoshiko, being raped in their home. The narrator flees, and Horiki intervenes. The narrator wallows in self-disgust. Yoshiko is “condemned to a life of anxiety.”

Notebook 3, part 1 done. The narrator drinks more and more. Shizuko seems unfazed. He states that “society,” which Hiroki invokes to scold the narrator, is actually an individual. The narrator spends multiple nights away, creeps back home, glimpses Shizuko and Shigeko, then leaves for good. He lives at a bar and marries a 17-year old shop clerk. He foreshadows horrors from this marriage.

Without clarity, the conversation with Flatfish turns sour. The narrator flees the next day, and by chance meets Shizuko. Suddenly through her he has a partner, money, freedom from Flatfish, and even a stepdaughter, Shigeko. This makes me feel very uncomfortable remembering the narrator’s precious allusion to a wife. His sincere relationship with Shigeko fractures when she makes a wish for her birth father.

The narrator lives with his father’s henchman, Flatfish. The narrator “lives the life of a half-wit,” doing nothing all day but reading old magazines. Flatfish unexpectedly offers him “help” if he has “serious plans for the future.” The narrator complains that this is unnecessarily obfuscatory; if Flatfish said plainly that the family will pay for him to go back to school, he would eagerly.

Notebook 2 done. The narrator became a communist, then was cut off by his father leaving Tokyo, and then attempted suicide (he failed) with a lover (she succeeded). He experiences happiness with the her, a hostess at a hostess bar, and then runs from it. He doesn’t feel the need to clown with her. They share in misery, and this is happiness. He alludes to a future wife, and not intervening while she’s violated.

The narrator makes friends with Takeichi, a classmate whom he describes as a “halfwit.” Takeichi sees through the narrator’s clowning, and it mortifies him. Takeichi prophesies that women will fall for the narrator. The narrator becomes friends with Takeichi, as a means of defense against Takeichi outing the narrator. Their connection seems genuine despite the narrator professing his disconnectedness.

The narrator cites the duplicity of his father’s friends and servants as a reason why he lost faith in humans. The narrator is Christian, and there is a connection between the lack of faith in humans and faith in Christianity. The narrator was corrupted cruelly by the family servants, but how?

Two narrators? Two voices of the same narrator?

Notebook 1 hints he is not human. He lacks empathy and professes not to understand what others are thinking. He cannot “be genuine.” But he does infer what his father wants to give him, and successfully “clowns.” Such distress at not feeling connected seems more human than feeling connected to humanity. He anticipates shame when he’s found out. What is shame?

Plataea and Mycalé round out the Histories. Fun read, though a little underwhelming after the invasion has clearly fizzled.

All this while Xerxes surveyed the battle from the shore. It seems now that his will may be broken and that he will abandon the invasion, unless Mardonius can convince him to press on to the Peloponnese.

Herodotus credits the victory to the elevated discipline of the Greeks, as contrasted with the disarray of the Persian navy, wherein ships are constantly entangled as they in their large number alternately rush to and flee from the front line. Incredibly, Herodotus also relates that more Persians died from drowning than anything else because they couldn't swim.

Book VIII begins with the Greek sea victory at Salamis. Themistocles exerts great efforts to keep the fleet at Salamis after having retreated from Artemisium, rather than sail back to the Peloponnese to fight near home (or disband). He even baits the Persians into surrounding the Greek fleet, without the knowledge of the other captains, so that escape is no longer an option.

After the battle, in breaking with the heretofore honorific manner in which the Persians had treated fallen opposing heroes, Xerxes orders Leonidas' head removed and impaled on a stake. Inscriptions were left, glorifying the allied force, the Mage among them, and the Spartans, respectively.

A pair of Spartans had previously detached from the group for the purpose of convalescence. One of these returned to the battle and died, and the other returned to Sparta and was shamed until redeeming himself in a later battle. One further was absent, having been sent away as a messenger, and he subsequently hanged himself after being ostracized.

Surprisingly little detail is given to the first days of the battle, in contrast to the anecdotes found in the Iliad. Eventually, Ephialtes shows Xerxes the path to flank the Greeks. Leonidas sends the bulk of the allies home, and the Spartans make their last stand. All of them who were present die.

Herodotus numbers the Greeks involved in the battle well beyond the 300 Spartans, but lavishes the 300 with the lion's share of glory. Still, the Allied numbers are small. He explains that this force was meant to be an advance guard for greater numbers to come, once the Olympic and Carneian festivals were concluded.

After cataloging the various poleis that resisted or submitted to the Persians, Herodotus recounts the Battle of Thermopylae. First, though, he describes the naval movements preceding the battle, and the great losses the Persians suffered in a storm near Thermopylae.

The beginning of Book VII chronicles the Persian army. One digression describes Xerxes surveying his forces. He first congratulates himself, then weeps. He explains: I thought of the shortness of man's life, and considered that of all this host, so numerous as it is, not one will be alive when a hundred years are gone by.

Prometheus Bound shows an attitude toward religion which is pervasive in ancient Greek works. Prometheus suffers a terrible punishment for taking the side of men over that of God. This may happen in Judaic tradition, but not with sympathy for humans and vilification of God. Not only is God defied, but his falling is foretold, and Prometheus, though Bound, has the last laugh.

JJR marks the formation of society as the origin of inequality. This is tied to the engagement of pursuits requiring more than one person and one day, e.g., agriculture and metallurgy. He demurs from prescribing a return to anarchy in the last paragraph. He instead resigns himself to the fact that he can't live without society, and calls for the reader just to guard against the vices that he described.

Swift is so good.