Review of That One Should Disdain Hardships: The Teachings of a Roman Stoic (discourses and fragments by Musonius Rufus)

At Rhino.

Teaser quote: Everyone in my milieu has heard of Musonius through a story in Guy Davenport’s book Da Vinci’s Bicycle (1979). The piece is called “C. Musonius Rufus” (the “C” stands for Gaius). There, Musonius is a supremely tough, supremely crabby-craggy figure, attractive in the same way the character Caska is, in the beginning of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. His “rudeness is a sauce to his good wit.”

[originally posted Saturday 11 July 2020]