A blog rec: Eighty Days Of Toscanini

[fpb]

For anyone who loves classical music (except Norman Lebrecht), this is by a professional player in a minor American band, who, unlike many of his fellow professional musicians, has not been embittered and has not forgotten why he got into music in the first place. An enthusiast about music and a pleasant, amusing personality, not afraid of forthright opinions, but also with the ear and insight of a professional orchestral player, this comes pretty close to being the last word on the musical side of one of my heroes.

Comments

So was Virgil trying to have it both ways?

[joetexx.livejournal.com]

I mean, Aeneas and Co. were Trojans.

Re: So was Virgil trying to have it both ways?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

But did Virgil ever say that the Trojans were not Hellenes? I can't remember him doing so, and I read him from cover to cover. Anyway, the idea that Rome was a Greek colony was widespread and widely accepted, thanks in part to the fortunate agreement between the city's name and the Greek word "rhome", physical strength.

Re: So was Virgil trying to have it both ways?

[joetexx.livejournal.com]

I was not aware of 'rhome', thanks.

I just had the impression that the historical Hellenes sharply distinguished their Achean ancestors from the Trojan enemy, and that Virgil, as a student of the Greek
legends, would have absorbed this.

I don't think anyone has ever thought of the Trojan War as an intra-Hellenic squabble.

Of course I don't know what the Greeks knew about the Roman view of their own origins.

Do you know the date at which the Romans began to participate in the games?

Probably their commenmorative coins DID have Mars on them!