Athenians Fall at Epipolae (413 B.C.) and a Trekkie Redux - May 20

So I'm up early, 4:30, and glued to the final hundred pages that will take me to the end of the Peloponnesian War, or at least so far as General Thucydides allowed us to see in his account.  The scene is set at Epipolae, and the Athenians are boldly going where no Greek has gone before -- a night battle against the Syracusans and their allies -- and all hell breaks loose.  This is the beginning of the end of Athenian confidence on the ground and on the sea, and from here on, the path to (Athenian) defeat is increasingly certain.  I can't refrain from thinking: "overreach, overreach, overreach!"  What were these guys thinking?

Meanwhile, the minutes tick away, our house criminals join me downstairs.  Samwise nudges over for a few ear scratches then jumps up on the coach where I'm sitting and promptly drifts off, oblivious to the drama of

Greek against Greek settler that is filling my consciousness, and arousing my indignation.  "When will we ever learn?"

Frodo saunters around the room, resplendent in his showy fur, no trace of muskrat about him today!  He halts briefly so the mere mortal in his presence can snap his photo and moves on to his cat bed to likewise savor the early morning hours in his own private way.

Roiling through my mind are stray thoughts of Barbara Tuchman's March of Folly wherein she reveals a long history of misguided national policies, beginning with the Greeks, and Paul Kennedy's Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, both of whom were criticized for their "rise and fall" theses.  But somewhere here there is a tipping point -- of going too far.  Spread out ahead in a sort of nauseating predictability is the death of Athenian democracy...

***

I'm a little more eager to get to my exercises this morning, and I emerge unscathed, something my Greek acquaintances could scarcely hope for 2,426 years ago.

***

A forecast of rain for the afternoon keeps me occupied on indoor projects, but I emerge briefly to gather supplies for my next foray into the greening of La Maison Cochran.  Over the winter I've been stacking up empty 2 quart containers for a planting on our 2nd story deck.  Our next door neighbors have a gravel driveway that is continuously being  weathered and swept down the gutter that runs along the long side of our street.  After 15 years of observing, they apparently have no intention to contain the drift of pebbles and gravel. Once I drill the bottom of these containers, I'm headed for the streetside alluvium and then the potting soil.

***

By half-past one raindrops are already falling and a quick recalculation of priorities puts the new Star Trek movie on the agenda for the afternoon.  So as not to spoil the movie, I'll just say that, in my opinion, it's not as good as some of the earlier ones of the franchise, but it's a decent contender for good old-fashioned escapist sci fi.

Arriving home I had the faint recollection that I had an artifact showing how long I have been watching Star Trek.  And, pulling out an old scrapbook, there is was, the TeeVee magazine with programs for the 1966 fall season.  It's glued opposite a campaign flyer when I ran unsuccessfully for president of my sophomore class at Edward W. Clark High School, in Las Vegas, Nevada.

 

Yup, there it is, the premier of Star Trek, Thursday nights at 8:30 pm on Channel 2, KORK-TV, an NBC affiliate.  When I see William Shatner hawking PriceLine these days on television I have to stop and remind myself that he is only a year younger than my father.  Shatner at 82, is nothing, if not a survivor.