Oh yeah, I have a history of Rome. I got it in Washington. I'm reading it on the BART, which moves me through at the rate of about 10 pages a day. I really should read it while not on the BART, but I don't want to, on principle. I shouldn't even read it on the BART, cause it's a big book and it takes up a lot of space in my backpack. I should find a smaller book to read on the BART.
The book was published in 1939 (I {met him, got it} in {a candy, an antique} store), and is filled with underlinings and marginal notes that date to late 1944. So much of the text is underlined that I really have to question the value of the underlining, and most of the margin notes take parts of the text and put it into list form.
There's one margin note that made me laugh out loud when I saw it. The relevant passage (it's circled) is:
This passage has a big note off in the right margin saying "Jew". Why?
I think the reason it made me laugh out loud is that it reminded me of an old Dr. Katz (is that still running?) where the guy on the couch is talking about a stand-up audition he did. "So I go up there and I'm doing my act, and the guy says 'don't be schticky.' 'Don't be schticky.' You know what that means to me? We hate the Jews. 'Don't be schticky, Jew.'"
Tue Aug 08 2000 07:11:
Anachronisms in my history of Rome book:
[Republican] Rome had also become the Mecca of fortune hunters from every corner of the Mediterranean world.
Except for the Jews, then victors over Antiochus in Palestine, the Carthaginians were the last great representatives of the Semites until the rise of the Arabs under Mohammed in the seventh century A.D.