Karl von Piloty’s “The Murder of Caesar” (1865, oil on canvas).Courtesy Landesmuseum Hannover. Both Dante and Shakespeare, who understood political instability, would tip the scales in favor of Caesar’s character against his assassins as would Shaw and the 1963 film “Cleopatra.” In reality, Caesar pitted the mob against the so-called elites and destroyed those he deemed “other,” paying the ultimate price.
The tagline of the PBS series “Julius Caesar: The Making of a Dictator,” is “Nearly five centuries of ancient Roman democracy were overthrown in 16 years by one man.”
Will we even get to 250 on July 4, 2026? Here’s how Time magazine summarized two interviews with former President Donald J. Trump and conversations with more than a dozen of his closest advisers and confidants for a cover story.
Read MoreAnderson Cooper at the 35th annual luncheon for the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism, held in Phoenix, Arizona. He’s among the announced celebrities who won’t be leaving his heirs great wealth. Photograph by Gage Skidmore.
Earlier this evening, a publicist sent me a pitch about a law professor’s take on the trend among the rich and famous, like CNN anchor Anderson Cooper, to leave their heirs with less rather than more — the idea being that children who inherit vast sums of money would be de-incentivized to get off their keisters and work for a living.
Read MoreJohn Trumbull’s “Surrender of General Burgoyne” depicts the end of the Battle of Saratoga in 1777, the turning point of the American Revolution, in which New England and Hudson Valley militia, under the command of Gen. Horatio Gates, defeated the British, led by Gen. John Burgoyne. Saratoga paved the way for French assistance while demonstrating that you can’t win a war against a people you don’t understand. (The star of the day was brilliant field commander Benedict Arnold., who galvanized the Americans. Three years later, he would be America’s greatest traitor.)
The Americans have left Afghanistan and though President Joe Biden and the public are happy, many of us have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, at 20 years it was the United States’ longest war, and no one wants to fight a forever war. On the other hand, there is a sense of a mission unfulfilled, or perhaps one extended beyond its original purpose and thus unfulfilled.
Read MorePrince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (left), examines building models at the University of Salford in 1967. During a 70-year career as a working royal, he carried out more than 22,000 solo engagements in addition to being what Queen Elizabeth II called her “strength and stay.” Courtesy the University of Salford Press Office.
Among the photographs The New York Times used to commemorate Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh — who died on Friday, April 9, at Windsor Castle two months short of his 100th birthday and will be buried from there Saturday, April 17 — was a 2017 photo in which the natty duke faces the camera smiling amid a sea of red-garbed Canadian soldiers, who are virtually all facing right. It encapsulates Prince Philip, a part of and yet apart from the British monarchy, “the strength and stay” of Queen Elizabeth II (her words) through 73 years of marriage, the longest in British royal history, who served crown and country with a confounding mix of devotion, action, humility, crotchety humor and a patronizing snobbery that critics have called impolitic at best and prejudiced at worst.
Read MoreThe Fresno Bee columnist Victor Davis Hanson has written a column comparing President Donald J. Trump’s slash-and-burn style with the Greco-Macedonian conqueror of the Persian Empire, Alexander the Great, cutting the Gordion knot impatiently with his sword, thus ensuring the prophecy that whoever did so would become lord of Asia.
Hanson’s gotten some bristling responses from history buffs, and my first thought was to lend my voice to the chorus, being rather protective of Alexander myself. More than anything I wanted to say: “I knew Alexander. Alexander was a friend of mine. Trump, you’re no Alexander.” But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the issue is deeper than Hanson and his critics might’ve realized. ...
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It’s fitting that President Donald J. Trump should address the nation regarding our recommitment to the war in Afghanistan on a day when most of the continental United States saw a total solar eclipse.
Historians would say that Afghanistan has eclipsed all our other wars. Not for nothing is Afghanistan known as “the graveyard of empires.” Certainly, it’s the graveyard of modern empires. The British in the 19th century and early 20th centuries and the Soviets in the 1970s got bogged down in wars there but left without the victor’s laurel wreath. We Americans have been fighting there 17 years, our longest war. ...
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This has not been the best moment in the relationship between the traditional sexes. (And we have to say “the traditional sexes” when talking about men and women, because we are moving toward a time when people will define themselves as something other or by no gender at all.)
The situation between the sexes has gotten tense on the campaign trail – as we have practically daily proof – but recently the battle shifted to the sports world as five veterans of the U.S. women’s soccer team charged the U.S. Soccer Federation with pay discrimination in everything from per diems to compensation for participating in exhibitions. This despite the women’s superior achievements to the men’s team.
“We continue to be told we should be grateful just to have the opportunity to play professional soccer and to get paid for doing it,” Hope Solo told “Today.” “In this day and age, it’s about equality. It’s about equal rights. It’s about equal pay. We’re pushing for that.”
This comes on the heels of a misogynistic rant by Raymond Moore, then CEO of the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells, Calif., in which he said that the women rode the coattails of the men in tennis and that they should get down on their knees in gratitude. ...
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