Since my cold keeps me from getting any sleep, while I wait for this dreadful TheraFlu to kick in (it tastes horrible, but does the trick) I will post here a few random items that may interest you all.

On the shameless self-promotion front, I have a review of Adrian Goldsworthy’s Caesar: Life of a Colossus in the latest TAC (1/29/07). 

On a random music note, I am currently listening to Sting’s impressive album of songs, Songs from the Labyrinth, written by the late 16th/early 17th century English composer, John Dowland.  Apparently, he even learned to play the lute to accompany the professional lutenist, Edin Karamazov, on one of the songs.  Dowland’s late medieval sound and lyrics, by turns melancholy and irreverent, are always beautiful.  Sting intersperses excerpts from a letter from Dowland to Robert Cecil, Lord Burleigh, in which Dowland, a confessing Catholic, was attempting to bring to the attention of the English court a plot against Elizabeth I while vowing his loyalty to England.  This has the interesting effect of recounting Dowland’s life as his corpus of work unfolds (the songs seem not to be in strictly chronological order).  By far, my favourite has to be Can she excuse my wrongs? (1597).  Here is the first stanza:

Can she excuse my wrongs with Virtue’s cloak?
Shall I call her good when she proves unkind?
Are those clear fire which vanish into smoke?
Must I praise the leaves where no fruit I find?

Los Angelino Eunomia readers, be mildly intrigued: the “Dark Lord of Paleoconservatism” will be visiting your city next week to speak on a matter historical, ecclesiastical and Armenian.  I am unsure whether I will have any time away from the scheduled events at the colloquium at UCLA, but if anyone is in the vicinity and would like to hear a talk on monotheletism (who wouldn’t want to hear a talk on monotheletism?) I imagine that you would be most welcome to attend.  Come and confirm that I am not, in fact, a disembodied brain who blogs via “sheer Mental Power.”