About: Ben Potter

Written by Ben Potter, Contributing Writer, Classical Wisdom As Michael Fontaine’s latest book How to Tell a Joke: An Ancient Guide to the Art of Humor comes hot on the heels of his fascinating How to Drink: A Classical Guide to the Art of Imbibing, one might reasonably expect the Cornell professor’s next installment to

Written by Ben Potter, Contributing Writer, Classical Wisdom The importance of rituals and temples in the ancient world are hard to clearly differentiate from worship. At first glance this might seen a little odd to the modern reader. These days, it seems perfectly normal for a disinterested secularist to wander around the great cathedrals of the

Written by Ben Potter, Contributing Writer, Classical Wisdom As Michael Fontaine’s latest book How to Tell a Joke: An Ancient Guide to the Art of Humor comes hot on the heels of his fascinating How to Drink: A Classical Guide to the Art of Imbibing, one might reasonably expect the Cornell professor’s next installment to

By Ben Potter, Contributing Writer, Classical Wisdom It is the eternal question for all classics enthusiasts: brawn versus brains, power versus beauty, empire versus empiricism – Rome versus Greece. Which team do you support? Of course the equation is far, far more complex than that. Indeed, most of the choices listed above are somewhere on

Of Aristotle’s writing, some readers were struck by the accuracy, some by the tone, others by the diligence, incision and insight of Aristotle’s words. Marcus Tulius Cicero, the most prominent man of letters of the late Roman Republic, even referred to Aristotle’s literary style as an ‘aureum flumen’, a ‘river of gold’. However, Cicero was