timelets

When it was the Nine Hundred and Eighth Night,
...

The boy grew up till he attained the age of twelve,[FN#96] when the King being minded to have him taught the arts and sciences, bade build him a palace amiddlemost the city, wherein were three hundred and threescore rooms, and lodged him therein. Then he assigned him three wise men of the Olema and bade them not be lax in teaching him day and night and look that there was no kind of learning but they instruct him herein, so he might become versed in all knowledge. He also commanded them to sit with him one day in each of the rooms by turn and write on the door thereof that which they had taught him therein of various kinds of lore and report to himself, every seven days, whatso instructions they had imparted to him. So they went in to the Prince and stinted not from educating him day nor night, nor withheld from him aught of that they knew; and presently there appeared in him readiness to receive instruction such as none had shown before him. Every seventh day his governors reported to the King what his son had learnt and mastered.

-- A thousand nights and a night, vol 9. The Spider and the Wind.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3443/3443-h/3443-h.htm#chap13

In teaching this lad I require no more of thee but to accept these three dictes and adhere thereto.” Cried the King, “Bear ye witness against me, O all ye here assembled, that I stand firm by these conditions!”; and caused a procès verbal to be drawn up with his personal security and the testimony of his courtiers. Thereupon the Sage, taking the Prince’s hand, led him to his place, and the King sent them all requisites of provaunt and kitchen-batteries, carpets and other furniture. Moreover the tutor bade build a house whose walls he lined with the whitest stucco painted over with ceruse, and, lastly, he delineated thereon all the objects concerning which he proposed to lecture his pupil.

When the place was duly furnished, he took the lad’s hand and installed him in the apartment which was amply furnished with belly-timber; and, after establishing him therein, went forth and fastened the door with seven padlocks. Nor did he visit the Prince save every third day when he lessoned him on the knowledge to be extracted from the wall-pictures and renewed his provision of meat and drink, after which he left him again to solitude. So whenever the youth was straitened in breast by the tedium and ennui of loneliness, he applied himself diligently to his object-lessons and mastered all the deductions therefrom. His governor seeing this turned his mind into other channel and taught him the inner meanings of the external objects; and in a little time the pupil mastered every requisite.

Thousand nights and a night, Vol 6, translated by Sir Richard Burton
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/54525/54525-h/54525-h.htm

And though he owned numberless silver mines, and highly valuable tracts of land with the labourers upon them, nevertheless one might regard all this as nothing compared with the value of his slaves; so many and so capable were the slaves he possessed, — readers, amanuenses, silversmiths, stewards, table-servants; and he himself directed their education, and took part in it himself as a teacher, and, in a word, he thought that the chief duty of the master was to care for his slaves as the living implements of household management.

7 And in this Crassus was right, if, as he used to say, he held that anything else was to be done for him by his slaves, but his slaves were to be governed by their master. For household management, as we see, is a branch of finance in so far as it deals with lifeless things; but a branch of politics when it deals with men.

--- Plutarch, Lives. Crassus: 6-7.
https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Crassus*.html

( Read more... )

The 2016 election was a result of anxiety about dominant groups’ future status rather than a result of being overlooked in the past. In many ways, a sense of group threat is a much tougher opponent than an economic downturn, because it is a psychological mindset rather than an actual event or misfortune. Given current demographic trends within the United States, minority influence will only increase with time, thus heightening this source of perceived status threat. Although whites will likely still be the best-educated and most well-off racial group, by 2040, they are unlikely to dominate in numbers. Likewise, despite US status as an extremely wealthy country relative to those countries perceived to threaten it economically, many Americans find that small comfort.
...
Negative attitudes toward racial and ethnic diversity are also correlated with low levels of education. In this election, education represented group status threat rather than being left behind economically. Those who felt that the hierarchy was being upended—with whites discriminated against more than blacks, Christians discriminated against more than Muslims, and men discriminated against more than women—were most likely to support Trump.