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Monday, August 24, 2009

Extract from Chapter One of The Greatest Show on Earth

blankImagine that you are a teacher of Roman history and the Latin language, anxious to impart your enthusiasm for the ancient world — for the elegiacs of Ovid and the odes of Horace, the sinewy economy of Latin grammar as exhibited in the oratory of Cicero, the strategic niceties of the Punic Wars, the generalship of Julius Caesar and the voluptuous excesses of the later emperors. That’s a big undertaking and it takes time, concentration, dedication. Yet you find your precious time continually preyed upon, and your class’s attention distracted, by a baying pack of ignoramuses (as a Latin scholar you would know better than to say ignorami) who, with strong political and especially financial support, scurry about tirelessly attempting to persuade your unfortunate pupils that the Romans never existed. There never was a Roman Empire. The entire world came into existence only just beyond living memory. Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese, Catalan, Occitan, Romansh: all these languages and their constituent dialects sprang spontaneously and separately into being, and owe nothing to any predecessor such as Latin.

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The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution by Richard Dawkins

Banned in turkey

The DVD 15-Pack

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Video Richard Dawkins at the Edinburgh Book Festival 2009 • Richard Dawkins • 28 Oct

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It won’t thrill his publishers to hear this, but Richard Dawkins appears largely uninterested in standard authorial topics like his new book, his writing habits or even himself. Instead he wants to talk about giant butterflies and tiny moths, worms disguised as snakes, why goats are related to whales and whether beetles have two sets of wings (they do, and for good reason).

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