Monday, June 28, 2004
Tacitus on the information world
A post not directly related to the BD this time. Re-reading Tacitus' Annals 15.44 on Nero's persecution of the Christians, the following sentence struck me as utterly modern:
exitiabilis superstitio rursum erumpebat [...] per urbem etiam quo cuncta undique atrocia aut pudenda confluunt celebranturque.and the urbs seems here a nice symbol of the information world (with the news deluge that inundates us every day) and of the Internet agora. No difficulties in finding modern implementations of exitiabiles superstitiones e.g. in economics and politics. Thanks Tacitus.
