OTIUM Travel
READING PLUTARCH WITH PAVEL SHCHELIN
Dates - 10 classes on Tuesdays from July 23 to September 24
at 19-00 (UTC+3)
Duration - 2 hours (one hour lecture and one hour discussion)
Format - online in a ZOOM conference in a group of up to 15 participants
Preparation - for each lesson you must read the biography of the figure to whom it is dedicated
Lecturer - Pavel Shchelin
Cost - 1500 EUR
COURSE OBJECTIVE:
the practice of the method of historical analysis not as a dry set of facts, but as a way of strategic knowledge of the future through knowledge of the past. In the biographies compiled by the Greek classic, we will analyze the types that are repeated from century to century in order to learn to see them in the present and predict future behavior. In a word, let us deal with history in the original meaning of the word.
Lesson 1. Lycurgus
How to build a utopia
The title of the lecture contains a paradox - utopia is literally translated as “a place that does not exist.” Nevertheless, it was Lycurgus, the great lawmaker of Sparta, who managed to come close to one of the forms of this state structure. Let's look at what and why he succeeded, including the emphasis on the extremely relevant financial aspects of his social transformations today.
Lesson 2. Alcibiades
How democracy is killing its last chance for salvation
In this lesson we will see from historical experience why a competent system cannot be formed through democratic means. How democracy devours its most worthy people, and why this is not an accident but a necessity. We learn from historical experience so as not to adhere to naive misconceptions.
Lesson 3. Guy Mari
The soldier who decided to play politics
The story of the creator of the model of an exemplary professional army. What happens when an undoubtedly talented commander tries to solve political problems using familiar styles. In general, we will discuss the relationship between the army and the republic and find out how, while winning on the battlefield, you can lose your career in the rear.
Lesson 4. Mark Cato the Elder
How to try to stop the coming catastrophe
The wise Ecclesiastes said that “there is a time for everything under the sun.” Sometimes a person happens to live in a time when the seeds of decline and destruction of his homeland are visible only to him alone. We learn what can and cannot be done in such circumstances from the example of the life of the living embodiment of the Roman Spirit and Roman Virtue.
Lesson 5. Lysander
How to defeat the invincible
It's easy to win where you're used to fighting. But defeating the enemy on his own field is an art of an even higher order. You will learn how the land power managed to defeat the sea power while reading the biography of Lysander, the Spartan commander who managed to turn the tide of the Peloponnesian War.
Lesson 6. Mark Antony
Who loses and who wins in the Turmoil
Civil wars are part of political life. Understanding which of the candidates for supreme power will win is a non-trivial task, but, unfortunately, necessary. Perhaps needed today more than ever. Let's look at one of the solutions to this equation using the example of the main competitor of the first Emperor.
Lesson 7. Cicero
The brilliance and poverty of politics as a profession
Cicero - embodied the limit of the Roman Republic. The Supreme Pontiff of the Roman Cult and the supreme expert on the state, who does not know whether God exists, nor what the state should be, who, by his own admission, lived in the world of the Mind that has lost hope. Perhaps the most talented professional politician of his time, at the end of the road he was defeated in this dangerous game.
The final three lessons allow us to practice predicting the future of the United States as it faces the “coming of the Caesars.”
Lesson 8. Crassus
The limits of the power of money
The first member of the Triumvirate is the richest man in Rome. The oligarch of all oligarchs. What money can and cannot achieve in times of Troubles. Let's learn from the life of Mark Crassus.
Lesson 9. Pompeii.
Deep State Limits
A man who managed to consolidate around himself the core of the old Roman aristocracy and institutions - what today we would call the deep state. A talented commander and administrator who should have won the Troubles by all rational calculations. We’ll find out why he didn’t succeed from this meeting.
Lesson 10.
Caesar The First “Superman”
The only biography that needs no introduction. It was Gaius Julius Caesar who became a role model in terms of the strength of his achievements for all subsequent ambitious young and not very statesmen. In the final lesson of the series, we will summarize with a discussion “about the role of the individual in history.”
