LESSON NINE:With Friends Like These

ROME SOME MORE: Rent, buy or stream Rome, Season 2 (2007). Originally there were more than two seasons planned, with season three through five covering Augustus’s consolidation of the Roman Empire and perhaps his booting of Ovid. But the show was cancelled due to budget constraints. Fans must content themselves with two measly seasons and an ongoing rumor about a film version. 

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GET OVID IT: Listen to Ovid’s Metamorphoses recited in several parts. Don’t worry, it’s in English and easily available.

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GO BACK TO ELEMENTARY: Read A Few Lessons from Sherlock Holmes (2013) by Peter Bevelin. Want to avoid the mental errors of Emperors and mere mortals? Learn from the great detective on Baker Street. Be sure to highlight this paragraph: “The fatal mistake which the ordinary police- man make is this: He gets his theory first, and then makes the facts fit it, instead of getting his facts first and making all his little observations and deductions until he is driven irresistibly by them into an elucidation in a direction he may never have originally contemplated.” 

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GO BOHEMIAN: Or pick up A Scandal in Bohemia (1891). The first of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes escapades makes the point on which the whole series turns: “It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.” 

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GO TO BAKER STREET: Discover Sherlock (2012), the BBC’s excellent reboot of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s sleuth features Benedict Cumberbatch dispensing wisdom and deconstructing the mental follies of criminals, friends, and his local police force alike. If it seems authentic, there is good reason. Benedict Cumberbatch is distantly related to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the author of the original Sherlock Holmes books. They are 16th cousins twice removed. 

BBC One - Sherlock

Thrilling, funny, fast-paced, contemporary reimagining of the Arthur Conan Doyle classic.

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GET SCHOOLED: Professor David Nystrom of Biola University in California provides a one-hour primer on the life and times of Ovid. With a background in New Testament the- ology, Roman social history, agronomy, and plant pathol- ogy his background is admirably eclectic. Not unlike your humble author. 

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READ THE PAPER: Buy a newspaper with an editorial bent with which you tend to disagree. Read the editorial page for one week highlighting any information or opinions you don’t like. Do some research on one or two of the high- lighted areas. Change your mind, or don’t. At least you’ve approached the topic from an alternate viewpoint.