Of what sort am I? One of those who would be glad to be refuted if I say anything untrue, and glad to refute anyone else who might speak untruly; but just as glad, mind you, to be refuted as to refute, since I regard the former as the greater benefit, in proportion as it is a greater benefit for oneself to be delivered from the greatest evil than to deliver some one else. For I consider that a man cannot suffer any evil so great as a false opinion on the subjects of our actual argument.

• The Meaning of Beheading
  
• So That's the Reason
  
• Why the Baroque is Superior to Rock
  

A humpbacked camel was crossing a swiftly flowing river when he defecated. Seeing that the dung was floating ahead of him, he said: "Truly, I'm in a bad way; what ought to be behind me is now going in front." [A state in which the worst citizens are in power, instead of the best, might tell this story of Aesop's.]

Διέβαινε ποταμὸν ὀξὺν ὄντα τῷ ῥείθρῳ
κυρτὴ κάμηλος, εἶτ' ἔχεζε. τοῦ δ' ὄνθου
φθάνοντος αὐτὴν εἶπεν "ἦ κακῶς πράσσω·
ἔμπροσθεν ἤδη τἀξόπισθέ μου βαίνει."
[Πόλις ἄν τις εἴποι τὸν λόγον τὸν Αἰσώπου,
ἧς ἔσχατοι κρατοῦσιν ἀντὶ τῶν πρώτων.]

Learning that flowered in days of yore
In these our times is thought a bore.
Once knowledge was a well to drink of;
Now having fun is all men think of.
Today mere striplings grow astute
Before their beards begin to shoot --
Striplings whose truant dispositions
Are deaf to wisdom's admonitions.
Yet it was true in ages past
No scholar paused from toil at last
Nor shrunk from studies the most weighty
Till his years numbered more than eighty.

Florebat olim studium,
nunc vertitur in tedium;
iam scire diu viguit,
sed ludere prevaluit.
iam pueris astutia
contingit ante tempora,
qui per malivolentiam
excludunt sapientiam.
sed retro actis seculis
vix licuit discipulis
tandem nonagenarium
quiescere post studium.

'But why don't you explain? What's your object?'

'To destroy everything. No more nations, no more government, no more property, no more God or religion.'

'Yes, I gather that. Only where is it going to lead you?'

'To the primitive and formless community, to a new world, a fresh start.'

'And how are you going to carry it out? How do you propose to set about it?'

'By fire, poison, and the dagger. The real hero is the murderer, for he is the avenger of the people, the revolutionary in action, not someone just trotting out phrases out of books. We must have a series of appalling cataclysms to horrify the rulers and awaken the people.'

....

'Tell me what your programme is? We want to know where we are going.'

Then Souvarine, gazing with misty eyes into space, peacefully concluded:

'Any reasoning about the future is criminal, for it prevents pure destruction and holds up the march of the revolution.'

(a) Frozen concentrate for lemonade is the frozen food prepared from one or both of the lemon juice ingredients specified in paragraph (b) of this section together with one or any mixture of safe and suitable nutritive carbohydrate sweeteners. The product contains not less than 48.0 percent by weight of soluble solids taken as the sucrose value determined by refractometer and corrected for acidity prescribed in "Official Methods of Analysis of the Association of Official Analytical Chemists," 13th Ed. (1980), section 22.025, "Frozen Concentrate for Lemonade (12)," under the heading "Soluble Solids by Refractometer--Official First Action," which is incorporated by reference. Copies may be obtained from the Association of Official Analytical Chemists International, 481 North Frederick Ave., suite 500, Gaithersburg, MD 20877-2504, or may be examined at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). For information on the availability of this material at NARA, call 202-741-6030, or go to: http://www.archives.gov/federal--register/code--of--federal--regulations/ibr--locations.html When the product is diluted according to directions for making lemonade which shall appear on the label, the acidity of the lemonade, calculated as anhydrous citric acid, shall be not less than 0.70 gram per 100 milliliters, and the soluble solids, measured as described for the concentrate, shall be not less than 10.5 percent by weight.

(b) The lemon juice ingredients referred to in paragraph (a) of this section are:

(1) Lemon juice or frozen lemon juice or a mixture of these.
(2) Concentrated lemon juice or frozen concentrated lemon juice or a mixture of these.

For the purposes of this section, lemon juice is the undiluted juice expressed from mature lemons of an acid variety; and concentrated lemon juice is lemon juice from which part of the water has been removed. In the preparation of the lemon juice ingredients, the lemon oil content may be adjusted by the addition of lemon oil or concentrated lemon oil in accordance with good manufacturing practice, and the lemon pulp in the juice as expressed may be left in the juice or may be separated. Lemon pulp that has been separated, which may have been preserved by freezing, may be added in preparing frozen concentrate for lemonade, provided that the amount of pulp added does not raise the proportion of pulp in the finished food to a level in excess of that which would be present by using lemon juice ingredients from which pulp has not been separated. The lemon juice ingredients may be treated by heat, either before or after the other ingredients are added, to reduce the enzymatic activity and the number of viable microorganisms.

(c) Label declaration. Each of the ingredients used in the food shall be declared on the label as required by the applicable sections of parts 101 and 130 of this chapter.

I hate this age of scribblers, when I can pick up my Plutarch and read of great men.

Mir ekelt vor diesem Tinten klecksendem Säculum, wenn ich in meinem Plutarch lese von großen Menschen.

This ink-stained generation makes me sick, whenever I read about great men in my Plutarch.

"What signifies," says some one, "giving halfpence to common beggars? they only lay it out in gin or tobacco." "And why should they be denied such sweeteners of their existence?" says Johnson; "it is surely very savage to refuse them every possible avenue to pleasure, reckoned too coarse for our own acceptance. Life is a pill which none of us can bear to swallow without gilding; yet for the poor we delight in stripping it still barer, and are not ashamed to show even visible displeasure if ever the bitter taste is taken from their mouths."

The sometimes introductory and sometimes parenthetical "sir" Boswell no doubt consciously established as the Johnsonian trademark by seeing to it that it occurred somewhere in most of the reported remarks, especially those of the knock-down-and-drag-out variety. But the vocable is not a mere meaningless syllable. It served Johnson only somewhat more conspicuously than it served eighteenth-century conversation in general by enabling him to speak freely without degenerating into insult. "Sir" used as an introduction to a vigorous attack means: "I acknowledge that this is a civilized gathering and that we are all ladies and gentlemen. In general, you have a claim to be treated with respect and the claim I hereby acknowledge. But you will grant me the privilege, which one gentleman grants another, of speaking frankly." To have lost, as we have, the use of such formulae is to make conversation that is at once full-blooded and civilized more difficult. It makes it harder to escape from merely vapid amiability without falling into what looks like mere rudeness.

Noticia del Gabinete de Comunicación de la Universidad de Valladolid:

El Salón de Grados de la Facultad de Filosofía y Letras de la Universidad de Valladolid acogerá la próxima semana las XIX Jornadas de Filología Clásica de las Universidades de Castilla y León, organizadas en esta decimonovena edición por el Departamento de Filología Clásica de la UVa y la Sociedad Española de Estudios Clásicos.

Estas Jornadas, que se desarrollarán durante las tardes de los días 17, 18, 19, 20 y 21 de octubre, llevan por título Griegos y latinos: facetas de un (des)encuentro y tienen como objetivo analizar los factores comunes y diferenciales de las grandes lenguas y culturas clásicas. Para ello, contarán con expertos no sólo de las universidades castellano-leonesas de Burgos, León, Salamanca y Valladolid, sino también de la Complutense y Autónoma de Madrid, Córdoba y Valencia.

A lo largo de las distintas ponencias y comunicaciones, se tratarán aspectos tan diversos como las fábulas en Grecia y Roma desde el punto de vista de su función didáctica y literaria, la educación física, las peculiaridades nupciales romanas, el sincretismo mágico en el mundo greco-romano, las biografías históricas en la época imperial, el epigrama satírico, la comedia de Menandro y de Plauto, la terminología jurídica en Roma y en Bizancio, la poesía filosófica en la antigüedad, etc.

En el enlace de la noticia está disponible también el programa de las jornadas.

(click for a larger version)

Whoever desires to found a state and give it laws, must start by assuming that all men are bad and ever ready to display their vicious nature, whenever they may find occasion for it. If their evil disposition remains concealed for a time, it must be attributed to some unknown reason; and we must assume that it lacked occasion to show itself; but time, which has been said to be the father of all truth, does not fail to bring it to light .... Men act right only upon compulsion; but from the moment that they have the option and liberty to commit wrong with impunity, then they never fail to carry confusion and disorder everywhere.

• Vergil, Eclogue 4
  
• Propertius 3.10
  
• Horace, Odes 4.11
  
• Tibullan Corpus 2.2, 3.11, 3.12
  
• Ovid, Tristia 3.13, 5.5
  
• Persius 2
  
• Statius, Silvae 2.7
  
• Martial 7.21, 7.22, 7.23, 7.86, 8.64, 9.52, 9.53, 10.24, 10.27, 11.65, 12.60, 12.67
  
• Ausonius, Idylls 5

The theatre season in the Washington D.C. area will include (besides a production of Tom Stoppard's Invention of Love) a new piece called Lift:  Icarus and Me.  Here's the skinny:

In January, Theater of the First Amendment will premiere "Lift: Icarus and Me," a new musical from Mary Hall Surface and David Maddox, a talented team who previously created "Sing Down the Moon," "Nathan the Wise," "Perseus Bayou" and "Odyssey of Telemaca." For "Lift: Icarus and Me," Hall and Surface have once again turned to the classics for their inspiration, this time the myth of the high-flying Icarus and his inventor-father, Daedalus. Transplanted from ancient Greece to the arid expanses of East Texas, this version of the fable features ragtime and Texas swing music and rodeos.

Two new books whose BMCR reviews were noted by the RogueClassicist look interesting and relevant to the subject here.  The first (in German), A. Luther (ed.), Odysseerezeptionen, with articles on the use of Odysseus' story in ancient and modern times:

Stefan Kipf (95-108) is primarily concerned with the figure of Telemachos in modern and contemporary literature for children. Beginning with Fénelon's "Aventures de Télémaque" and then (less fruitfully) Gustav Schwab's "Die schönsten Sagen des klassischen Altertums", Kipf looks for traces of Telemachos' role in modern paedagogy as a model of wisdom and maturity. It is very interesting to learn that in most contemporary renderings of the Odyssean plot, the whole Telemachy is either heavily abridged or eliminated tout court. All the more significant is the case, duly highlighted by Kipf, of Peter Hacks' book "Prinz Telemach und sein Lehrer Mentor" (1997). From an Italian perspective, one might add that in our own days "Telemaco" is the name of both a well-known junior reading club in Piemont and a national program for social assistance to young people. However, in a book devoted to continuity, I think one further issue ought to have been mentioned. Even if one does not believe that the relative abundance of Telemachy-papyri in schoolhands should be explained in the light of moralistic teaching,  there is no doubt that the ancients had already developed a clear sense of the paedagogical purport of Telemachus' adventures, as is certified by several scholia focusing of Telemachos' paideia and psychology.

Andreas Goltz's paper (109-124) starts with a brief documented survey of the films drawn from or inspired by the Odyssey: my only complaint regards the absence of Theo Angelopoulos' "Ulysses' Gaze" (with Harvey Keitel, and terrific music by Eleni Karaindrou), probably one of the best films of this kind. Goltz concentrates on a comparison between Camerini's "Odissea" (1954, with Kirk Douglas and Silvana Mangano) and Konchalovsky's "The Adventures of Ulysses" (1997, with Armand Assante and Greta Scacchi): this turns out to be a very fruitful procedure that highlights some overall and some minute differences that can be explained by referring to the cultural climate in which each movie was born (the presence of the gods; the handling of Ulysses' adulteries; the hero's cruelty after his homecoming). Anyone wishing to experience how artistically powerful the chill of the ancient world can be in contemporary cinema, should visit Francesco Vezzoli's "Caligula", currently on display at the Italian Pavillion of the Biennale in Venice.

The other is about Shakespeare's "little Latin and less Greek":  Martindale and Taylor (eds.), Shakespeare and the Classics.  Here's just a teaser:

As modern reappraisals of ancient authors and genres enter the picture, Renaissance scholars following our lead are able to recognize unexpected innovations and affinities between their texts and ours on ideological as well as aesthetic levels. Even more striking for Shakespeare in particular is the recognition that his presentation of classical antiquity itself informs our own view of the ancient world, with all the challenges and potential circularities that such a complex process of reception entails. Such realizations create opportunities for discussion across our departmental divides are genuinely exciting, and if the present collection did little more than represent the current variety of perspectives on the set of problems raised by its title, it would be valuable. But it does more.

The production of Orestes at the Playhouse is a very ...

He is well known to most for his monumental Tower of Babel project, a massive on-line etymological database that includes Sino-Tibetan, Caucasian, Altaic, Dravidian, Semitic, Khoisan, among others. His major research has focused on Caucasian and Altaic linguistics.

I had the opportunity to meet Prof. Starostin after he presented on his work on the database during a visit to the Program in 2002, and I now regret all the more missing his seminar on Caucasian prosody. I join his family, friends, and colleagues in their sadness.

As noted by the RogueClassicist, Martha Nussbaum recently gave a lecture entitled "The Arbitrariness of Canons: The Neglect of Hellenistic Philosophy and Why it Is a Bad Thing":

She specifically mentioned the Stoic, Skeptic, and Epicurean schools of thought and said that they had a profound impact on later philosophers and thinkers, including Kant, Descartes, Hume, and Adam Smith. The classical texts make “the heart of the great books curriculum,” she said.

During the question and answer session that followed her one-hour lecture, one student asked Nussbaum why she considered the mentioned philosophers to be germane today.

Nussbaum answered that Skeptic theories of emotion and the unconscious were similar to modern psychological models, for example, and that many of the philosophers were ahead of their time, acting as the forerunners of women’s liberation.

At the same time, John Bellamy Foster hopes for ecological and social revolution, based in part on Epicurus:

In conceiving such a social and ecological revolution, we can derive inspiration, as Marx did, from the ancient Epicurean concept of “natural wealth.” As Epicurus observed in his Principal Doctrines, “Natural wealth is both limited and easily obtainable; the riches of idle fancies go on forever.” It is the unnatural, unlimited character of such alienated wealth that is the problem. Similarly, in what has become known as the Vatican Sayings, Epicurus stated: “When measured by the natural purpose of life, poverty is great wealth; limitless wealth is great poverty.” Free human development, arising in a climate of natural limitation and sustainability is the true basis of wealth, of a rich, many-sided existence; the unbounded, pursuit of wealth is the primary source of human impoverishment and suffering. Needless to say, such a concern with natural well-being, as opposed to artificial needs and stimulants, is the antithesis of capitalist society and the precondition of a sustainable human community.

A book on data mining also cites Epicurus, while Harriet Rubin wishes that journalists covering natural disasters read more Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius.

I haven't had time since ...

Tom Holland, author of (inter alia) Rubicon, the recent popular history of the Late Republic, has come out with an account of the Persian Wars [not available in the U.S. until 2006--here's the UK Amazon], including also much background material on Sparta and Athens, as well as Persia. As with Rubicon, the Preface of Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West makes some connections with current events; it also explores the pervasive influence of the Greek/Persian conflict for later Western civilization.

Touching on the East-West conflict currently on many radar screens (in which East = Islam, in a reversion to a division far predating Cold War East-West divisions), he refers back to the Father of the History of East-West conflict, Herodotus. He sketches the importance of the events narrated by Herodotus, citing John Stuart Mill: "The battle of Marathon, even as an event in English history, is more important than the battle of Hastings"; in Holland's words, "Not only would the West have lost its first struggle for independence and survival, but it is unlikely, had the Greeks succumbed to Xerxes' invasion, that there would ever have been such an entity as 'the West' at all." He continues:

No wonder, then, that the story of the Persian Wars should serve as the founding-myth of European civilisation; as the archetype of the triumph of freedom over slavery, and of rugged civic virtue over enervated despotism. Certainly, as the word 'Christendom' began to lose its resonance in the aftermath of the Reformation, so the heroics of Marathon and Salamis began to strike many idealists as an altogether more edifying exemplification of Western virtues than the Crusades. More principled, after all, to defend than to invade; better to fight for liberty than in the cause of fanaticism.

It is not just that the human spirit reacts directly and beyond all arguments to a story of sacrifice and courage, as a wine glass must vibrate to the sound of a violin. It is also because, way back and at the hundredth remove, that company stood in the right line of history. A little of Leonidas lies in the fact that I can go where I like and write what I like. He contributed to set us free.

Holland further explores the (also very important) influence of the Persian side of the equation, not only for the Muslim Caliphate, but also for the British Empire (including a quotation from Lord Curzon):

The British Raj, governed by the products of self-consciously Spartan boarding schools, was also thoroughly imbued with 'that picturesque wealth of pomp and circumstance which the East alone can give',--and which ultimately derived from the vanished flummery of Xerxes' palaces. It might have flattered the British Empire to imagine itself the heir of Athens; but it owed a certain debt of obligation to the mortal enemy of Athens, too.

Persia was Persia, in other words, and Greece was Greece--and sometimes the twain did meet. They might have been combatants in the primal clash of civilisations, but the ripples of their influence, spilling out across the millenia to the present day, can sometimes serve to complicate the division between East and West rather than to clarify it.

Oh, and the non-Preface parts of the book look like they'll be fun too!

Me escribe Ana Ovando para anunciarme la celebración de la III Jornada de Cultura Clàssica en Sagunt, organizada por el Centre de Formació, Innovació i Recursos Educatius. Se trata de una actividad dirigida a profesores, en la que compartir experiencias y aprender algunos recursos que puedan ser de utilidad en las aulas. La fecha de celebración será el próximo día 12 de noviembre.

En esta dirección podéis encontrar información y/o inscribiros en la Jornada. El programa de actividades lo podéis ver aquí.

The Department of Linguistics at Yale University expects to make an appointment in the field of Historical Linguistics, at the Assistant Professor level [...] In addition to courses in Historical Linguistics, including (but not limited to) Indo-European Comparative Linguistics, the appointee will be expected to teach courses in Syntax at both the beginning and more advanced levels. [...]

(Link to departmental website added; emphases mine.) This is the Warren Cowgill line, if I’m not mistaken. Yes, friends, Penn, UCLA, now Yale bis. Waiting for the fifth water to burst forth from the mountain.

[UPDATE: Penultimate sentence slightly modified. 7:48 a.m., 29 September 2005.]

• Degrassi, Atilio, ed. 1963 (1972). Inscriptiones Latinae Liberae Rei Publicae, vol. 2. Florence: La Nuova Italia.

Really “fasciculus alter” ‘fascicle 2’, but the force of the diminutive suffix seems opaque for the 540-page volume. Perhaps not so for length and width: about 5" x 7"? I had to order the first volume from an alternate source, and it hasn’t arrived yet.

And:

• Habinek, Thomas. 2005. The World of Roman Song: From Ritualized Speech to Social Order. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

On my advisor’s recommendation. Habinek 2005 looks very different from his Fraenkelian Colometry of Latin Prose (1985).

Sander Goldberg in his 1995 book said that complete poems could be “bullies” of fragments. That is, if I understand and remember correctly, Andronicus should be studied for his Odusia’s own sake, without judgmental comparison/contrast to Ennius, who himself should not suffer unjustly against Lucretius and Virgil.

In my own training, text and language (langue) have held primacy over langage and all other approaches. These are my own prejudices in reading, which I admit are the same in receiving the results of literary-theoretical approaches. The Latin carmen, be it the form, genre, or style, has been bullied by both poetry and prose, being religated to the precarious status of “rhythmic prose” for failing to be rigidly metrical or clearly unmetrical—closer inspection reveals the carmen’s own formal and stylistic aspects. þe olde-tyme philologie itself has been bullied by perceived sexier approaches. Let’s see what can be said about the Latin carmen from the new literary point-of-view, which application seems never before dared.

The Department of Linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania invites applications for a tenure-track position in historical linguistics and linguistic theory at the rank of Assistant Professor. [...]

Applicants should demonstrate thorough training both in historical linguistics and in modern linguistic theory;[...]

A printable version of this announcement can be downloaded here:
http://www.ling.upenn.edu/Penn_historical.pdf
http://babel.ling.upenn.edu/Penn-historical.pdf

(Emphases mine; link to departmental website added.) Not for me, but it’s a third drop of blood in a small pool crowded with many sharks: this makes three open Indo-European-y jobs, with Yale and UCLA.

[ADDENDUM: The published URL for the PDF erroneously has an underscore for hyphen. 9:51 p.m., 27 September 2005.]

This deserves more attention.  Debra Hamel posts a snippet from Alan Alda's autobiography:

Bill Christopher, who played Father Mulcahy [on M*A*S*H], was studious, translating ancient Greek during his breaks. For one scene, he had to spend a long time at the bottom of a car in which about twelve nurses were piled on top of him. When he finally crawled out, someone asked him if he was all right, having spent two hours under all those women. 'Yes, fine,' he said. 'Fortunately, I had my copy of the Iliad with me.

Here's Mike Farrell's take:

A wonderful man and a good friend. He's very droll, very funny when you get to know him. An intellectual with an in-depth understanding and appreciation of classical music and literature. He reads Homer in the original Greek and studies languages for fun. 

Michael Moriarty, who used to play Ben Stone on Law & Order, has morphed into a decidedly eccentric political figure in Vancouver (5-year old Salon article), and his latest editorial for Enter Stage Right riffs on the Da Vinci Code, the Trojan War, and Red China:

The first Grand Master of the Priory of Sion was Jean de Gisor in 1188 A.D. His successors were mostly French until the undisputed creative supremacy of the Italian Renaissance replaced French leadership with artists like Sandro Botticelli and Leonardo Da Vinci. France regained control of this intellectual supremacy movement, which then crossed the English Channel and was briefly led by Isaac Newton. Paris again reclaimed authority under Jean Cocteau's veritable papacy, which ended with his death in 1963.

Paris. What a name for a city. Paris was the singular cause for the fall of Troy in ancient Greece. This son of Priam and Hecuba, King and Queen of Troy, had slipped into Athens, stolen Helen, wife of Agamemnon, and carried her back home to Troy. Because of that, the Greeks and the Trojans warred, battled and slaughtered one another for over 10 years. The Greeks won eventually. Under the cunning advice of Odysseus, better known under the Roman name Ulysses, the legendary Trojan Horse was built and presented as a gift from the Greeks to the Trojans. Inside the horse were Greek soldiers who, once inside the gates of Troy, erupted from within the wooden beast and conquered the fabled city.

Paris. The future of the human race can almost be charted by names alone. The poetic underpinning of all communication, no matter what the language, carries Jungian symbolism that, when examined closely enough, determines the fate of millions.

The city of Paris was the birthplace of an anti-Judeo-Christian ideology, but it wasn't until the advent of Da Vinci that the ultimate Anti-Christ was found.
...
...
Beijing said if it detects even the slightest movement within our atomic missile system, it will rain atomic bombs on us. It won't matter by 2012. By then, should a Chinese missile even lift one foot out of its silo, our own missiles will be released and reach our targets before the Chinese atomic salvo reaches theirs. God willing, SDI will take out at least a third of their incoming. The world, the entire human race, of course, will be rooting for us. There'll be no doubt about that. Why? Because we'll be watching the Red Chinese Trojan Horse bring all of Europe to its knees.

Whew!

Andrew Gottlieb, in Sons Talk about Their Gay Fathers (Life Curves), invokes paradigms from ancient Greece:

Deep down, whatever the reality, all boys want to know who their fathers are.  That some never get to know firsthand is, perhaps, the Tragedy of Sonhood.  For those who do find out, such as Telemachus, the quest ends happily.  For others, such as Oedipus, it ends tragically.

Page 13 goes into more detail about the two stories.  Ok, ok, Gottlieb is not saying that the fathers of Telemachus and Oedipus were gay...it's part of the background...

The San Francisco Chronicle notes a new Young Adult fantasy novel, Rick Riordan's The Lightning Thief:

A social misfit afflicted with dyslexia and attention deficit disorder, 12-year-old Percy Jackson is used to being thrown out of schools for bad grades and disruptive behavior. But he truly begins to question his sanity when his math teacher turns into a monster and physically attacks him during a field trip. He manages to fend her off, but a subsequent encounter with the Minotaur straight out of Greek mythology sends him fleeing to a magical sanctuary on Long Island.

Percy learns that he is  the "half-blood" offspring of an Olympian god and a mortal woman. After a bit of training among with satyrs, centaurs and naiads, he learns that he is destined to undertake a terrible quest. He and two friends set off to confront the king of the Underworld. They must retrieve lightning bolts stolen from Zeus himself before the  world is plunged into chaos to rival the Trojan War.

Percy isn't nearly as well-behaved as Harry Potter, but one can't help but feel that Riordan hasn't done enough to escape J.K. Rowling's long shadow. Too much of "The Lightning Thief" falls into patterns familiar to anyone who has read even a handful of fantasy novels for younger readers. Percy and his fellow demigods may attend a special summer camp instead of a boarding school, but the book dwells too long on intramural rivalries, well-meaning but feckless sidekicks and a villain so terrible his name must not be spoken. "The Lightning Thief" offers taut action and good-natured humor, but Riordan needs to deliver a significant infusion of novelty to propel Percy's story through any subsequent volumes.