February 2003
A Renaissance bestseller is now available on this site: The Courtier of Baldassare Castiglione, translated from the Italian by Sir Thomas Hoby in 1561. Also, I have revised "Why Stoics?" to explain why Cicero and Seneca dominated Renaissance ethics rather than Epictetus and MarcusAurelius, whose Stoicism differs considerably from that of Cicero and Seneca.

October 25, 2001
The reason for the improved look and feel of this website is the excellent work done by Karin Evans, Ph.D., and her associates Jill McKenna and Kelly McCormack, who have copyedited the text, made some formatting changes, and improved navigation links. They have not yet done the book texts (see disclaimer). I am sure that visitors will find the site cleaner and easier to use.

June 9th, 2000
Spenser's Faerie Queene (1596), Sidney's Arcadia, and Hall's Characters are now available from the Books page. At long last I have finished automating all the indexes of the books now on-line and converting all texts to strict HTML protocol, so that they will expand or shrink to the size of your window. 

January 20th, 2000 
By special request, James I's Basilikon Doron (A King's Gift), is now available.

December 15th, 1999
We inaugurate the third millennium by exploiting the hypertext medium to the fullest extent. The fastest and surest way of finding out what a text has to offer is to follow its hyperlinks into the farthest recesses of its anatomy. To that end we are linking our indexes to the text locations to which they refer. The first book to be so electrified is Cicero's De Officiis, now ready for inspection. The rest of the books should follow in fairly quick succession, by virtue of a program I have written that can link 200 index entries to a text in three minutes.  Maybe you can use this program!

August 23rd, 1999
We are now installing Montaigne's Essays in three volumes. In his own time, Montaigne was known as "the French Seneca," a fact abundantly confirmed by my indexes to Seneca and Montaigne.

July 15, 1999
Now available on the Books page is Thomas Elyot's Boke of the Governour, the primary English vernacular manual of virtues desirable in persons who hold positions of authority in government. Published in 1531. 

June 1999
The contents of the first four volumes of Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans, in Thomas North's famous translation (1579), are now available. The fourth volume is in John Dryden's translation (1683-1686), which sets forth Plutarch in a more modern vocabulary and is derived from a better Greek text, unavailable to North. Unfortunately, macular degeneration, a form of partial blindness, has interfered with my optical scanning process, so that further volumes of North's Plutarch are indefinitely postponed. Elyot, Montaigne, and the rest of the books promised on the home page escaped the macular curse and will become available in the coming months. 

May 1999
We have now added Source, Table of Contents, and Index information to the items on the Books page so that you can inspect these particulars before deciding which book to study. 

May 1999
Users who were dismayed by the numerous typos (thanks very much for alerting me) will be glad to know that we think we have rooted most of them out. I will be very grateful to hear about any errors of any kind that we may have committed. The fact is that my eyes went bad a few months ago (macular degeneration) so that I am more error-prone than I like to be. Thank goodness the books and articles on the site were produced before my eyes went bad.

This page last updated February 24, 2003