The Spiked Guns of Scholars Militant

Ah, the liberal arts. The artes liberales. The trivium and quadrivium. The education of free citizens; the accumulated learning of antiquity preserved in the medieval university and passed on to the modern age. Grammar, logic, rhetoric, astronomy, arithmetic, geometry and music: the disciplines that turn a man into a gentleman. The liberal arts, the very foundation of our shared humanity, the eternal truths that unite us all regardless of culture or creed. With them, life itself is sweetness and light; without them, hopelessly philistine.

Well, that’s the theory at any rate. In reality, the liberal arts date from a time when “free citizen” meant “heavy infantry”. Back in ancient Athens, Socrates served with distinction as a hoplite in battles at Delium, Potidaea and Amphipolis. His student Xenophon was the cavalryman who led the “ten thousand” home from Persia. An even more accomplished student of the liberal arts was Alexander of Macedon, who conquered the world…