A fake artifact from my true youth

[womzilla]

PNH linked to this post on A Marginal Revolution giving Chomsky summarizing a famous passage from Augustine's The City of God.

Rather than go through four layers of quotation, here's the original:

Indeed, that was an apt and true reply which was given to Alexander the Great by a pirate who had been seized. For when that king had asked the man what he meant by keeping hostile possession of the sea, he answered with bold pride, "What thou meanest by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, whilst thou who dost it with a great fleet art styled emperor."

And here's the promised artifact:

Comments

[martin-wisse.livejournal.com]

Oddly enough, I was just thinking about that the other day; it made the rounds back in 2003 iirc, just before the war on Iraq.