October 11: From our sporting correspondent

Ribs and the man I sing: eager fans anticipating book V of the Aeneid.

How about we cast off the cares of our collapsing civilization and go to the world's number one most favorite sport? No, not soccer -- a boat race. And we're not going to a boat race, we're going to read about one.

In verse.

In translation.

Who's still psyched?

All right, fine, go look at your 401K statement -- I don't care. Let me just tell you what the third-place finisher gets:

Yet, for his galley sav’d, the grateful prince
Is pleas’d th’ unhappy chief to recompense.
Pholoe, the Cretan slave, rewards his care,
Beauteous herself, with lovely twins as fair.

A slave girl or three. It's the same incentives they use now to linebackers in college football, so I guess there really is nothing new under the sun. I can't think of a better way for Aeneas to memorialize his deceased father. Second prize, of course, is a set of steak knives.

The pregame tailgate is also SEC-worthy:

Æneas then advanc’d amidst the train,
By thousands follow’d thro’ the flow’ry plain,
To great Anchises’ tomb; which when he found,
He pour’d to Bacchus, on the hallow’d ground,
Two bowls of sparkling wine, of milk two more,
And two (from offer’d bulls) of purple gore...

I've stepped in worse in parking lots. Good call on the beef blood, BTW -- excellent for hangovers.

I have sports I would like to watch myself, so I will only add that the festivities seem to be taking place hard on the heels of Aeneas ditching Dido and getting the hell out of Carthage -- much like Don Fernando in the morning reading, I hate to say, except that this is also an early example of a guy breaking up with a woman and immediately seeing if there's a game on.