December 7: What Cicero Least Expected (Vol. 12, pp. 222-231)

On this day in 43 B.C., Cicero was killed by Mark Antony's soldiers. Cicero had just been named governor of Sicily and returned to Rome expecting a hero's welcome. Instead, an able statesman and superb orator was cut down by a rival.

Our ace reporter Plutarch tells a familiar story of how Cicero had to deal with the various trials and intrigues that every Roman leader seemed to face. Very few of these guys died peacefully in bed.

December 6: Moralizing as a Seductive Art (Vol. 27, pp. 73-80)

The last issue of "The Spectator" was published this day in 1712. Joseph Addison, one of the English essayists who wrote for "The Tatler" and "The Spectator," is today's author. The two selections are all over the map. "The Vision of Mizra" is hallucinatory nonsense. "Westminster Abbey" is a meditation on death, and is slightly more readable. Neither are quite my style.

December 5: Poems by an Artist's Model (Vol. 42, pp. 1181-1183)

On this day in 1830, Christina Georgina Rossetti was born. She is one of the few women included in the Harvard Classics, and she supposedly was known as much for her beauty as for her poetry (as well as being Dante Rossetti's sister).

It's hard to tell how good a poet she is from the four poems they selected. They mostly dwell on death in an Emily Dickinson-like way.

And yes, Miss Dickinson's work didn't make it into the series. A modern remix of the series would probably swap Christina for Emily without a second thought.

December 4: The Queen Weds a Poor Stranger (Vol. 13, pp. 152-162)

Another sequence about Aeneas and Dido from Virgil's "Aeneid." No thank you.

December 3: Met the Gods of Ten Thousand Worlds (Vol. 45, pp. 603-612)

More religious mumbo-jumbo, this time from the non-Christian branch. "The Birth of the Buddha" is as silly as the Holy Grail sequence of yesterday.

December 2: Practical Jokes in King Arthur's Day (Vol. 35, pp. 128-134)

Sir Thomas Mallory's "The Holy Grail" makes a reappearance today. It's still just as unreadable today as it was when we last encountered it, and the images of scenes from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" overwhelm any objective attempt to read it.

December 1: Are Skeptics Faulty Thinkers? (Vol. 37, pp. 189-199)

The answer to that question, according to philosopher George Berkeley, is yes — when it comes to religious belief. Today's selection from "Three Dialogues" deals with the question of atheists and freethinkers, but as is the case with Berkeley's stuff, it is convoluted and hard to follow.