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The Franciscan editors made every reasonable effort to trace rights holders to any copyrighted material used in this journal. In cases where these efforts failed, the department welcomes communications from copyright holders, so that the appropriate acknowledgments can be made in a future edition and to settle other permission matters when outside fair use. All rights reserved. No parts of this publication may be reproduced, translated, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form in any means: electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher. The only exception includes reviewers who may quote brief passages. Any member of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for educational use, or those desiring to include the work in an anthology, may direct inquiries by email to [email protected].

Second Edition.

The Franciscan Journal of History Vol. 2

Concordia University Irvine History and Political Department

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Dedication

This edition of The Franciscan is dedicated to Professor Rebecca Lott and Dr. Jeffrey Mallinson. Their encouragement, motivation, and dedication were instrumental in the publishing of this journal during this year full of trials.

Professor Lott’s continued support for this journal has been the cornerstone to its publishing. She was not only crucial to its inception, but also infallible in her commitment to the quality of the journal and the needs of her students.

Dr. Mallinson’s love for history, liberal arts education, and his students has been inspirational during this year. A second edition of this journal may not have been possible without his support.

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In Appreciation

Historical Editing Instructor Professor Rebecca Lott

Senior Editor Jacob Lange

Editing Staff Autumn Borg Ryan Dunn Makenzie McMullen

Aerie Director Professor Kristen Schmidt

Department Chair Jeffrey Mallinson, PhD

Dean of Arts and Sciences Bret Taylor, PhD

Acting Dean of Arts and Sciences Kerri Tom, PhD

University President Michael Thomas, PhD

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Table of Contents

Letter from the Senior Editor ------1 Editors’ Awards ------2 Articles Reflecting Absence: Review of The Stages of Memory: Reflection on Memorial Art, Loss, and the Spaces Between ------3 Nigeria’s Constitutional Crisis: The Need for Philosophy ------6 An Exploration of “Good Government”: The Republic of Siena in its Golden Age, 1260- 1355 ------22 The Original Party Animals: A Study of Costumes in Aristophanes’ The Birds ------35 Seeing God: The Lost Art of Christian Mysticism ------41 “My Fellow Citizens…”: The Cultural Effects of American Foreign Policy during the 1950s on the Literary Works of Heller and Updike ------45 The Lost King of the Gilgamesh Epic ------55 The Reader is Dead: The Legitimacy and Impacts of Social Media Poetry ------62 The Tyrant’s Triumph: How Pindar Extols Hieron of Syracuse Through Poetic Innovation ------71 Author Biographies ------77 Editorial Staff ------79

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Letter from the Senior Editor

Looking back, this year has certainly been quite different from what was expected, and this edition of The Franciscan certainly different from what I envisioned when I took the role of Senior Editor last spring. As a team, we have had to overcome unforeseen challenges, adapt to unknown circumstances, and still strive to produce a journal that reflects the academic excellence and intellectual curiosity central to the mission of Concordia’s History Department. Yet, with a reduced staff, with meetings consigned to computer screens, and with all of the uncertainties imposed by a global pandemic, I am proud to say that The Franciscan holds fast to its commitment to encourage historical discussion and sharpen the minds of readers and contributors alike.

This edition of The Franciscan contains nine articles from both students and alumni, ranging from discussions of ancient near eastern cultural history to postmodern poetry, from Athenian theatre to Sienese political tradition. They are all exemplary scholarly works produced by the wise, honorable, and cultivated citizens that Concordia University seeks to train, and they all question the human experience in unique and subtle ways. The excellence of the papers submitted during this tumultuous year stands as a testament to the calibre of Concordia’s students and their commitment to the academic principles of the university.

We are indebted to Professor Rebecca Lott and Dr. Jeffrey Mallinson for the quality of this year’s edition of The Franciscan. Professor Lott’s professionalism and unflagging patience are the reasons that this journal will be published, and she has been a model of constancy during the entirety of this year. Dr. Mallinson’s dedication to his students and to the search for goodness, truth, and beauty are pillars of the History Department as a whole, and to the publication of this journal in particular. While The Franciscan is edited and published by students, we would be lost without the guidance and counsel of such exceptional faculty.

However, I would be remiss if I did not call attention to the wonderful editing staff that has made this publication possible. I was continually shocked by the willingness of the editors to tackle novel challenges, and by the quality of the work they produced without fail. The dedication of these students to the creation and publication of this edition of The Franciscan went far beyond what I could have ever hoped to expect, and the refinement of the journal is a reflection of their consummate ability and hard work.

In conclusion, this publication stands as a continuation of the inspirational work done in the inaugural edition of The Franciscan, and, I hope, as a foundation for its continued success in the coming years as a platform for nuanced historical discussion and incisive questioning. And so, I would once again like to thank all those who made this work possible, and, finally, exhort readers, writers, and historians alike to continue to seek for goodness, truth, and beauty in the stories that we tell.

Jacob Lange Senior Editor 2021

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2021 Editors’ Awards

The Editors’ Awards are given to the papers that best contribute to meaningful academic discussion, demonstrate scholarly excellence, and reflect a deep curiosity for investigation in the field of history. In short, these papers exemplify what The Franciscan seeks to accomplish.

Nigeria’s Constitutional Crisis: The Need for Philosophy Godesulloh Bawa

This article is driven by a complex and nuanced argument regarding the constitutional history of African nations in the wake of European colonialism. The author both sheds light on the unique historical challenges of these nations and posits a novel position on how they might be remedied. In doing so, he demonstrates a tactful approach to modern political discourse and a keen understanding of the interaction between history, culture, and philosophy.

The Republic of Siena Ryan Dunn

The author does an exemplary job of exploring a lesser known historical topic and drawing connections to universal conceptions of good governance. This paper embodies the spirit of seeking out goodness, truth, and beauty in history by analyzing music and art alongside political history. The discussion of political and civic virtue is particularly poignant considering the modern rise of populist and nationalist political movements.

“My Fellow Citizens...” Cultural Effects of 1950’s American Foreign Policy” Jacob Lange

This paper represents the best of interdisciplinary studies. The author interestingly synthesizes American foreign policy and literature, evaluating the extent to which timeless novels like Heller's Catch-22 reflected US grand strategy. He also aptly points out the downfalls of this cultural paradigm, including a "fanaticism" around anti-communism and actual conflict like the Vietnam War.

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Reflecting Absence Review of: James E. Young, The Stages of Memory: Reflection on Memorial Art, Loss, and the Spaces Between. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2016. ISBN 978-1-62534- 257-7.)

Luca Azuma

James Young’s The Stages of Memory explores a relatively new field of historical theory in public history while showing the role of the historian in a public history capacity. The autobiographical way in which Young uses his experiences to present his own struggles and confrontations with problems encountered by public historians in the field proves this work to be a valuable combination of field experience and theoretical, big-picture reflections on his life’s work to show how public historians can apply theory to their own projects. For aspiring public historians, the introduction is useful in setting a conceptual framework from which to approach monuments and collective memory. Here, Young posits that traditional monuments unify a vision of the past in one space of memory, but that this kind of monument is not suited for the post-modern world. Traditional monuments are still erected today, Young implies, because they are the manifestation of cultural longing for universal values (Young, 14). The newer style of monument, the “negative form” monument seen for example in Maya Lin’s Vietnam War memorial (2-3) is one that brings mourners to reflection in a different way. These new monuments create common spaces for interpretation that give the “illusion of common memory”, speaking to a nostalgia for a unifying narrative while in actuality encouraging individual interpretation of events (15). The point which Young clearly conceptualizes is that post-modern monuments have circumvented the politicization of certain subject matter while still addressing important historical realities. With these lenses in place, Young moves us to his experience on the commission selecting the Ground Zero memorial. It is invaluable to see Young’s encounters with different stakeholder groups, from families of the deceased to first responder groups and how their perspectives differed on what the monument should communicate. After many forums with the city at large and exclusively with families of victims, Young’s committee crafted a mission statement once they felt that the proper balance had been struck (36-43). Young is forthright about difficult decisions that had to be made, especially after the first design submitted by the committee tried to please everybody and ended up pleasing nobody, an important lesson to keep in mind for any exhibit (32). Young frankly shares what had to be discarded for the sake of the project and what information made it through the filters. For instance, Young expresses that the committee listened to the families of the deceased to get a sense for the loss and grief at stake with the project, but that they largely discarded their design input (42). Despite this, the committee still gathered public input effectively through surveys and town halls, ensuring that

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this would be a collaborative effort while maintaining enough control to see the project to its end (43-45). The middle section of the book returns to the theoretical, and Young here spends time examining the seminal influence of Nazi Germany in the theory of the public history discipline. Young utilizes the Jewish museum of Berlin as a vehicle for exploring the theoretical underpinnings of public history as we know it, offering a superb study of genocide that public historians and museum curators alike ought to take note of when confronting a troubled past of race/ethnic relations. The problem that Young begins with is how to make the Jewish museum in Berlin “both autonomous and integrative”: having it completely separate from the rest of the museum would only cement the legacy of Jews as aliens in a strange land, while integrating the Jewish wing of the museum completely ran the risk of glossing over Jewish persecution in German history. In order to show “Jewish culture as part of and separate from German culture” (83) Daniel Libeskind’s final design for the Jewish museum made it connected physically to the rest of the museum, but distinct in that the space clearly is reserved for the Jewish history of Germany. Young finds Libeskind’s approach demonstrative of balancing these two extremes while also marking out its own message. Libeskind’s final design “represent[s] un-meaning and the search for meaning” (85) that is at the core of Libeskind’s presentation of the Holocaust, and utilizes an “anti-redemptory design” (88) which does not attempt to right wrongs or apologize for the Shoah, but instead leaves negative space for reflection on loss. The next section on gender and the holocaust is about exhibit content. The concern raised first by Susan Sontag is the tendency of historians to portray Jewish female victims of the Holocaust as “idealized casts of perfect suffering and victimization” and a “spectacle” and subsequently fail to capture “stories women might be telling about themselves” (107). The actual experiences of women in the Holocaust are lost, because they are “converted almost immediately into symbols” (108). This is a variation on the study of shared authority in public history, for though these exhibits are about these women, their input is absent, both in the process itself and in historical evidence presented. Worse, says Young, issues of desire and violence that come with Holocaust women are swept under the rug. This issue, however, is more complex than merely putting these stories in the forefront of museum exhibits. Young brings in the voice of David Liventhal, who posits through his works that Nazi killers and Jewish victims were aware of the sexual dynamics of degradation and mass killings, making the point that these women are murdered and objectified once again in the act of displaying their pictures as part of an exhibit, and in turn exhibit visitors are complicit in this act (116). The opposition of community groups to such exhibits vindicates Liventhal’s perspective, and Young gives no definitive answer to the question of “how far is too far”? This non-answer leaves much to be desired, but perhaps the issue is too situation-specific to offer up a theoretical panacea, and requires the input of many stakeholder groups when implementing these concepts in the field. In the last part of this middle section, Young examines the “terrible beauty of Nazi aesthetics” (127) as another form of shaping public opinion and memory, though more as a study than a guidebook. This section is a case study of the power of monuments in the traditional fashion by creating “a monumentality that denies the multiplicity of experience and forces all to adopt one vision of the world as their own” (135) in the work of Nazi architect Albert Speer, who designed the “Cathedral of Light” demonstration for a Nazi rally and even considered “ruin value” of his work so that it would resemble classical ruins, the lasting impact of the thousand- year Reich once its time too had passed (137). This last section on the unifying nature of Nazi

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architecture pairs well with the following section, in which Young shifts his gaze to Eastern European monuments. Soviet monuments were constructed with similar intentions to those of mid-twentieth century Germany, but here a concerted effort was made to demystify these monuments after the fall of the USSR. The strategies here can just as easily apply to the Nazi architecture or any architecture whose goal is to impose uniformity. Of demystifying efforts in Eastern Europe, Young remarks that “any nation’s monuments can be…decontextualized, stripped of their self-importance, their self-naturalizing continuity, their eternal pretensions” (182). “Once people renege on their collaboration with the monument, its power is gone” (183) he continues, highlighting the weakness of monuments both “positive” and “negative”, a consideration of great weight in the planning of a monument. Young here however, runs the risk of historical revisionism, as the implications of Young’s commentary on stripping these monuments of their power quite literally involves amending historical items. It is a raging issue in the United States today as it pertains to Confederate monuments in the American South, and the answer will prove of great social importance. An alternative to leaving empty space or modifying monuments to reflect their disuse is erasure, a possibility discussed by Young in the final chapter on the case of the Utoya tragedy in Norway, in which several child day-campers were killed in a mass shooting. The arguments for razing Utoya’s cafeteria (and Sandy Hook Elementary school, as Young describes it) “carried a distinct memorial logic of their own—a kind of memory by subtraction…they were looking for a kind of memory act that would enable ongoing life, not disable it” (196). Young opposes this movement, arguing that “the cleansing of [Utoya]…would also amount to a devastating foreclosure of memory, even an unintended whitewashing of history” (196). The Stages of Memory is a work with heavy reliance on an experience-based epistemology, and inexorably comes with all the benefits and detractors of such a way of knowledge. Hearing about Young’s professional experiences and walking in his shoes could not be more valuable to an historian choosing to pursue life outside the ivory towers, and each of his projects is illuminated by a wealth of knowledge and application of theory resulting in effective praxis. The downside of such an approach is the situational nature of each venture which creates inconsistencies and vagueness. As seen above, it results in Young commending the modification of monuments in Eastern Europe while defending the sanctity of monument spaces in Norway and North America. Inconsistency is also extant in many assumptions underlying monument theory that is employed, especially when it comes to the “illusion of common memory” that Young so lauds in the Vietnam memorial. The precept of allowing for individual interpretation with the new “negative form” monuments is abandoned when Young considers the alteration of Eastern European monuments specifically to promote a certain meaning for the monuments. In all fairness, Young’s response to this criticism most likely would be that a situational approach is necessary for the success of a monument and allows for a certain freedom for the commissioners, a considerable point for his perspective.

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Nigeria’s Constitutional Crisis: The Need for Philosophy

Godesulloh J. Bawa

1. Introduction: Africa Has No Countries. “Nigeria is not a nation. It is a mere geographical expression. There are no ‘Nigerians’ in the same sense as there are ‘English,’ ‘Welsh,’ or ‘French,’ The word ‘Nigeria’ is a mere distinctive appellation to distinguish those who live within the boundaries of Nigeria and those who do not” – Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Nigerian Founding Father, 1947.1 Like most African nations, Nigeria seems unable to shake the military-industrial complex that shaped most of its years as a young nation. Nigeria's troubled past is still very much alive in its present, and it shows itself in a few ways. For example, it is interesting to note that Nigeria's current president, Muhammadu Buhari, was himself a military head of state who toppled the government in 1983 until he was ousted by another coup in 1985. In 2015, Buhari, a born-again democrat, ran and won the presidency. Interestingly, although the nation has been under civilian rule for about two decades, Nigerians are reminded ever so often that their country still flirts with its military-defined past in some ways. Such a reminder came in October of 2020. As the United States was rocked by protests surrounding police brutality, similarly charged demonstrations were happening across Nigeria. These protests were focused around the disbandment of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), a branch of the Nigerian police. This branch had been linked to numerous human rights violations against Nigerian citizens, specifically young people. On October 20, 2020, protestors occupied the Lekki Toll Gate in Lagos, Southwestern Nigeria. Demonstrators marched with the Nigerian flag, and some sang the national anthem to avoid harassment from the military and police.2 The reports on this specific day vary, but at some point, the soldiers allegedly opened fire on the protestors, and about 12 people were killed.3 Naturally, the government was initially reluctant to corroborate this story, which contributed to the conflicting nature of the reports. In observing this tragic story, a few questions naturally arise— how could Nigerian soldiers and law enforcement knowingly soil Nigerian flags with the blood of the people they are sworn to protect? How could they do so as these Nigerians were singing the national anthem? Does the Nigerian anthem and its flag truly mean anything? These issues are tied to a more significant question— why have military states been abundant in Africa over the past few decades? These problems are more related than they might seem when taken at face value. One has to wonder why African nations seem to attract military rulers in a way that seems disproportionate to most of the modern world. Ghanaian economist George B.N. Ayittey interestingly states that Africa has had more dictators per capita than any other continent. He also points out that in 1990, only four out of the 54 African countries were democratic, but as at 2011

1 Awolowo, O. Path to Nigerian Freedom. Faber, 1947, 47-48. 2 Mbah, Fidelis. “Waving Flags, They Sang Nigeria's Anthem. Then They Were Shot At.” Police News | Al Jazeera, Al Jazeera, 21 Oct. 2020. 3 "Nigeria: Denials and Cover up Mark 100 Days since Lekki Shooting." Amnesty International.

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(21 years later), the number had only risen to 15.4 One potential reason for this is that when a single individual rises to power over (or in the absence of) a constitution, the military pledges allegiance to the person, not the country. This would be why African soldiers throughout the continent's post-colonial history have committed atrocious acts against their fellow countrymen. This all leads to a harsh but necessary evaluation— Africa does not have countries. Such a statement might seem like an overreaction, but it appears to be a sensible conclusion when attempting to understand the need for the battle for Africa's soul. We will explore this idea a bit further when we begin to dive into the history of Nigeria. The concept of Africa having no countries might seem like a broad generalization, so let us flesh it out a little further in more concrete terms. The idea here is that colonial powers created sub-Saharan African nations, usually for economic reasons. Their earliest post-colonial constitutions functioned more as business agreements than documents that outlined the rights and protections of citizens. In the aftermath of colonization, African leaders drafted most of the early constitutions based on models from the West that often had little thought put into them. The lack of strong foundational African philosophies in these early documents would ultimately prove irrelevant, as most of the earlier constitutions were done away by military dictators. These early post-colonial constitutions were replaced by documents that also lack any foundational principles or philosophies. As a result of this, many modern-day African nations are, in essence, founded upon nothing of substance. Therefore, Africa has no real countries. In this paper, we will explore the messy history of a nation that has struggled to find it’s soul in the aftermath of colonization. We will use Nigeria as a case study to explore some of the foundational cracks that plague many sub-Saharan African nations and lead to their seemingly endless turmoil. We will then explore the need for philosophy, and the role African philosophers will play in rescuing their troubled nations.

2. Pre Independence History. “The labors of our heroes' past shall never be in vain.”— Nigerian National Anthem, Stanza 1, Line 5. At this point, it would be beneficial to briefly explore Nigeria's history. We will not explore every bit of this nation's fascinating and complex history; instead, we will narrow our approach and attempt to understand the first constitutions that governed Nigeria under the British. We will not spend much time on pre-colonial Nigerian Kingdoms because our focus will be on how colonial influence shaped the nation's political future. To understand Nigeria's peculiar and often unspoken history, we must explore the young nation’s ties to the Royal Niger Company. This was a 19th-century mercantile company that operated in West Africa. In 1885, the RNC (Then called the National African Company) began to make economic treaties with soon-to-be Nigerians such as the Sultan of Sokoto.5 These agreements were mostly business-minded, as the Company sought to gain control of the Benue River and Lake Chad. Between 1886 and 1889, Nigeria would be ruled by this Company, and it set up an economic monopoly that set out to commercialize Nigerian products.6 These are important ideas to note because, in essence, the first "constitutions'' that were set up between Nigerians and the British were more akin to business contracts. In line with that, all decisions

4 "How to Defeat Africa's Dictators (Video)." The World from PRX. 5 Pearson, Scott R., 1971. "The Economic Imperialism of the Royal Niger Company," Food Research Institute Studies, Stanford University, Food Research Institute, vol. 10(1), 78. 6 Ibid, 70.

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made on what to do with Nigeria were influenced by the potential economic benefits. In 1900, the Southern Nigerian Protectorate and the Northern Nigeria Protectorate were officially passed on to the Crown. Under the request of Lord Frederick Lugard, a British Colonial Administrator, the two protectorates would be amalgamated in 1914, leading to the creation of modern-day Nigeria.7 Here, we begin to see a glimpse of the unfortunate reality of the nation's foundation. The British established the two protectorates for largely economic purposes, and they were amalgamated for similar reasons. The colonialists gave little or no regard to ancient Nigeria's cultural particularities, and the ordinary people themselves essentially had no say in these actions. As such, the borders of the nation were drawn up for arbitrary purposes. As a result, different tribes and cultures were now brought together under the banner of "Nigeria''— a name chosen by Flora Shaw, a British journalist who would eventually marry Lord Lugard. Some Nigerian historians theorize that the amalgamation of the protectorates in 1914 by Lugard would sow the seeds of cultural enmity that would eventually explode in a civil war about fifty years later. The effects of these cultural tensions are still felt today with countless acts of culturally- charged socio-political violence in the nation. Either way, one could say that Nigeria never truly recovered from its civil war, the seeds of which can be traced back to amalgamation. On the topic of Nigeria's name, it is important to spend some time on the controversy surrounding it. The most widespread tale is that Flora Shaw named the country so because of its connection to the great Niger River. Shaw suggested the name in an article in The Times of London of January 8, 1897. In this article, Shaw made the case that,

"The name Nigeria applying to no other part of Africa may without offence to any neighbours be accepted as co-extensive with the territories over which the Royal Niger Company has extended British influence, and may serve to differentiate them equally from the colonies of Lagos and the Niger Protectorate on the coast and from the French territories of the Upper Niger."8

Shaw sought to provide a more practical name for the nation that took into account its geographic location and its original name, "Royal Niger Company Territories". Running contrary to this tale is a theory that Nigeria was not actually named after the river Niger; instead, the true story is far more derogatory. One of the pioneers of this theory is Natasha H. Akpoti, a Nigerian barrister and politician from Kogi State in central Nigeria. Akpoti tells a tale of a conversation she had on a plane with an "American professor of African History". This professor informed her that the tale of Nigeria being named after the River Niger is nothing more than a lie and a whitewashing of history. He states that Niger Republic, not Nigeria, is named after the River Niger. In reality, Nigeria was named the "Nigger-area” or "Land of the Black Slaves". This is because the area of West Africa where Nigeria now stands was known to have supplied more slaves than any other country, and as such, it was essentially named after what it produced. The professor likened this to Ghana initially called the "Gold Coast" because of an abundance of gold discovered there.9 There are undoubtedly a few problems with this tale, such as the fact that the words of a

7 Isiani, C., Mathias, Obi-Ani A., Ngozika. AMALGAMATION OF NORTHERN AND SOUTHERN PROTECTORATES OF NIGERIA: BLESSING OR CURSE? Department of History and International Studies University of Nigeria, Nsukka. 2019. 2-3. 8 "Flora Shaw Gives The Name - Hogarth Blake Ltd. 9 "Could This Be The True Meaning Of 'NIGERIA'? A White Man Explains - Culture - Nigeria." Nairaland, the Nigerian Forum.

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nameless and faceless "American professor" are not a particularly reliable source. In addition to that, this tale contradicts historical records, such as the news article in which Flora Shaw explains her rationale for providing the name Nigeria. With that said, however, Akpoti is not the only one championing this idea. Professor Akin Oyebode, a Professor of International Law And Jurisprudence at the University of Lagos in Nigeria also has a similar belief. He stated in an interview with Sahara reporters that even the River Niger was not traditionally called so by the indigenous people around it. Therefore, he argues, Nigeria's claim to it as inspiration for the name is shaky. He does believe that the name Nigeria is shameful and should be changed to something more fitting. He also champions the idea that Nigeria gets its root from a derogatory term tied to slavery.10 Here we have two conflicting stories regarding the origin of Nigeria's name. Perhaps the "Nigger-Area” theory is merely just a conspiracy theory that seeks to amplify the wrongs done to Africans by their colonial masters. Maybe there is some truth in both versions of this story. Either way, it is unfortunate that many Nigerians genuinely have no idea where this name came from, and even the people who lived around the time it was named had no real say in the naming process. Regarding Akpoti's conversation with her mysterious professor, it is important to note that her claims are often disputed by Nigerian academics such as Professor Farooq A. Kperogi of Kennesaw State University.11 That said, perhaps we should not be too quick to throw the baby out with the bathwater in her account because one interesting point is made. This professor points out that there are no records available of the 1914 amalgamation document, and Nigerians deserve to know the terms that essentially sold their young nation to the British. Some say that no Nigerians were present at the signing of this document—although this claim is likely inaccurate. More accurately, there were probably about six Nigerians present and thirty Europeans.12 Either way, this amalgamation proclamation, in a way, functions as the first foundational document to Nigeria as we know it today. However, most Nigerians have no idea what it is, and, likely, no one in modern times has seen this document. To briefly recap, Nigeria's borders were carved by foreign hands, its name was given by foreigners and potentially has derogatory undertones, and one of the key founding documents is shrouded in mystery. What then is Nigeria built upon? The phrase "the labors of our heroes' past shall never be in vain" was penned in 1978 and is in the first stanza of Nigeria's national anthem. With the line in mind, we must ask the question— who are the heroes past of Nigeria? Lugard, perhaps? Maybe the individuals who signed the amalgamation document? Most Nigerians would possibly point to Nnamdi Azikiwe or Tafewa Balewa, who were both figures associated with Nigeria's independence, but does Nigeria have no pre-colonial heroes to admire? One part of Nigeria's history that was not touched on in this section deals with the conflicts that arose between the British administrators and the traditional rulers at the time. Such instances include the death of Muhammadu Attahiru I, the sultan of Sokoto who was killed in 1901 as Lugard laid siege against his kingdom in order to bring it under British control;13 and the exile of the Oba of Benin, Ovonramwen Nogbaisi, who was exiled following the attack on Benin by Admiral Harry

10 "Centenary of Amalgamation: Nigeria Must Re-invent Its Name, Flag, Anthem And All -Prof. Akin Oyebode." Sahara Reporters. 11 Kperogi, Farooq A. "Natasha H. Akpoti's Wildly Inaccurate History of Nigeria." Natasha H. Akpoti's Wildly Inaccurate History of Nigeria. 12 Nze, C. Festus, King, Paul, Nigeria, in HANDBOOK OF FEDERAL COUNTRIES 228, 235 (Ann L. Griffiths ed., 2005), 229. 13 Muffett, D.J.M., Concerning the Brave Captains, London, 1964. 204.

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Rawson in 1897 which led to the destruction of the city and the deaths of many indigenous people.14 The heroes of these stories might be the traditional leaders who were killed or exiled by the colonialists for defending their homes. These are some of Nigeria's pre-independence heroes, but most of them are lost to contemporary history. Most of these exiled or killed traditional leaders likely had philosophies that took their people's specific characteristics into account. Perhaps if some of these philosophies were present in the foundational political principles of a young Nigeria, the nation's history might have played out quite differently.

3. The Constitutional Creators. “Since 1914 the British Government has been trying to make Nigeria into one country, but the Nigerian people themselves are historically different in their backgrounds, in their religious beliefs and customs and do not show themselves any signs of willingness to unite … Nigerian unity is only a British invention” – Alhaji Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, First Nigerian Prime Minister, 1948.15 After Nigeria’s amalgamation in 1914, Lord Lugard established The Nigerian Council, also known as The Nigerian Council Of Lord Lugard. This council was composed of 24 official and 12 unofficial members. The members included a few Europeans representing commerce, shipping, and mining. Also present were a few traditional Nigerian leaders and a handful of educated Nigerians from across the country.16 While this council was important as it marked the first time Nigerians were somewhat involved in politics, it is essential to note that it was merely an advisory body. The council had no actual legislative or political power and proved ineffective even as a mere forum for discussion. The council would be dissolved in 1922, as Nigeria became governed by the Clifford Constitution, named after Sir Hugh Clifford. Here, we see Nigeria’s first official constitution. This constitution introduced the elective principle to the Nigerian people, so they could vote and hold political power for the first time. In line with this, a provision was made for the establishment of political parties. Herbert Macaulay, often seen as the father of Nigerian nationalism, would create the first political party in 1923 called the Nigerian National Democratic Party.17 This constitution was certainly not without its fair share of controversy. The newly established legislative body was mostly Europeans, and the legislative powers did not include northern Nigeria. In addition, Nigerians felt as though this new constitution was imposed on them without their input. A substantial amount of power still rested in the hands of the governor-general. Despite its flaws, the Clifford Constitution also saw the establishment of newspapers and essentially sparked the beginning of nationalism in Nigeria. In 1946, a new constitution was established called the Richards Constitution, named after Sir Arthur Richards. This constitution sought to promote the unity of Nigeria and give citizens more opportunities to participate in their government. Unlike the Clifford Constitution, the legislative body under Richards covered the entire nation. Under this constitution, Nigeria would be divided into three regions— north, west, and east.18 In 1951, Sir John Stuart Macpherson would change the constitution again, and the Macpherson Constitution would be established.

14 Obinyan, Thomas Uwadiale. "The Annexation of Benin." Journal of Black Studies 19, no. 1 (1988), 29-40. 15 Albert, Isaac Olawale., Ernest E. Uwazie, and Godfrey N. Uzoigwe. Inter-ethnic and Religious Conflict Resolution in Nigeria. Lexington Books, 1999, 8. 16 Ediagbonya, Michael. Nigeria Constitutional Development in Historical Perspective, 1914-1960, 244. 17 Ibid, 244 . 18 Nze, Festus C., 229.

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Macpherson sought to remedy some of the ills of the past constitutions by ensuring that Nigerians were present at its drafting. With this in mind, the Ibadan All Nigerian Constitutional Conference of 1950 convened on the 9th of January, 1950. The delegates wanted the country to adopt a federal government system that would grant autonomy to the three regions and allow each of them to develop at their own pace.19 The body also set up a Council of Ministers. This body was made up of 18 individuals, with twelve of them being Nigerians. Under this constitution, we also see the establishment of Lagos as an autonomous municipality. In 1954, the Lyttelton Constitution under Oliver Lyttleton was adopted and sought to strengthen Nigeria's federal character. At this time, Nigeria was declared a federation, and the limited autonomy of the regions was recognized.20 Also, Lagos was officially established as the autonomous Federal Capital Territory. The Lyttleton Constitution laid the foundation for Nigeria to become an independent nation. It would be the last colonial constitution, as Nigeria would gain independence from the British in 1960. One might think that after independence, the story of Nigeria’s constitutions would become slightly more stable. Unfortunately, as we enter into Nigeria’s more modern history, some might long for the days when the British handled this nation's affairs, regardless of their motivations. Before exploring this side of Nigeria’s history, a question arises when observing the colonial constitutions— what shall we make of Lugard, Clifford, Richards, Macpherson, and Lyttelton? Shall we call them forbears of Nigeria? Perhaps not, because the nation they presided over is certainly not the same one that exists today. However, between the five of them spans a history over four decades-long. One has to wonder how different Nigeria would be today if Nigerians held more political power throughout this process. These constitutional creators governed Nigeria under appointment from the crown. When all was said and done, Nigeria's shaping was little more than a job they had to carry out. How different would Nigeria be if Nigerian philosophers handled these formative years of the nation? The constitutional creators came from various backgrounds but generally speaking, they had business experience and political and or military exposure. While certainly useful, these alone are not sufficient to handle the governance of a young nation. These alone are not enough to properly consider the nuances present in Nigeria’s socio-cultural climate. What worked in Britain might not necessarily work in Nigeria, and it takes a very deliberate and thoughtful leader to acknowledge this. Like most men of power in history, these five gentlemen certainly were complicated. They were certainly not all benevolent, but neither were they all simply white devils. However, we can say for sure that they were not Nigerian philosophers, and therein lies the problem we will further explore later.

4. Independence. “Nations enshrine mediocrity as their modus operandi, and create the fertile ground for the rise of tyrants and other base elements of the society, by silently assenting to the dismantling of systems of excellence because they do not immediately benefit one specific ethnic, racial, political, or special-interest group. That, in my humble opinion, is precisely where Nigeria finds itself today!”– Chinua Achebe, Nigerian Author.21 On the 1st of October, 1960, Nigeria gained independence. The Nigerian Independence Constitution of 1960 was largely built upon its predecessor, the Lyttleton Constitution. Under this new constitution, Queen Elizabeth II remained head of state, with Nnamdi Azikiwe serving

19 Metz, Helen Chapin, and Library Of Congress. Federal Research Division. Nigeria: A Country Study, 44-45. 20 Nze, Festus C., 229-230. 21 Achebe, Chinua. There Was a Country: A Memoir, 236.

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as governor-general and acting head of state, and Tafawa Balewa serving as Prime Minister.22 Three years after independence in 1963, The Federal Republic of Nigeria was officially born.23 In the newly independent Federal Republic, a republican constitution was established. It was based on the Westminster system in England and gave exclusive powers to the federal government. These powers were present in defense, external affairs, immigration, passports, currency, railways, post and telecommunications, aviation, and meteorology.24 This new republic would see Nnamdi Azikiwe as its first president, and Nigeria was seen as a beacon of hope and democracy in Africa at this time.25 Azikiwe was bold and charismatic, and his Pan-African philosophy painted a picture of a strong, stable, and self-sufficient Africa.26 Azikiwe was, in many ways, a Nigerian Philosopher. However, Nigeria’s first republic would not last very long. As stated earlier, Nigeria's amalgamation superimposed different ethnic groups together and laid the foundation for cultural tensions. The multiple constitutions under the British rulers would re- shape the geo-political zones in other ways that did little to soothe already growing ethnic tensions. Although Nigeria is home to hundreds of tribes, there are three main ones— the Hausas in the north, the Igbos in the east, and the Yorubas in the southwest. At this time, numerous factors distinguished the tribes. Under British rule, the colonial administrators essentially governed Nigeria as two nations, with the north being governed indirectly.27 As a result, the Yorubas and Igbos were generally more educated and had stronger political institutions. By contrast, the Hausas in the north were extremely large in number and held more political power as a result. The Igbos and Yorubas feared a northern hegemony dominated by the Hausas, and the Hausas feared an uprising of strong political opposition coming from the southwest and east.28 All these factors would come to play in 1966 and would lead to Nigeria’s first military coup. Undoubtedly, many factors led to this first coup, and cultural tensions were only a part of the story. However, one could make the point that if these tensions were non-existent, all other problems that plagued the first republic might not have necessarily led to its collapse. Either way, in January of 1966, a military coup was orchestrated by Major Chukwuma Nzeogwu— an Igbo soldier. Among those killed during this uprising were the Prime Minister, the Premier of the Northern Region, the Premier of the Western Region, and several senior military officers. The young soldiers who carried out this coup believed they were doing what was best for their country. They stated that they could see the seeds of corruption and poor governance beginning to blossom, and they felt a preemptive strike was needed.29 Ironically, most Nigerians still lament about the same problems even today. Some say these young soldiers were heroes who sought to liberate a young nation from falling into the hands of nefarious individuals; others say they were foolhardy and broke the country in ways from which has still been unable to recover. In any case, this coup would drastically change Nigeria.

22 Metz, Helen Chapin, 50. 23 Nze, Festus C., 230. 24 Ibid. 25 Metz, Helen Chapin, 209. 26 Ibid, 40-42. 27 Smith, Edwin W. "Indirect Rule in Nigeria: Miss Perham's Great Book." Journal of the Royal African Society 36, no. 144 (1937): 371-78 28 Nze, Festus C., 230. 29 Metz, Helen Chapin, 216.

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The 1966 coup would ultimately fail, as the Nigerian Major-General Aguiyi-Ironsi (also an Igbo man) took charge and arrested the insurgents. In taking control of the country, Aguiyi-Ironsi abolished the federal system and adopted a unitary one in its place, effectively doing away with the regions and marking the end of the First Republic. In adopting a unitary form of governance that he felt was needed at this point in the nation’s history, Ironsi further escalated tensions and reinforced many fears of the northerners at the time.30 Because Igbo soldiers masterminded the coup, it began to be unfairly characterized as an Igbo coup, and persecution of Igbos in the nation began to rise.31 The northerners lashed out, and the killing of Igbos became commonplace. Tensions would continue to boil until northern officers staged the countercoup of July 1966. This coup would play out in the north’s favor, and restore the northern hegemony. It would lead to the assassination of Major-General Aguiyi-Ironsi, and the establishment of Lieutenant-Colonel Yakubu Gowon (a northerner) as the new head of state.32 Although Gowon reinstated the federal system, relations between the federal government and eastern Nigeria, now under the control of military governor Colonel Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, were very strained.33 Around this time, the Igbos sought to form their own nation to flee from persecution in Nigeria. In May of 1967, the Republic of Biafra was established in Eastern Nigeria as the new home for the Igbos. This was against the will of the Nigerian government, and it led to the tragic civil war of 1967. Although it only lasted for three years, this war would see the deaths of nearly two million Igbo people. Most of them were civilians, and a large number of deaths were due to starvation.34 Some do not view this conflict as a civil war and liken it more to the massive genocide of a helpless group of people by an oppressive government. In the aftermath of the war, Nigeria would struggle to find its place as a nation and would be categorized by a series of subsequent military coups. In 1975, Yakubu Gowon was ousted by Brigadier Murtala Muhammed, who became the next head of state.35 In October of 1975, Muhammed put together a blue-ribbon committee that consisted of businessmen, academics, and prominent political civilian leaders. They were tasked with drafting a new constitution for the nation, and this act as well as several other reforms made Muhammed generally admired by the people.36 His rule would be short, however, as another coup orchestrated by Lt. Colonel Buka Suka Dimka would be attempted in 1976. Dimka, like the military revolutionaries before him, cited corruption and lack of proper governance as some of his motivations. The 1976 coup led to the assassination of Murtala Muhammed. Dimka’s coup would eventually be quelled by Nigerian government troops and would end with the military eventually executing him and his co-conspirators.37 In the aftermath of this, Lt. General Olusegun Obasanjo (the first Yoruba to lead the nation) would be appointed head of state. Under General Obasanjo, an assembly was elected in 1977 and tasked with drafting a new constitution. This led to the establishment of the 1978 Constitution, which was meant to serve as the foundation of the Second Republic of Nigeria. This constitution abandoned the Westminster system that defined the First Republic and instead embodied a system more akin to the American

30 Ibid. 31 Nze, Festus C., 230-231. 32 Metz, Helen Chapin, 216. 33 Ibid, 216. 34 Ibid, 60. 35 Nze, Festus C., 231. 36 Metz, Helen Chapin, 70. 37 Ibid, 71.

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approach with an elected President.38 In 1979, elections were held, and Shehu Shagari was sworn in as Nigeria's first president and commander-in-chief. General Obasanjo oversaw the creation of this Second Republic and handed over power to Shagari.39 This event marked the first time in the nation’s history that a leader willingly stepped down and handed over power. Although it certainly was not perfect, the Second Republic had quite a few redeeming qualities and offered new hope for the troubled nation. However, it too would be relatively short-lived as another military coup was brewing. On the 31st of December, 1983, a group of senior army officials overthrew the democratically elected government of the Second Republic. Among these officers were General Muhammadu Buhari, General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, and Brigadier Sani Abacha. General Buhari would be appointed head of state, and unsurprisingly cited corruption and poor governance as the major reasons for the coup.40 Buhari would rule until 1985, when he was ousted by one of his colleagues and previous conspirator, General Ibrahim Babangida (who is often referred to by the charming nickname “Evil Genius”).4142 Babangida attempted to add some variety to the script by stating that Buhari’s human rights abuses and poor handling of the economy (in addition to corruption and bad governance) were the causes of the coup.43 Under Babangida’s reign, an alleged coup was supposedly masterminded by Major General Mamman Jiya Vatsa in 1985. However, this accusation against Vatsa (which led to his execution) still remains highly controversial even today.44 Babangida’s regime would also survive a violent coup orchestrated by Major Gideon Okar in 1990.45 In 1989 under immense pressure to step down, General Babangida promised a transfer of power to civilian rule and drafted the 1989 Constitution. Elections were held in 1993, and Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola, a Yoruba man, emerged as the winner. Once more, a new and hopeful future awaited the nation, as Abiola was beloved by many.46 General Babangida, however, would declare the elections fraudulent and nullify the results. This action led to social unrest within the country, with many citizens feeling wronged. Babangida’s actions would lead to the extremely controversial imprisonment and eventual death of Abiola, who would be jailed by Sani Abacha, and die under mysterious circumstances on July 7, 1998, the day he was supposed to be released.47 Babangida’s actions were beginning to soil Nigeria in the eyes of western powers, which had been championing democratic movements in Africa at the time. The US halted aid to Nigeria, and the UK threatened to sever ties with its former colony.48 Under immense pressure, Babangida resigned in 1993 and appointed Chief Ernest Shonekan, another Yoruba civilian, to replace him.49 Shonekan

38 Ibid, 71-72. 39 Ibid, 72. 40 Nze, Festus C., 231. 41 Admin. "IBB at 75, Says 'I'm Not an Evil Genius'." THISDAYLIVE. 42 Ikpoto, Edidiong-Ronny. "5 Things to Know about the 'Evil Genius' IBB as He Clocks 79." Daily Times Nigeria. 43 Metz, Helen Chapin, 221. 44 Adebisi, Yemi. "Before We Forget Mamman Vatsa." Independent Newspapers Nigeria 45 Metz, Helen Chapin, 221. 46 Vanguard. "The Military Underrated Abiola's Popularity - Sen Zwingina, Campaign Manager." Vanguard News. June 13, 2013. 47 Damilola Agbalajobi Lecturer. "June 12 Is Now Democracy Day in Nigeria. Why It Matters." The Conversation. February 02, 2021. 48 Faul, Michelle. "NIGERIA NULLIFIES ELECTION." The Washington Post. June 24, 1993. 49 Kenneth. "Nigerian Ruler Cedes Power to Civilian." The New York Times. August 27, 1993.

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became the interim president and was in office for three months before he was quietly ousted by the then Minister of Defence, General Sani Abacha. Sani Abacha is generally considered one of the cruelest and most corrupt despots in African history. In 1994, he officially placed his government above the courts and dissolved all the federal agencies, effectively giving himself absolute power. His regime was characterized by military brutishness50 and wanton embezzlement of the Nigerian treasury.51 He would rule until his somewhat mysterious and sudden death in 1998, and would be succeeded by Major General Abdulsalami Abubakar.52 General Abubakar would begin the final transition that ushered in the Fourth Republic. Elections would be held, and on the 29th of May, 1999, former military leader Olusegun Obasanjo would be sworn in as the president and commander-in-chief of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.53 This marked the beginning of the Fourth Republic and brings us to modern-day Nigeria. To say that Nigeria’s journey from independence to date has been convoluted and tumultuous would be an understatement. The bloody and tragic history of this nation truly is unsettling to ponder. However, all the turmoil would perhaps be justified if the Fourth Republic finally lived up to the hopes and dreams of countless fallen Nigerians. We will discuss this final republic momentarily, but we must first reflect on the post-colonial history we have briefly explored. It would be fair for us to ponder a question similar to the one we raised earlier— what shall we make of the post-independence leaders? The founding fathers such as Azikiwe, Balewa, and Obafemi Awolowo were set to lay the philosophical foundation of their young nation. The first coup would change the nation's trajectory and plunge Nigeria into a decades-long state of ideological turmoil. Indigenous Nigerian systems, practices, and philosophies were left to die as military dictatorships imposed wholly un-African ideologies on Nigerian soil. Constitutions were reduced to mere pieces of paper that were almost illustrative in nature because of how quickly they were done away with. Nigerian artists, philosophers, poets, and writers such as Christopher Okigbo, Chinua Achebe, Fela Kuti, Mamman Jiya Vatsa, and Wole Soyinka were jailed, beaten, killed, or ostracized. Nigeria’s political philosophies were broken, and the nation's shared identity was sought after but never found. The lack of trust among the military rulers who ousted each other with little remorse painted a picture of a nation that did not know what it was founded upon. It showed a nation with no underlying philosophical principles to trust and lean upon. “There Was a Country” is the title of a famous novel by Nigerian author Chinua Achebe. In this book, he gives an account of growing up in a young and hopeful Nigeria, and he expands upon life in the short-lived home of the Igbos, the Republic of Biafra. The “country” in this title could indeed be associated with Biafra. After all, it was a country that lived for a time and then died. However, this sentiment could easily be applied to Nigeria. Perhaps one could say that there was a Nigeria. It was built on little but was armed with enough hope and optimism to make something out of itself. Since then, Nigeria’s national soul has been tainted by its rulers, and what little foundation it was built upon has nearly withered away. Azikiwe had a vision for Nigeria and was fueled with a Pan-Africanist dream of a strong Africa. The founders before the fall of the First Republic were certainly not without their faults; however, we could outline their philosophies and hopes for Nigeria, and this is their distinguishing factor. Out of all these

50 Nigeria: Statements on Assassination, 6/5/'96. 51 "U.S. Freezes More Than $458 Million Stolen by Former Nigerian Dictator in Largest Kleptocracy Forfeiture Action Ever Brought in the U.S." The United States Department of Justice. October 09, 2014. 52 Nze, Festus C., 231. 53 Ibid, 232.

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demoralizing circumstances, the Fourth Republic was ushered in, and Nigeria’s constitution that rules it today was established.

5. The Constitution of the Fourth Republic. “WE THE PEOPLE of the Federal Republic of Nigeria…”– Preamble to the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

“Therefore, a whole generation of Nigerians was reared without knowing the constitution, its value or significance. About 60 percent of Nigerians today are under 40 years old, meaning the vast majority were raised in a constitutional vacuum.”– George B.N. Ayittey.54 There are two minor grievances and one major one that we will bring forth against Nigeria’s current constitution. First, at just under two hundred pages, the constitution is quite long. This in itself is not inherently a problem; however, it seems as though some of the information housed in the text is redundant. The unnecessarily long length of the document makes it difficult for most Nigerians to know what it contains. This goes hand in hand with the second grievance: the constitution is written with far too much legal jargon. It appears as though it was not written for the average Nigerian to comprehend easily. This is problematic because it is meant to serve the average citizen. Ideally, the average person should be able to read and at least have a working understanding of what the constitution says. The primary grievance deals with the fact that we do not entirely know what this current constitution was built upon or who exactly was present at its formation. General Abdulsalam Abubakar was undoubtedly present as the head of state that oversaw its creation. But that leaves much to be desired. The United States Constitution is ideal in that the framers who were present are all well known. We can map out their philosophical beliefs and contributions to the constitution. This is a luxury that Nigerians do not have. In line with this, there seem to be no foundational philosophies etched within the text. In a situation where numerous Nigerian citizens cannot read their constitution, they should be able to depend on the transcending ideas that live in the text to show them their rights as human beings and Nigerians. Constitutions are fascinating in that they are, in some ways, a union between abstract theories of humanity and practical implementations tailor-made to fit the people they are meant to serve. Nigeria’s constitution does a fair job at outlining citizens' rights, but its lack of a strong philosophical foundation shows through the cracks. The question must be asked— what exactly makes this current constitution different from the ones that preceded it? It essentially exists on the same level as most of them, yet they were fragile enough to be cast away at the whim of a dictator. This current text has the luxury of existing in more contemporary times where a military uprising might be met with substantial international backlash. However, this constitution does not stand on anything remarkable and does not bring anything new to the story. Like most constitutions, the Nigerian preamble begins with the phrase “WE THE PEOPLE…”. Unfortunately, the people do not connect with this constitution in any way. This is not a constitution established or admired by the Nigerian people. The average Nigerian has likely never glanced at it, and it would not be far-fetched to assume that some rural Nigerians do not know it even exists. The constitution promises many rights to the Nigerian people, but the people are unmoved by the pseudo-comforting words of this document that is alien to them. The people long to connect to the spirit that led to the writing of the words. Some Nigerians might be

54 "George Ayittey: The Constitutional Vacuum." Daily Post Nigeria. July 01, 2012.

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surprised to learn that they have a constitutional right to life and prosperity that their government is meant to protect. Such knowledge would be shocking because it seldom feels like this is the case. In essence, this is why there needs to be a philosophical foundation to the constitution. Nigerians need to be able to connect to the abstract principles of the human condition and understand them in Nigerian contexts. Nigerians need to look at their constitution not as a document shrouded in mystery that is inaccessible to them, but as a text that defines what it means to be Nigerian, what the nation is built upon, and what it holds dear. Even if the average person cannot read the constitution, they must be able to connect to its foundational principles. This is especially true in a nation like Nigeria, with a large illiterate population. Expressing the contents of a constitution to a large part of the country orally would not have a meaningful impact unless the words are rooted in a strong philosophy that connects with the people. Pre- colonial African constitutions such as the Kurukan Fuga of the Mali Empire (one of the world’s oldest constitutions)55 were largely passed down orally, yet they were successful because they connected to the people on a profound, philosophical level. The current Nigerian constitution, with all its jargon, fails to do this fundamental task. The history of Nigeria has been defined by colonial statesmen, politicians, economists, businessmen, military dictators, and lawyers. It needs to be influenced by philosophers as well.

6. The Philosopher. How might we define the Nigerian philosopher? Perhaps this task is as daunting as attempting to answer the very question “What is philosophy?”. In the literal sense, the philosopher is one who loves wisdom. In this context, the Nigerian philosopher is one who properly understands Nigeria, including its peculiarities and needs. This would be someone with a heart set towards the pursuit of wisdom and truth, and would also be a person who seeks to understand these concepts in the Nigerian context. Such a person would set themselves towards virtue, whether they are involved in politics, economics, or military service. Such philosophers would have been instrumental in shaping the nation at critical moments of its founding. However, such individuals might still be able to play a role in the battle for Nigeria’s soul. This battle must be fought on many different fronts because modern-day Nigeria has many issues to overcome. The economic front often gets a lot of attention as Nigeria struggles to lift its citizens out of poverty. The political front is often emphasized as widespread corruption and misgovernance are commonplace and serve to show the rot in the political system. The nation's socio-cultural tensions have been ever-present, with the rise of the Indigenous People of Biafra movement (IPOB) in 2012,56 the emergence of Boko Haram terrorists in the northeast in 2009,57 and the clashes between Fulani herdsmen and farmers that have begun to spread to the south.58 All these sides of the battle for Nigeria’s soul are vital and should be given attention. However, there is another front— the philosophical front. This is often overlooked and not adequately addressed. Shedding light on this is one of the primary purposes of this paper. Nigeria’s soul is in turmoil, and it cries out to cling on to something higher. It longs for something to believe in and soothe the wounds of its tragic past that never

55 "Manden Charter, Proclaimed in Kurukan Fuga." UNESCO. 56 "Nnamdi Kanu and the Indigenous People of Biafra." Council on Foreign Relations. 57 Adibe, Jideofor. "Explaining the Emergence of Boko Haram." Brookings. July 09, 2018. 58 "Herders against Farmers: Nigeria's Expanding Deadly Conflict." Crisis Group. April 29, 2020.

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truly healed. It needs an identity; this identity will not be discovered by politicians or activists alone. Nigerian Philosophers must seek it out. One of the potential reasons why the philosophical side of the battle is often overlooked is the impracticality of it. One could say that Nigerians do not need philosophy; instead, they need food, safety, and money— and this would be a valid point. Philosophy, historically speaking, has been the pastime of those who need not bother themselves with the toils of this world. Philosophy is nothing to a man who does not know where his next meal will come from, and many Nigerians sadly fall into this category. Why, then, the emphasis on Nigerian Philosophy? As stated earlier, there are different sides of the battle, and the other more jarring fronts too easily overshadow the philosophical. In addition to that, like most sub-Saharan African nations, modern-day Nigeria is a fascinating experiment. The great American experiment was an attempt to see what would become of a republic built on shared values, fundamental self-evident truths, and certain foundational philosophies. The unofficial great African experiment was a quest to see what would become of artificially created countries after being left with little ties to their historical identities and are essentially forced to forever live in the shadow of their tragic race- defined history. We established earlier that Africa has no countries, and the final effect of this is still yet to be seen. Nigeria is hanging by a thread and resting upon nothing. What will happen when the next monumental chapter in the nation’s story comes knocking and throws the country into disarray? Talks of another civil war and a mass exodus already fill the Nigerian air. Who should be present to put the pieces of the nation back together if it breaks apart? It cannot be the old politicians, as they would likely be part of the reason Nigeria reached a breaking point. One thing is clear, should Nigeria collapse, its philosophers must be there at its funeral, and they must stand firm and carefully work towards its resurrection.

7. The Collapse. “It is better for us and many admirers abroad that we should disintegrate in peace and not in pieces. Should the politicians fail to heed the warning, then I will venture the prediction that the experience of the Democratic Republic of Congo will be a child’s play if it ever comes to our turn to play such a tragic role”— Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, Nigerian Founding Father, 1964.59 One of the reasons why it was vital to layout the history of Nigeria is to be guided as we think of the future of the nation. The constitutions of the first and second Republics were done away with, and that of the third never even saw the light of day. We must ask the question— what makes Nigeria's current constitution relevant? In pondering this, another related question arises: is Nigeria's history of socio-political destruction doomed to repeat itself? As we saw earlier, most military figures who took Nigeria by force cited an abundance of corruption and bad governance as their driving factors. These two concepts are still alive and well in Nigeria today. The country regularly scores poorly on all world corruption indexes,60 and with about 83 million people living below the poverty line, Nigeria is consistently one of the most impoverished nations in the world.61 We must ask the question— is a collapse of the fourth Republic imminent? Let us

59 Tamuno, Tekena N. "Separatist Agitations in Nigeria since 1914". The Journal of Modern African Studies 8, no. 4 7(1970): 563-84, 574. 60 "Corruption Perceptions Index 2020 for Nigeria." Transparency.org. 61 "Overview." World Bank. https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/nigeria/overview#:~:text=Economic overview&text=Nationally, 40 percent of Nigerians,people could fall into poverty.

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explore this question. If Nigeria were to collapse, there are two potential ways it could happen. First, an uprising led by the people, and secondly, a civil war. Many Africans today are angry. They are angry because they have been left in the dust to rot by corrupt leaders, they are furious because their ancestral homes are no longer safe, and they are pained because their communities are falling apart before their very eyes. It might not be long before the people reach a breaking point. If the day comes when Nigerians decide to revolt against their government, what would stop them from doing so? Nigerians do not have any strong, enduring ideas to find hope in and cling to. When they see Nigeria, they do not see the hopes and dreams of founders who poured their hearts, souls, and minds into their country's foundation. They only see a broken nation on life support. With nothing left to clasp to, what would stop revolutionaries from rising? The second potential reason for collapse would be civil war. One could say that certain parts of the country are currently at war already due to ethnic tensions, so this idea is not entirely far-fetched. The primary reason why the civil war is a possibility deals with the unresolved conclusion of the initial conflict in 1967. The tensions that led to the civil war were never actually remedied. More accurately, they have mutated and are now much more complicated. The exacerbation of cultural and religious tensions might spark a conflict in the nation that would potentially lead to a restructuring of some of the country's fundamental foundations. Even if a civil war were to break out and be quenched by the Nigerian military, it would likely be a hollow victory like the one that marked the ending of the initial war. This is because the physical conflict might be won, but the ideological battle would still be in full force, and, likely, the tensions would not simply evaporate into thin air. Talks of a civil war brewing lightly fills the Nigerian news waves nowadays.6263 The question we must ask is, when certain tensions reach a boiling point, would empty hopes of a united Nigeria be strong enough to stop the nation from descending into chaos? The great African experiment is still unfolding before us. The futures of African nations are difficult to predict due to the instability attached to these countries still searching for their stolen souls. Empires rise and fall, nations conquer and get conquered, rulers gain power and lose it all, and as we have seen in Nigeria, republics crumble— this is the story of humanity. Somewhat understandably, most Nigerian leaders talk of the nation’s unity as an absolute given, and something that is not negotiable. However, they should not be so pompous as to begin to think that Nigeria’s “proud” history will be strong enough to help the nation weather the coming storms. Nigeria has fallen before, and nothing tangible stops it from falling again. The only chapters of the nation's history that its people might cling to are the tales, philosophies, and practices of pre-colonial kingdoms. But these kingdoms were not Nigeria. “Nigeria’s” history begins in 1914, and the events since then have done nothing to safeguard the future of the country. Given the “young” age of African states, the continent is still in the process of metamorphosing. Some surprising events in Africa's recent history that show the unpredictability of this continent include the military coup in 2017 that ousted Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe after his thirty year reign,64 the controversial leadership style of Paul Kagame that set Rwanda on a

62 "Nigeria on the Brink of Civil War, Nun Says." Crux. March 05, 2021. 63 "Act Now to Prevent Another Civil War, Arewa Youth Forum Tells Buhari." The Guardian Nigeria News - Nigeria and World News. February 18, 2021. 64 Mackintosh, Eliza. "Zimbabwe's Military Takeover Was the World's Strangest Coup." CNN. November 21, 2017.

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new path after its tragic history,65 the unexpected act of blacks in the diaspora returning to Ghana,66 the election controversies surrounding musician Bobi Wine and his presidential bid challenging the thirty-five year reign of incumbent president Yoweri Museveni in Uganda,67 and the relative successes of the END SARS protests across Nigeria.68 The casual observer of African states could deduce that the continent has not yet achieved stability that proves it is ready to play its part in the modern world properly, and is still searching for its identity.

8. Conclusion. Constitutional reform in Nigeria is not a new idea. In 2014, former President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan set up the 2014 National Conference. Delegates were brought in from all over the country to tackle some of the nation’s most pressing issues. The idea here was to bring representatives together with hopes that their deliberations would lead the country in the right direction.69 This event could have been a significant turning point in the nation's political history, precisely because the constitutional conference was composed of Nigerians engaging in dialogue and attempting to pave the way forward. It was a slightly constrained endeavor, however, as the federal government allegedly established “no go areas” that essentially barred the delegates from discussing anything that could suggest the break-up of Nigeria.70 Either way, since Johnathan’s defeat by Muhammadu Buhari in 2015, the conference's resolutions were never fully implemented. President Jonathan stated that he believed the final report contained the answers to many of Nigeria’s problems. He also stated that with 2015 being an election year and the National Assembly being preoccupied with political survival, there was no time to implement these new laws properly.71 Although the National Conference never fully achieved what it set out to accomplish, perhaps Nigerians could take comfort in the fact that such a gathering was possible, and the proceedings and resolutions are all accessible to them. This document drafted a hundred years after the lost amalgamation agreement might one day become a part of Nigeria’s political history. But even then, we must ask—is it too late? Are constitutional amendments alone enough to cover the deep cracks that cripple the document? It is interesting to note that although this paper's focus was on Nigeria, there are parallels that can be drawn to most sub-Saharan countries that are still struggling to find their identities in the aftermath of their troublesome histories. A constitution void of meaning cannot hope to provide any transcendent meaning to its citizens. The great African experiment is still underway, and struggling nations are still in the process of understanding their place in Africa and the world. On some level, a call for revolution might be necessary for these nations—a revolution for and by the people to wrest power from their despotic rulers. There is a place for that, but this paper calls for a different revolution— a philosophical one. The African philosophers of the

65 "Rwanda's Paul Kagame - Visionary or Tyrant?" BBC News. August 02, 2017. 66 "Ghana Looks to Long Relationship With African Americans for Investment." Council on Foreign Relations. 67 "Uganda's Presidential Elections Mired in Controversy." Anadolu Ajansı 68 "How the End Sars Protests Have Changed Nigeria Forever." BBC News. October 23, 2020. 69 "Analysis: What Did Nigeria's National Conference Achieve?" BBC News. August 26, 2014. 70 Vanguard. "National Confab: FG Insists on No-go Areas." Vanguard News. March 16, 2014. 71 "Jonathan: Solution to Nigeria's Problems Is in Confab Report." The Cable. July 11, 2019.

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future will play a part in the redemption of their nations. Young Africans must think about these things now and be ready when the time comes. The battle for Nigeria’s soul and Africa as a whole is underway. Although it seems like a losing conflict, and hope might be too far away to catch a glimpse of, Nigeria’s soul is not beyond redemption; and a brighter future might be within the grasp of those Nigerians who set themselves towards it.

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An Exploration of “Good Government”: The Republic of Siena in its Golden Age, 1260-1355

Ryan Dunn

Numerous crises that the Kingdom of Italy, a constituent state of the Holy Roman Empire, faced in the tenth century allowed for the rise of central Italian city-states and principalities, among them, the commune1 of Siena.2 The absence of a local hegemon, a strategic avoidance of the Florentines, and the pro-Ghibelline (pro-papal) leanings of the Sienese were conducive to Siena becoming a regional power bdroker as it developed into a republic in the twelfth century.3 From its onset, the republic enjoyed widespread civic and religious engagement, mostly centered on the construction of the Cattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta (Cathedral of the Assumed Saint Mary) and the comparatively modern hospital Santa Maria della Scala (Saint Mary of the Stairway).4 Local businesses engaged in extensive commerce with the Papal States and Holy Roman Empire, which granted strategic access to the Adriatic Sea and circumvented the republic’s enemy, Florence.5 From Siena’s strategic position between the Tyrrhenian Sea and the Papal States to the Via Francigena that connected central Europe to Rome via Siena, the republic enjoyed its status as a predominant power comparable to the Papal States and the Republic of Florence.6 These factors contributed to Siena’s future success. In 1287, Siena took on a new form of government that brought about substantial success: an elected council of nine members of government, known as the Nove (nine); the newfound civic participation, among other factors, led to the development of a novel conception of what the Sienese called “good government.”7 During a time when much of Europe tied its identity to various leaders – that is, leaders who personified the state – Siena, on the other hand, put its hope in ideals and values alone. This entire Sienese political philosophy laid the foundation for the Renaissance long before the Florentines or Venetians did. This paper argues that it presents a model for those seeking to create a “good government.” The uniquely Sienese idea of good government is that government which encourages civic engagement and has expansive views of the rights of citizens, invests heavily in art patronage, practices a secularized civil religion, and creates modern public works programs, undergirded by the aim to bring to fruition the public good.

1 It is worth noting that “commune” originates from the Latin commūnis (“common” or “ordinary”) and is understood to be a large gathering of people who live together in a common enterprise and common life. Thus, medieval Siena, like many medieval principalities, can be understood to be a commune. In modern Italy, the Comune di Siena is understood to be the Municipality of Siena. 2 Mario Ascheri and Bradley Franco, A History of Siena: From Its Origins to the Present Day (United Kingdom: Taylor & Francis, 2019), 1. 3 Ascheri and Franco, A History of Siena, 2-3. 4 Ascheri and Franco, A History of Siena, 2-3. 5 Ascheri and Franco, A History of Siena, 4. 6 Petra Pertici, The Fabric of History: Power, Prestige and Piety in Siena in the Pellegrinario of Santa Maria Della Scala (Siena: Betti, 2015), 1. 7 Pertici, The Fabric of History, 2.

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The Sienese Conception of Good Government Naturally, the Sienese conception of “good government” focuses on the republic’s form of government: a council of nobles elected to their posts by popular vote, reinforced with strong civic engagement and modern services that artistic propaganda reify. Siena’s literature, architecture, and modern fables express its unique notion of “good government.”8 One prominent example is Il Buon Governo di Siena (“The Good Government of Siena”), which is biccherna 16 (“chancellery of finance 16”), one of the Republic’s Finance Ministry’s decorative book covers that commemorate Tuscan religion, philosophy, and history:

Gabella, Il Buon Governo di Siena, Biccherna 16. Archivo di Stato di Siena, Siena, Italy, 1344.

This biccherna’s text reads:

Libro dell ‘entrata e dell ‘escita de la / Generale Cabella del Comune di Sie/na da chalende lulglio infino a klende gennaio anni MCCCXLIIII anoo depto / Al tenpo di Do(n) Franchescho Minucci / Monaco di San Galgano Chamarlen/go e bindo Petrucci Giovanni M/eio Baldinotti Mino d’ Andreoco / Signiori Eseguitori della detta / cabella nel detto tenpo.9 This text roughly translates to:

8 Wolfgang Drechsler, “The Contrade, the Palio, and the Ben Comune: Lessons from Siena,” Trames Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences 10, no. 2 (January 2006), 99. https://www.academia.edu/7795655/The_Contrade_the_Palio_and_the_Ben_Comune_Lessons_from_Siena 9 “Biccherna 16,” Archivo di Stato di Siena, http://www.archiviodistato.siena.it/museobiccherne/it/46/biccherna-16.

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The book of the entrance and exit of the / general head of the commune of Sie/na from [the] first day of July until [the] first day of January of the year 1343 / in the time of Lord Franchesco Minucci / monk of San Galgano (a nearby abbey) Charlama/gne and Bindo Petrucci (shortened name, referring to Bindo di Petruccio Forteguerri), Giovanni de M/eio Mignanelli Baldinotti (name, possibly translated as – John of My Bold Nights), Mino d’Andreoco, (name, Mino of Andreoco) / the performing Sirs of the saying / of the head in this time. The Sienese included inscriptions and images like the one above throughout their literature, art, and architecture. This specific biccherna, the State Archive of Siena explains, is based directly on Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s frescoes, The Allegory of Good and Bad Government that will be explored in more detail later. The individual pictured above, dressed in black and white (the colors of Siena’s seal), represents the city’s government. He wields a scepter and a seal, indicative of the sovereign power of the Nove. At his feet are Aschio and Senio, the legendary twins who are said to have founded Siena.10 Moreover, the text itself refers to the incorporation of taxes (referred to as gabella) by three noble families: the Forteguerri, Baldinotte, and d’Andreoccio families, which were conducive to Siena’s success. This one example among many indicates the extent to which the Sienese believed in their government system: depicting it on the finance ministry’s official records. Civic Engagement The Contrade One cornerstone of the Sienese conception of good government is ordinary citizens' engagement in the political and cultural process. While other principalities had some civic engagement, the extent to which the Sienese participated in their governance makes them unique in medieval Europe.11 Siena had a unique system of 17 contrade12 (districts), each depicted by an animal, a coat of arms, particular colors, a motto, a local parish, and a patron saint.13 Beyond the Nove that led the entire Republic of Siena, each city district had an elected seggio (seat) and an accompanying governing body. These bodies were wholly distinct from the governing body of the nine, which augmented political engagement since the Sienese could participate in the leadership of their own contrada in addition to the entire republic.14 The contrade also engaged in cultural events, had social gatherings for women, age-specific groups, and sports groups. Churches baptized infants into their respective contrada, and those who died carried symbols of the contrada with them into the grave and on their gravestones.15 Perhaps most significantly, due to a lack of separation between the living spaces between the rich and the poor, the contrade united all echelons of Sienese society together in a fraternal spirit – a facet of the republic that impresses even Marxist historians (who believe class divide permeates all history).16 This districting system allowed for active participation in the localities’ governance; the sense of community that developed makes Siena unique among its usually monarchical contemporaries.

10 “Biccherna 16,” Archivo di Stato di Siena. 11 Drechsler, “The Contrade,” 100. 12 Note: contrada is singular and contrade is plural. 13 Drechsler, “The Contrade,” 104. 14 Drechsler, “The Contrade,” 109. 15 Drechsler, “The Contrade,” 105-106. 16 Drechsler, “The Contrade,” 109.

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Even among other city-states, none developed such a system that harbored so much political engagement. Modern historiography tends to focus on specific social events as opposed to the contrade themselves, but this tells an incomplete story of the republic. Yet, this unique system of political subdivisions has “intrigued historians, anthropologists[,] and sociologists” in modern times.17 Perhaps the lacking historical literature on the contrade results from the fact that this system implicates sociology more than history. Some sociologists have described the deepness with which the Sienese feel attached to their contrade as a sort of “cognitive ethnology” that surpasses what historians can articulate.18 The rituals connected to the districting system contribute to a mystic Sienese civil religion that seems to be unique among medieval Europe, where the Sienese perceived their home literally as the best place in the world.19 This grandiose mysticism, Drechsler aptly warns, “[I]s so seductive… hardly any scholar would study it without some initial sympathy – and if it was [sic] not initial, it would surely come after the first Palio.” Thus, as this paper attempts to explain, scholars must find a balanced view of the Sienese Republic based upon proper historical methods. With that in mind, history still indicates that the mystic relationship that the Sienese shared with their contrade deeply impacted their ontology, for the Sienese believed that they were in the most modern, most excellent society, with the best government. It seems that some part of this claim rings true, for Siena was more progressive than its European counterparts. Il Palio It is impossible to understand the contrade without also understanding the most important Sienese social event: il Palio (the pallium). While the Sienese had many events that marked civic engagement, none were (or are today) more substantial than this twice-annual horse race in the city’s central plaza, Piazza del Campo (the Camp Square). The festivities begin with a corteo storico (historical procession) that captures Siena’s history and devotion to the Virgin Mary. Ten of the 17 contrade send in one horse each for the race itself; thus, the contrade and the palio can only be understood collectively, for both lose their significance without the other. More important to the Sienese than today’s most significant sporting events, the palio “is larger than life,” somewhat like a “drug, virus, incurable illness, madness, or fever.”20 In the end, the victorious jockey receives the specially made blue pallium (hence the name of the race) with the Virgin Mary’s image on it.21 Yet, this event marks not just a race, but captures the entire essence of Sienese life: friendly competition, community with one’s contrada, city-wide unity in religion, entertainment, sport, and, of course, good government. It is a “play, game” and “ritual,” an event that glorifies Siena and its history.22 The people felt a deep devotion to Siena, to the Virgin Mary, and to the ideals that the republic stood for all in this twice-yearly event. Citizenship

17 Drechsler, “The Contrade,” 102. 18 Drechsler, “The Contrade,” 102. 19 Gerald Parsons, Siena, Civil Religion and the Sienese (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), chapter 1. 20 Drechsler, “The Contrade,” 111. 21 Drechsler, “The Contrade,” 110. 22 Drechsler, “The Contrade,” 112.

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Likewise, Siena was more progressive than its contemporaries concerning to whom they granted citizenship and what citizens’ entitlements were. An early humanist writer, Francesco Patrizi of Siena, expounded upon the idea of Sienese citizenship, and more broadly, citizenship in a republican government. Political historian James Hankins notes that Patrizi – and Siena – were “less restrictive” than other Italian cities (who built their governments on some restrictive Aristotelian conceptions of citizenry) in that they did not exclude “city dwellers” or those who “work for a living in agriculture or the trades.”23 All men were able to vote, participate in the government, and elect their leaders.24 In 1309, the republic translated its constitution into Italian and made it accessible to the people.25 While theoretically anyone could run for office in the Nove, custom expected ordinary citizens to “have enough public spirit to recognize their own strengths and weaknesses to defer to those of greater abilities.”26 Siena was, therefore, a meritocracy that trusted its citizens to vote for whom they believed to be the most meritorious. Given the placement of Siena amid the Via Francigena, the Sienese also welcomed pilgrims that traveled through the republic. No other principality in medieval Europe had such a progressive view of citizenship or voting rights; Siena followed the example of Roman and Greek antiquity a few hundred years before the rest of Europe, laying the stage for the Renaissance before the rest of Europe. No matter one’s class, the privileges and immunities were consistent, each man was able to cast a vote and participate in his government. This system contributed to the notion of “good government” and seems to make Siena a comparatively fine government. The Republic of Siena’s civic engagement, captured by its districting system, progressive citizenship benefits, comparatively early resurrection of the classics, and its Palio, mark it unique among its European counterparts. All these aspects indicate that reality dictated the Sienese conception of good government, for it held substantially good values that would serve as a precursor to the Renaissance. Secular and Modern Art The art of the Republic of Siena, like its civic engagement, was more modern and trendsetting than the rest of the medieval world. Part of participating in the good government was documenting, depicting, and artfully expressing the Sienese government’s effectiveness. Today, some historiographical debate exists regarding whether Siena's art falls under propaganda or genuine artistic liberty. Some modern historians suggest that the Nove used art to exert subtle control over their populations.27 Painting When Ambrogio Lorenzetti painted his masterpiece fresco collection in 1338, The Allegory of Good and Bad Government, he manifested not only his own political beliefs, but the prevailing political thought of the Republic of Siena. The Nine had paid Lorenzetti to decorate their meeting room in the Palazzo Pubblico (town hall), where he painted frescoes depicting good government, bad government, and their respective effects in the city and the entire

23 James Hankins. Francesco Patrizi of Siena on Virtuous Citizenship in a Republic (Cambridge: Harvard, 2020), 7. 24 Hankins, Francesco Patrizi of Siena, 8. 25 Ascheri and Franco, A History of Siena, 7. 26 Hankins, Francesco Patrizi of Siena, 11. 27 Ascheri and Franco, A History of Siena, section 3.

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republic.28 Remarkably, this piece is the first secular fresco since the fall of the Roman Empire nearly a millennium before.29 It is unprecedented in scale and scope and served as a very early harbinger of Renaissance art. The piece has a unique ability to “impart information and inculcate a lesson,” with an “omnipotent” lesson in the value of good, Sienese government, and the destructiveness of “bad” government.30 It would not be for another century after Lorenzetti’s death that other Italian artists decided to take up secular art.31 As valuable as his work was, modern historians are beginning to note that Lorenzetti’s work represents a propagandistic, utopian view of Siena.32 He glorified the government and put down any other system of government, contributing to a sort of Sienese elitism unbecoming of a truly modern society. Yet, the Nove government was around for just 100 years, during which time many republics lacked as much stability as Siena enjoyed.33 Lorenzetti, though, captured the enthrallment of the Sienese people: they were proudly one of the most modern republics in the middle ages. His modern art seems to corroborate that point. Beyond political propaganda, Sienese artists began to use modern artistic methods that contributed directly to the Renaissance. Duccio, a Sienese artist, is often cited as the “true founder of Sienese painting” for his focus on a “new decorative system” with “richness and solemnity.”34 Most especially his Maestà (Majesty) altarpiece decorated in 1311 did Duccio vividly depict the Virgin Mary and Jesus surrounded by saints.35 The climate of vast commerce, fine education, and funding of the arts allowed for the development of modern art and art guilds.36 Even in the 100-year golden age of Siena, the republic was able to single-handedly create a new, more realistic art genre that would, in the fifteenth century, sweep the rest of Europe. This facet of Sienese society, then, suggests that the illusion of good government also resulted in modern art, both secular and religious, that some art critics regard as some of Europe’s finest medieval heirlooms. Music The Sienese shared a close relationship with music; specifically, extant folk songs from the era reveal a profoundly intimate connection between the people and their land. One famous example of Siena’s medieval musicology is the unofficial anthem of the Sienese: E Mentre Siena Dorme (And While Siena Sleeps), whose memorable second verse goes as follows: Nella Piazza del Campo In the Camp Square ci nasce la verbena, Where the verbena was born, viva la nostra Siena (Long) live our Siena. viva la nostra Siena. (Long) live our Siena.

28 Wolfgang Drechsler, Good and Bad Government: Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s Frescoes in the Siena Town Hall as Mission Statement for Public Administration Today (Budapest, Local Government and Public Service Reform Initiative Open Society Institute, 2017), 3. 29 Drechsler, Good and Bad Government, 5. 30 Schevill, Siena, the Story, 324. 31 Schevill, Siena, the Story, 328. 32 Drechsler, Good and Bad Government, 10. 33 Drechsler, Good and Bad Government, 10. 34 Schevill, Siena the Story, 310. 35 Parsons, Siena, Civil Religion, chapter 1. 36 Schevill, Siena the Story, 310.

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Nella Piazza del Campo In the Camp Square ci nasce la verbena, Where the verbena was born, viva la nostra Siena (Long) live our Siena la più bella delle città!37 The most beautiful of the cities.

This song, Izsó explains, relates to the mystic union that the Sienese had with their land: they believed that the verbena plants, which grew in the Piazza del Campo, were placed there by God; thus, some used these plants in magic formulas.38 This song is similar to a love poem for the city since “[t]he love for Siena belongs to the Sienese as the love between man and woman.”39 This intimacy between the Sienese and their land certainly heightened the sense of patriotism the Sienese felt. Another folk song properly captures this attitude, boasting, “Ah, ah ah! O che giorni felici! / O che bei momenti!” (“Ah, ah ah! Oh, what happy days! / Oh, what good times!”).40 The Sienese tended to feel deep patriotism for their land, a patriotism built up by the belief in their values and their government, built up by folk music. In addition, Izsó notes that the repetition and rhyme scheme of Sienese folk songs made them easier to memorize for the medieval Sienese, leading to their widespread use at civic and religious events like the palio.41 The cathedral and the town square were sites of numerous solemnities and ceremonies attended by thousands of ordinary folks from each contrada.42 The music composed at the cathedral was under the direct control of an advisory board that the Nove, not the diocese, appointed.43 The entire music patronage, in addition to the painting patronages, were funded in large part by the Nove. Their policies of financing the public arts not only bolstered their reputation, but also reified the belief in Sienese elitism. Interestingly, these public patronages were strong enough to outlast the republic itself; they survived after Florence took over Siena in 1555.44 This lasting musical tradition changed the face of both secular and religious music, underlining Siena’s influence on the impending Renaissance. Religion and Good Government Since the Republic of Siena tended to be more secular than its contemporaries, it may seem odd that the Sienese conception of good government is connected to the concept of the papacy; however, this apparent dichotomy may have its roots in political pragmatism as opposed to an inherent connection between the church and state. It would be anachronistic to claim that Siena was ideologically committed to a separation of church and state, but the Sienese held a basic recognition that the church and state hierarchies ought to control into their own spheres of influence and that the immense power of the papacy can be mutually beneficial to the Papal States and the republic. Nonetheless, religion enthralled the Sienese, and they shared a special devotion to the Virgin Mary while remaining comparatively more secular than much of Europe.

37 Zsuzanna Izsó, La poesia delle contrade di Siena (Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, 2006), 44. 38 Izsó, La poesia, 44. 39 Izsó, La poesia, 45. The original Italian text reads, “L’amor per Siena appartiene ai senesi come l’amore fra uomo e donna.” 40 Izsó, La poesia, 33. 41 Izsó, La poesia, 29. 42 Frank D’Accone, The Civic Muse: Music and Musicians in Siena during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1997), 5. 43 D’Accone, The Civic Muse, 5. 44 D’Accone, The Civic Muse, 1.

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Guelphs and Ghibellines The issue of religion in Siena becomes more understandable in the context of the centuries-long medieval conflict between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines. The two factions disagreed on the power and scope of the papacy; the Ghibellines, aided by Siena, were in favor of a powerful pope who had the sole authority of investiture, while the Guelphs, assisted by Florence, preferred a more autocephalous model of the church, where secular governments – especially the Holy Roman Empire – had the power of investiture.45 The first instance of conflict between the two factions was at the Battle of Montaperti in 1260, where the Florentines, aided by Pistoia, Prato, San Miniato, San Gimignano, and Colle di Val d’Elsa marched 30,000 troops toward Siena, who only could respond with a force of 17,000. Though outnumbered, the Sienese killed 10,000 troops (2,500 of which belonged to Florence) and decisively won the battle, considerably diminishing Florence’s power in the region and prompting a Sienese golden age.46 Indeed, this blow struck at the heart of Florentine pride for generations; the illustrious writer Dante Alighieri, himself a Florentine Guelph, confined to hell a traitor in the battle named Bocca in his 1320 Divine Comedy. Perhaps capturing the attitude of all Florentines, Dante humorously imagined himself “passeggiando tra le teste, / forte percossi ‘l piè nel viso ad una” (“walking among the heads / striking my foot hard in the face of one”) for the sake of “la vendetta / di Montaperti” (“the revenge / of Montaperti”).47 Moreover, Parsons notes that the Battle of Montaperti was the single event that heightened the Sienese devotion to the Virgin for the belief that her intercession won them the battle.48 Thus, a civic pantheon began developing as early as Montaperti and the Sienese convinced themselves of their Ghibelline cause. Yet, the question arises: why was Siena pro-Ghibelline in the first place? Schevill explains that the adoption of this stance was a “sober recognition of the fact that… there was only security in the camp of the church”.49 While this stance may not have been voluntary, it is undeniable that Siena recognized the politically pragmatic move: supporting the neighboring Papal States. With a papal alignment, the Sienese gained strategic access to the Adriatic Sea so that they could engage in commerce with the Eastern Mediterranean region. The Sienese did not abuse religion, but rather, understood the geostrategic advantage of aligning themselves with the pope. Thus, another facet of good government is a pragmatic foreign policy that uses domestic fervor – a civic religion – to reach strategic ends. Civic Religion and the Sienese Pantheon Religion also served as a unifying force conducive to a genuinely good government. The Sienese held a civic religion, that is, a mystic belief in the virtue of their sovereign government, which had a duty to maximize the public good. While most modern civic religions are not necessarily religious as much as patriotic, the Sienese intermixed their civil religion with Catholicism. In fact, the patron saints of the contrade served as “a manifestation of local

45 Browning, Oscar, Guelphs & Ghibellines: A Short History of Medieval Italy from 1250-1409 (New York: Cornell University, 1894), 6-7. 46 Browning, Guelphs & Ghibellines, 17-18. 47 Alighieri, Dante. The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri: Inferno (New York: Bantam Classic, 1980), Canto XXXIII, lines 77-78, 80-81. 48 Parsons, Siena, Civil Religion, chapter 1. 49 Schevill, Siena, the Story, 138.

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patriotism” for a belief in the “nearness to the divine powers.”50 Siena closely followed the cult of the Virgin Mary, dedicating to her the cathedral, the local hospital, the entire city, and commemorated her with the Palio, and widely celebrated the Marian feasts.51 The Sienese devotion to Mary, like those of local saints, was based upon a perceived personal connection with the Virgin. In one of the doors to the city’s cathedral, there are four panels that “depict[] an occasion on which it was believed that the Virgin… had intervened to save Siena in a moment of crisis.”52 Additionally, within a century, three Bishops of Siena became Pope: Eugene IV, Pius II, and Pius III53, which immensely contributed to Sienese pride and religious fervor.54 The religious devotion of the people had helped contribute to Siena’s cohesion during its golden age. The city’s foremost mystic and saint, Catherine of Siena (1347-1380), developed a reputation for writing obstreperous letters to some of the most influential individuals in Europe. Though she wrote very shortly after Siena’s golden age, she still encapsulated the Sienese concept of the common good in her epistles. In one such example, written to Andrea di Vanni, a member of the Governo dei Dodici (the republic’s executive body following The Nove), St. Catherine writes, “Ma il giusto per neuna cosa… a fare, l'onore di Dio, la salute de l'anima sua e il bene universale d'ogni persona; consigliando schiettamente e mostrando la verità quanto gli è possibile. Così debba fare, a voler mantenere sé e la città in pace, e conservare la santa giustizia, ché solo per la giustizia, la quale è mancata, sonno venuti e vengono tanti mali. E però io, con desiderio di vederla in voi e mantenerla ne la città nostra, regerla e governarla con ordine, dissi ch'io desideravo di vedervi giusto e vero governatore: la quale giustizia se prima non si comincia da sé… non la poterebbe osservare in veruno stato che fusse. Adunque v'invito e voglio che con ogni solicitudine ordiniate sempre voi medesimo, come detto è, acciò che facciate compitamente quello per che la divina bontà ora v'à posto. Ponetevi sempre Dio dinanzi agli occhi vostri in tutte le cose che avete a fare, con vera umilità, acciò che Dio sia gloriato in voi, etc. Permanete etc. Gesù dolce, Gesù amore.”55 Which translates to: But the just thing… to do, for the honor of God, the health of the soul of the universal good of every person, [is] advising bluntly and showing the truth as much as possible. So should it (the government) act, to desire keeping itself and the city in peace, and to conserve the holy justice, only that justice, which is lacking [while] sleep and many evils came (possibly a reference to the plague).

50 Schevill, Siena, the Story, 76. 51 Schevill, Siena, the Story. 52 Parsons, Siena, Civil Religion, chapter 1. 53 By the time Francesco Piccolomini (Pius III) was appointed the ecclesiastical head of Siena, Siena was elevated to an Archdiocese; thus, he was Archbishop of Siena as opposed to Bishop. 54 Pertici, The Fabric of History, 21. 55 Catherine and Niccolò Tommaseo, La Lettere di S.Caterina da Siena – ridotte a miglior lezione e in ordine nuovo disposte con proemio e note, (Firenze: G. Barbera, 1860).

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But I, with the desire to see it in you and to keep it in our city, to rule it in our government with order, I said that I was desiring to see you, just and true governor: which justice if you yourself do not start first… it may not observe in any fused state. Therefore, I invite you and hope that you command with every solitude, as is often said, to do [these things] politely so that the divine goodness now goes to its place. Bridge always God before your eyes in everything that you do, with true humility, so that God may be glorified in you, etc. You must remain, etc. Sweet Jesus, to love Jesus. St. Catherine captures the political and religious zeitgeist well in her letter. She articulates one of the republic’s primary goals: focusing on its citizens’ spiritual health and material good. In a properly good government, civic religion focuses on expanding the health and happiness of the citizens. In fact, when a civic religion does maximize happiness, one can reason that, like in Siena, the people believe in it more firmly and resolutely. In this way, the civic religion confirms Siena’s belief in the goodness of their government. While Siena likely did not provide for the free exercise of religion during the Golden Age, Sienese Jews lived in relative peace. The civic religion was indeed Catholicism, but the historical record does not indicate that the Sienese generally persecuted Jews during the Sienese golden age. The Encyclopaedia Judaica explains, “There is documentary evidence that a well- established Jewish settlement existed in 1229” that “consisted mainly of moneylenders, who found conditions there favorable for their business.”56 The fact that a Jewish settlement could peacefully exist in the thirteenth century and work in Siena demonstrates the comparatively progressive attitudes of the Sienese. In fact, the neighboring Florence refused to allow Jews to operate money lending businesses until the fifteenth century.57 In Siena, systemic anti-Semitism, primarily propagated by Franciscan friars in the 1400s, would not come until after the Nove’s collapse.58 The Nove focused on welcoming those that other Europeans perceived as outsiders, bolstering their economy, and providing a relatively safe haven for most. Siena’s Civic Religion had crafted celebrations, rituals, and events that led to religious fanaticism and unique civic identity. While most of Europe was overwhelmingly Catholic, small communities, including Siena, celebrated local saints to exercise an early form of nationalism.59 It was as if Siena crafted an entire pantheon of saints; the stories of miracles had “elaborated and asserted… the political power and independence of the city”.60 Parsons notes that Siena “provides an example of continuity between [] the modern concept of civil religion… and the concept of ‘civil religion.’”61 The cult of saints served as a unique identity and conscience that permeates most of European history; the Council of Nine certainly utilized the capital gained by this fact to provide the image of a successful Siena. This method seems to have worked: for religious devotion gave way to Sienese patriotism. Il Duomo (The Cathedral)

56 Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd ed., s.v. “Siena.” 57 Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd ed., s.v. “Tuscany.” 58 Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd ed., s.v. “Siena.” 59 Parsons, Siena, Civil Religion, chapter 1. 60 Parsons, Siena, Civil Religion, chapter 1. 61 Parsons, Siena, Civil Religion, chapter 1.

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Few things capture the extent of Sienese religious devotion more than the Cathedral of the Assumed Saint Mary. Dedicated in 1179 by Pope Alexander III, the Sienese cathedral had “an elevated structure with three naves and three main doors… that gave onto a porticoed courtyard.”62 The high altar, also dedicated to the Assumed Virgin Mary, gave way to the Solemn High Mass celebrated each Sunday and High Feast, sometimes with Sienese polyphony instead of Gregorian chant; at two side altars, canons, intermingled with the public, prayed the Divine Office daily.63 As early as the 1270s, an anonymous painting entitled Madonna degli Occhi Grossi (Our Lady of the Big Eyes), in addition to the newly commissioned Madonna del Voto (Our Lady of the Vow) were given prominent places in the cathedral in thanksgiving to the Virgin Mary for delivering the Sienese in the Battle of Montaperti.64 Also, Duccio’s aforementioned Maestà began gracing the altar in 1311, visualizing the Sienese’s deep Marian devotion. Moreover, a belief in Sienese civic superiority over the rest of Europe presents itself in the form of the depiction of the Sienese she-wolf in the center of a large circular tile in the center of the cathedral’s floor, presenting Siena as the center of the world; emanating from the sides of the central Sienese circle were much smaller circles representing cities like Rome, Florence, Pisa, and others that the Sienese believed to be subservient. As part of the massive investment in the arts that the Nove made, they attempted to make an addition to the cathedral in the mid-fourteenth century. The Nove planned on doubling the cathedral’s size, making it larger than the original St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. They built just one massive wall connected to the southeastern portion of the cathedral before structural problems, in addition to the plague, prevented the completion of this grandiose project.65 Even today, a single large wall and perpendicular smaller wall remain, connected to the cathedral’s southeastern wall: the bones of a once-mighty society beginning to be brought down by pandemic. Thus, during the fourteenth century, the Sienese were enthralled by their religion and dedicated to building the largest, most grand cathedral in the western world. Public Services In the thirteenth century, the Sienese Republic developed several modern public services, continuing to feed into the typification of good government. The Nove created some town courts responsible for overseeing public services throughout the republic, including upkeep of the city walls and clean water fountains.66 Furthermore, the early republic created a state-of-the-art hospital, Santa Maria della Scala (Saint Mary of the Stairway), and in its late days, created Europe’s first bank: Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena (roughly, Mountain of Piety Bank of Siena). These public services indicate that good government must focus on the public good. Education Unlike most European nations during the medieval era, Siena sought to educate as many people as possible. In 1240, the city established the University of Siena, one of the first public institutions of higher learning in the Italian peninsula.67 The university, a world-renowned

62 D’Accone, The Civic Muse, 15-16. 63 D’Accone, The Civic Muse, 15-16. 64 Parsons, Siena, Civil Religion, chapter 1. 65 D’Accone, The Civic Muse, 17. 66 Schevill, Siena, the Story, 128. 67 Ascheri and Franco, A History of Siena, section 2.

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institution, taught Latin literacy, medicine, and early conceptions of the liberal arts.68 It supplied the republic with doctors and lawyers; very few students decided to leave the city in order to continue participating in the perceived good government.69 Notably, Francesco Patrizi called for free universal education in the liberal arts to all young men so that they could become even more engaged in their republic’s leadership.70 In addition to the Nove's actual funding of the university, this remarkable stance marked Siena unique among Europe. The rise of education helped contribute to cooperation between the socioeconomic classes of Siena. This so-called interclassismo (interclassisim) allowed the lower classes to involve themselves in the governance of the contrade and the entire government because of their access to education. In Siena, education was the great equalizer that brought about a harmony not oft seen in the medieval world. It would not be until the Reformation that there would be equally wide calls for free public education in other European nations, giving more credence to the notion of “good government” in the harmonious, relatively egalitarian, Siena. Medicine The previously mentioned Ospedale Santa Maria della Scala, dedicated to the Virgin Mary, began as a rest house for pilgrims trekking the Via Francigena but during the thirteenth century developed into one of Europe's most important medical centers.71 While the diocese founded it, the hospital eventually became a secular institution that survived off of local nobles' donations.72 The Scala was a genuine philanthropic organization and played a “fundamental role in the Sienese state’s stability and economic well-being.”73 The hospital went as far as commissioning artists to decorate it to boost the spirits of those at the hospital and glorify the physicians and nurses provided by the University of Siena.74 Artists decorated the entire hospital with a theme of “efficiency,” which the staff sought out to aid in various illnesses' recovery processes.75 Pertici notes that this hospital was a “lesson in ethics and history,” highlighting “Siena’s experience in providing social guarantees in managing resources… from learning… theology… [and] medicine.”76 This hospital was both a result of, and a contributing factor to, the belief in good government: for it was the Nove and nobles that prompted the hospital up, and the Sienese took pride in it, for it maximized their good and their health. Finances Though after the rule of the Council of Nine, the Republic of Siena in 1472 created the first modern bank in the world: Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena (MPS). The foundation of artistic patronage and maximizing the public good set by the Nove directly led to the creation of Europe’s first bank. In fact, MPS is the successor to the Nove’s Chancellory of Finance, the

68 Pertici, The Fabric of History, 16. 69 Schevill, Ferdinand. Siena: The Story of a Mediaeval Commune (New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1909), 357. 70 Hankins, James. Francesco Patrizi of Siena on Virtuous, 14. 71 Schevill, Siena, the Story, 90. 72 Schevill, Siena, the Story, 92. 73 Ascheri and Franco, A History of Siena, section 3. 74 Pertici, The Fabric of History, 15-16. 75 Pertici, The Fabric of History, 16-17. 76 Pertici, The Fabric of History, 22.

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Biccherna.77 It started as a public bank where customers could hold savings accounts and eventually became a dominant player in Sienese daily life.78 Thus, nobles created the MPS to prevent usury; the people viewed it as a public good.79 This bank, too, served as a precursor to the Renaissance; as Europe’s first public finance institution, it reflected the innovation and trendsetting of the Republic of Siena. Undoubtedly, in the financial realm, the republic served as the harbinger of modern society and thus deserves recognition from history as a profile in competent government.

Conclusion Throughout its thirteenth and fourteenth-century golden age, the Republic of Siena proved itself a substantial cultural force in the Italian peninsula. With all its success, the republic created an idiosyncratic idea of “good government” that provides lessons for both the historian and the modern government seeking virtue. The idea’s expression in art from the Biccherna to Lorenzetti, overwhelming presence in civic engagement from contrade to the Palio, cooperation with religion in art and medicine, and conjunction with public services from the Scala to MPS renders Siena a very progressive society for the middle ages. Even though some of the aspects of the Sienese “good government” were exaggerated by art, the city still served as an overwhelming force of good and philanthropy, even for non-citizen pilgrims and other typically persecuted groups that made their way through. In the face of actual conflict with Florence, the republic’s ideals fared well and brought them success, fostering around 100 years of progressivism and early Renaissance movements in central Tuscany long before the rest of Europe caught on. These factors suggest that Siena, indeed, achieved their goal of creating a “good government.” The historiography of the Republic of Siena, unfortunately, is sparse. While some minor debates, such as whether art was propaganda or not, do abound, the relatively progressive ideas promulgated by the Nove often are not discussed in medieval historiography. It would be wise for historians to explore the Republic of Siena and consider some of the timeless ideas presented. Especially during a time when populism and nationalism are on the rise in many parts of the world, it is beneficial to explore what even some in the medieval world considered civic virtue: expansive views of citizenship, maximizing the good of the many as opposed to the few, and welcoming those from all walks of life.

77 Schevill, Siena, the Story, 106. 78 Drechsler, “The Contrade,” 115. 79 Drechsler, “The Contrade,” 115.

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The Original Party Animals: A Study of Costumes in Aristophanes’ The Birds

Evangeline Gahn

When the going gets tough, the tough get going. At least, that is what Aristophanes’ comedy, The Birds, is all about: the main characters Pisthetaerus and Euelpides are fleeing the “harsh” conditions of their native city of Athens to create a new utopia where the petty concerns that plagued them at home will be a thing of the past. However, the true power of this comedy comes from the author’s masterful combination of theriomorphism and anthropomorphism; that is, the application of animal characteristics to humans and human characteristics to animals. This is typical for Aristophanes, who was known for his creative inclusion of non-human characters in his comedies. However, much of the power such characters have within the play is lost when merely reading the text. A bird-man is not so impressive when one cannot see him in his magnificence (or lack thereof). In addition to this, many of the explicitly bird-coded jokes within The Birds would have been delivered alongside some physical manipulation of costuming for maximum dramatic effect. Therefore, the costuming of The Birds and of Old Comedy in general requires closer inspection in order to truly understand the full effect of this play, as well as developing a more holistic understanding of the Old Comedy style than can be found in texts alone. Theater in Ancient Greece primarily began as part of religious celebrations in honor of the god Dionysus.1 Though comedies were not performed at the Greater Dionysia, which was held within Athens itself, drama remained purely an event of religious festivals.2 Instead, Aristophanes would have premiered The Birds3 at the Lesser Dionysia which, while still a religious festival in honor of Dionysus, was held outside of Athens at a different time of year.4 It is known that The Birds premiered in 414 BC, and that it came in second place, though Aristophanes was a well-known and beloved comic by this point in his career.5 However, in comparison with his other works, the characteristic mockery and lampooning of significant events and public figures which had made his other comedies, such as Clouds and Frogs, so remarkable is missing from The Birds. Though the main characters Pisthetaerus and Euelpides are fleeing the political and social climate of Athens at the beginning of the play, Aristophanes focuses primarily on their determination to create their own city. Nephelococcygia is a utopian society of the birds which they, under the guidance of Pisthetaerus, have built in the air between the realm of the gods in heaven and the earthly domain of men. Aristophanes chose to create an entirely new narrative, rather than specifically using instances from recent Athenian history

1 Eric Csapo and Margaret Christina Miller, The Origins of Theater in Ancient Greece and beyond: from Ritual to Drama (Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 222. 2 Anton Bierl, “Chapter 2. Kômos and Comedy: The Phallic Song between Ritual and Theater,” in Ritual and Performativity the Chorus in Old Comedy, trans. Alexander Hollmann (Washington, DC: Center for Hellenic studies, Trustees for Harvard University, 2009). 3 It must be noted here that any reference to the text of the play will use page numbers, as line numbers were not included in this edition. 4 Aristophanes, The Birds (Auckland, NZ: The Floating Press, 2010), 5. 5 Ibid.

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which could have inspired the story. The play has a surprisingly happy ending as well; when Pisthetaerus demands the beautiful goddess Basileia as his wife and the scepter of Zeus from the ambassadors of the gods, they surprisingly agree, and the play ends joyously with a wedding and peaceful resolution to the conflict.6 There is no clear reason as to why the plot of The Birds is so different from Aristophanes’ other works; however, this does not detract, but rather enhances, the effect of the anthropomorphic theme which is the foundation of this play’s humor. In the comedy, the humor of Pisthetaerus and Euelpides relies primarily on their manipulation of language and the transformation motif which is the foundation of many jokes between the first and second parts. However, the chorus of birds, while contributing significantly to the humor, is also a magnificent display of the power of costuming. Each member of the chorus is dressed as a different bird, some of whom are named as they enter the stage in a grand procession.7 Though Aristophanes certainly brings a unique twist to the tradition of animal costuming with members of the Chorus being dressed individually along a theme rather than as a whole, it is important to note that he was not the only playwright to do so, nor the first. As one may expect, no costumes from the Classical Period have survived to the twenty-first century. Rather, the main source as to what actors and choruses would have worn besides what is referenced in extant texts and fragments comes from pieces of pottery, often made in commemoration of the choregos (wealthy aristocrats who sponsored choruses) who received prizes at the lesser Dionysia.8 These pieces of pottery generally only feature the chorus and the auletes (flute players), never the individual actors who would have played title or supporting characters. Compton-Engle believes this singular focus emphasizes how decadent the costumes of winning choruses would have been. The images depicted on these pots from which scholars are drawing their conclusions are certainly fantastical: hoplite soldiers ride dolphins and ostriches into battle, while on another mysterious cloaked figures creep up behind the auletes on one side, with the other side depicting them throwing off their cloaks to reveal dramatic bird costumes.9 In addition to this, the collection of 22 pieces of pottery to which Compton-Engle is referring dates from 500-480 BC, some sixty-odd years before Aristophanes premiered The Birds in 414 BC. All of these artworks point to a longer tradition which Aristophanes was a part of, and from which he most likely drew inspiration. From these sources it is possible to hypothesize what the original costumes of The Birds might have looked like. Subtle visual cues from costumes were present in all the plays performed in the fifth century BC, which would have been obvious to the original audiences but now must be carefully decoded by modern readers.10 The Birds is no exception to this, and there is an added layer of complexity inherent in its non-human costumes. Where human characters would be dressed as contemporaries of the citizens who made up the audience, a basic understanding of ornithology is necessary when reading The Birds.11 Knowing that Procne is a nightingale, for example, would call to mind the original myth of Procne and Epops, which adds another layer of humor to the already ridiculous introductions between Epops, Pisthetaerus and Euelpides, and the Chorus. However, it is important to note that these costumes were never meant to be “realistic” in the

6 Ibid., 103-105 7 Aristophanes, 26-29 8 Gwendolyn Compton-Engle, Costume in the Comedies of Aristophanes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 110-111. 9 Ibid., 114-116 10 Alan Hughes, Performing Greek Comedy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 178. 11 Ibid., 187

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sense that the audience would not be able to tell that there were, in fact, humans performing on the stage; therefore, the balance between animal and human becomes a necessary facet of the humor of the text.12 The true power of animal chorus costumes came, according to Compton- Engle, through the fusion of anthropomorphism and theriomorphism. For example, Stone has suggested that in Knights, half the chorus members are dressed as riders and the other half as horses. This costuming would add an extra layer of meaning and humor to the chorus’s praise of the (self-evidently human) “horses,” who are described anthropomorphically as leaping aboard ships “manfully...” and taking oars “just like we mortals” …13 Compton-Engle also points out Aristophanes’ subversion of the comedic trope of giving away clothes to beggars by having Pisthetaerus give away wings. In addition to this, the transformation from man to bird by Euelpides and Pisthetaerus would have happened off-stage, and their return after the costume change would have been a powerful moment of revelation.14 This skilled blurring of lines between animal and human is what makes the anthropomorphic nature of The Birds so compelling. It is impossible to discuss the costumes of Old Comedy without mentioning the masks which have become the symbol of Greek Theatre to the modern audience. Though, again, no actual masks have survived to the modern age, there is plenty of artistic representation of them to be found in terracotta vessels, paintings, and sculpture. Modern versions of the comedy and tragedy masks which are most widely recognized today appear to be simple caricatures of the human face, but the actual masks of Old Comedy would each have been highly detailed and individually recognizable. The word “mask” in the way it is used today does not do justice to what the masks of ancient Greek Theater would have been like. The first image which would most likely pop into one’s mind would be a dainty masquerade mask with feathers and sequins, not a humongous, disproportionate helmet with ears, a jaw, and all the facial features of a man which would have encased the entire head of the actor. The masks would have been bald on top, with hair along the back and sides which concealed the actor’s own head, and the color of the mask would have indicated the gender of the character (brown for men, white for women).15 Hughes distinguishes comedic masks from tragic by stating: “As usual, comedy is different. Its expressive masks could convey a clear impression of character, and perhaps ‘dominant emotional states.’”16 In addition to this, the mask would never have been acknowledged on stage as “false,” as a phallus or pieces of clothing would be. While artistic renditions of costumes often highlight seams or flaws which indicate the fact that the figure is not dressed as himself, the mask, but especially tragic masks, would merely have been painted as the character’s face. Hughes concludes that, “It appears, then, that comic costume was linked to the actor, but the mask was capable of independently manifesting a personality.”17 Given this scholarship of comedic masks in general, and Compton-Engle’s study of the terracotta pots depicting animal costumes in comedy from c. 560-425 BC, it is not difficult to imagine that the production of The Birds in 414 BC at the Lesser Dionysia would have featured fantastic masks as the crowning jewels of the costumes. Since it is also known from the text that

12 Compton-Engle, Costume in the Comedies of Aristophanes, 126 13 Ibid. 14 Aristophanes, The Birds, 55 15Hughes, “Performing Greek Comedy,” 166-167 16 Ibid., 168 17 Hughes, 168

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each member of the chorus was dressed as a different bird,18 it appears likely, therefore, that each mask would have been uniquely painted as well. In addition to this, the masks are occasionally directly referenced as the physical component of a joke. For example, Euelpides, upon seeing the beautiful Procne, who has been transformed into a nightingale, says: “I would treat her like an egg, the shell of which we remove before eating it; I would take off her mask and then kiss her pretty face.”19 Merely reading about Euelpides’ desire to crack Procne’s mask open like an egg is funny in its own right; imagine what a spectacle it would have been to have seen it performed in person! Another facet of Old Comedy costume which is often discussed, though not necessarily in regard to The Birds, is the traditional use of phallic humor and the large leather phalluses worn by actors on stage. Though the use of such humor was common in Old Comedy, Aristophanes himself seems to have had mixed feelings about it.20 Beare, in his article on the use of phallic comedy in the fifth century BC, states that he does not believe Aristophanes’ distaste for such comedy stems from a rejection of sexual humor, but rather a distaste for cheap humor which has no wit to back it.21 Aristophanes considered his humor to be more intellectual, not bawdy and unsophisticated.22 In addition to this, Beare does not believe there is enough textual evidence from other plays by Aristophanes which made use of “physical” comedy (e.g. the use of cross- dressing in the Ecclesiazusae) to support the hypothesis that Aristophanes frequently or always made use of phallic humor. In addition to this, the vases commonly cited as evidence of phallic costuming in Old Comedy do not actually seem to be representations of scenes from real plays from the fifth century, as they are dated from the fourth and third centuries, and are of Italian rather than Greek origins.23 There is no direct evidence within the text of The Birds to suggest the use, or lack thereof, of phalluses on stage, but the anthropomorphic nature of almost every character, excluding the gods and Pisthetaerus and Euelpides in the beginning, does not indicate that there would have been. Beare hypothesized that even human characters in other plays, dressed in the day-to-day clothes of fifth century Athenians, would not have made use of phallic costuming.24 Admittedly, the combination of phallic and anthropomorphic costumes would have been an interesting way of combining human and animal features, and it perhaps would not be unfaithful to try and reproduce them in combination in a modern production of The Birds. The use of costumes within the unfolding drama also served as a powerful metaphorical tool. In the introduction to her book on Aristophanic costumes, Compton-Engle says, “to be stripped is to be defeated.”25 It is telling, therefore, that the motion of Pisthetaerus and Euelpides from voluntary exiles of Athens to beloved tyrants of Nephelococcygia is shown at each stage through the changing or adding of garments.26 Additionally, as Pisthetaerus fulfills his first official duties by sacrificing to the gods, he also illustrates his new status by the gift of cloaks and wings to supplicants who come to him.27 Aristophanes also does not have characters finish

18 Aristophanes, 26-29 19 Ibid., 50 20W. Beare, “The Costume of the Actors in Aristophanic Comedy,” The Classical Quarterly 4, no. 1-2 (April 1954): pp. 64-75, 65. 21Ibid., 66 22 Beare, “The Costume of the Actors in Aristophanic Comedy,” 66 23 Ibid., 69 24 Ibid., 73 25 Compton-Engle, 11 26 Aristophanes, 55; 103 27 Aristophanes, 81

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dressing or undress on stage to illustrate power dynamics; in fact, there are no instances of a character entering the stage half-dressed and finishing in view of the audience in any of his extant plays.28 In The Birds, this means Pisthetaerus and Euelpides’ transformations after eating Epops’ magic root happen off-stage, and they then return triumphantly in their new bird-forms to begin construction of the city.29 Now that the basics of Old Comedy costumes and some of Aristophanes’ idiosyncrasies have been explored, it is time to turn the spotlight to the text of The Birds itself. The fact that Aristophanes’ characters are almost all birds, or have bird-like characteristics, is not lost on the author, and much of the action of the play is centered around the physical aspects of anthropomorphism. For example, Compton-Engle cites the inversion of the trope of giving away cloaks as a prime example of how Aristophanes turns the traditions of comedy into something different for his own use.30 Pisthetaerus’ new-found mastery over the costumes of the other characters is also metaphorical for his mastery over the new city. Though it was originally Epops who gave Pisthetaerus and Euelpides wings by the power of a magic root, now Pisthetaerus distributes wings from a basket to those supplicants who stumble upon Nephelococcygia.31 In addition to this, after their transformation Pisthetaerus and Euelpides spend several lines both admiring their own costumes and also mocking each other. However, having had their laugh Pisthetaerus says: “Tis ourselves asked for this transformation...”32 After this, they do not mention their own appearances again, but the dichotomy between man and bird remains central to the humor of the play. Another important facet of Aristophanes’ application anthropomorphic/theriomorphic themes in The Birds arises in one of the few scenes post-transformation with humanoid characters, which is when the gods send an envoy to Nephelococcygia to find out why they have suddenly been cut off from earth. The scene opens with Poseidon, a Triballian, and Heracles arguing amongst themselves; Poseidon fusses at the Triballian about how he has arranged his cloak, which emphasizes not only Triballus’ own idiotic nature, but also the rather foolish caricature of the gods in general that Aristophanes has created. Knowing how to properly wear one’s clothing, especially cloaks, was a sign to others that one was intelligent and sophisticated, not barbaric and stupid.33 This is a standard way of signifying the quality or status of a character in real life, as any Greek would have been able to tell how rich or poor a man was by the style and quality of his cloak. The way in which he wore it would also have provided clues as to his occupation. However, the audience would not have been able to perceive such minute details as fabric quality from their seats, and so comic playwrights had to use other distinguishing features, like the Triballian wearing his cloak over the wrong arm.34 Heracles and Poseidon do not have the benefit of such obvious allusions to their incompetence, but it is this balance between the visually ridiculous Triballian and the dialog between Pisthetaerus, Heracles, and Poseidon which completes the humor of the negotiation scene. The visual and emotional climax of the play comes with the return of Pisthetaerus from Olympus, having just been wed to the goddess Basilea and taking the scepter of Zeus, thus

28 Compton-Engle, 11 29 Aristophanes, 57 30 Compton-Engle 139 31 Aristophanes, 81 32 Ibid., 55 33 Compton-Engle, 142 34 Hughes, 187-189

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essentially becoming a god himself. The Chorus sings his praises, saying: “More brilliant than the brightest star that illumes the earth, he is approaching his glittering golden palace; the sun itself does not shine with more dazzling glory.” Pisthetaerus has once again changed his costume, this time to a bridegroom’s robes and has added the lightning bolt scepter of the king of the gods to his accoutrements.35 In addition to this, Basilea, though she is not a bird herself, would have been dressed in a manner fitting of a divine bride; though, given the rather caricatured nature of the other gods who appear in the play, whether her costume would have been regal or a satire of such pretensions must be left to the reader or director’s interpretation. All in all, The Birds by Aristophanes is a prime example of fifth century Athenian comedy, and the significance which costumes lend to interpretation and enjoyment. Aristophanes’ deft manipulation of language and his ability to tie even the most basic of jokes to the theme of anthropomorphic birds and theriomorphic men has given this play and him as the author a place among the greatest comedic writers. From this study of the history of comedic costumes, traditions in Old Comedy itself, and an in-depth analysis of the references to costumes within the play, it becomes clear that Aristophanes was a master of using costumes to achieve maximum comedic effect. Though reading The Birds is by no means a displeasurable experience, without the visual side of the story the humor is certainly diminished. The true power of Pisthetaerus, Euelpides, the Chorus and their utopia of Nephelococcygia is the way in which it turns the world of men on its head and gives wings to the imagination of its audience.

35 Hughes, 187-189

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Seeing God: The Lost Art of Christian Mysticism

Evangeline Gahn

Christian mysticism is somewhat of a lost art, especially in the modern Protestant tradition. However, there is a rich tradition in medieval Christianity of holy men and women having visions, which they believed to be from God, and recording those visions to share with others. Hildegard von Bingen (c.1098-1179) was one such woman, an abbess from a small convent on the Rhine. Though few people outside of academia have any curiosity about such characters as Hildegard, she is part of an important and often overlooked part of Western canon. Historians have good reason for focusing on such sources as the Venerable Bede and St. Benedict and his Rule when teaching about the west in the medieval era, however, they are not representative of the world which Hildegard experienced. All are holy folk, but Hildegard and her experiences as a mystic and a cloistered nun are but another facet of the history of the Christian church which ought to be explored.

Not much is known about Hildegard’s origins, which is not unusual for this period. A monk from Disibodenberg named Godfrey wrote a biography of Hildegard after serving as her secretary for many years. In the first chapter, he writes that:

Her parents, Hildebert and Mechthilde, although wealthy and engaged in worldly affairs, were not unmindful of the gifts of the Creator and dedicated their daughter to the service of God. For when she was yet a child she seemed far removed from worldly concerns, distanced by a precocious purity.

This is essentially all that is known about her lineage; such facts as the exact date of her birth, location of her childhood, and other such information that a modern scholar would find useful are simply not included, though her biographer knew her personally. Hildegard’s contemporaries were not concerned with Hildegard’s earthly origins. What mattered to them were her spiritual accomplishments and life as a woman dedicated to God.1 Though Hildegard was renowned for her spiritual gifts, the likelihood that she was as pious as a child as Godfrey makes her out to be is likely a stereotype added later to provide a sense of spiritual continuity.2 Though she later becomes an abbess, Hildegard’s introduction to the life of a holy woman did not begin by entering a convent. Rather, she was enclosed with the anchoress Jutta at the Benedictine monastery in Disibodenberg. An anchoress is a woman who lives in a cell attached to a monastery, abbey, or cathedral whose sole purpose is to pray for the clergy of that place.3 Jutta instructed Hildegard in the ways of the psalter and of women when they had finished their duties, until eventually the community of women serving the monastery grew too large for the little anchoress’s cell, and they moved into their own abbey, still attached physically and financially to the monastery. Jutta died when Hildegard was about 38 years old,

1 Flanagan, Sabina. Hildegard of Bingen, 1098-117: A Visionary Life (version 2nd ed.). 2nd ed. Ingram Digital E- Books (t & F), 2008-2014. (London: Routledge, 1998) 1 2 Ibid., 2 3 Mary Wellesley, “The Life of The Anchoress,” March 8, 2018, https://www.bl.uk/medieval-literature/articles/the- life-of-the-anchoress.

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and the records from the time the two women spent together are scarce.4 Shortly after, Hildegard was elected abbess, though there is no reason to believe this was specifically because of the spiritual gifts that would so distinguish her later in life.5 Hildegard’s world was one of uncertain prospects and political instability. Though the twelfth century saw much improvement to the state of affairs after the chaos caused by the dissolution of the Carolingian empire, Germany itself was filled with many princes, magistrates, and lower nobility all vying for power against each other, the Holy Roman Emperor, and the church.6 Hildegard herself viewed the climate of the times as one of spiritual decay and socio- political decline, which is much at odds with modern scholarship of Europe in 1100 CE. One explanation for her rather pessimistic worldview is perhaps that Hildegard did not view her life and work as a part of human history, but as one part of the grand story of salvation, begun with Christ’s death on the cross. If this were the case, then it makes sense that she was none too pleased with the trajectory of the world; though the worldly affairs of most people were improving, Hildegard was not concerned with this life, but what is promised to come after.7 By 1130 or so, Hildegard was finally in a position that afforded her the opportunity to explore Christian spirituality through personal experience. She was the abbess of a convent, mostly separated from the monastery where she had grown up with the anchoress Jutta, and now in her new administrative position she did not have to acquiesce to the orders or needs of the monks. She became a revered local theological authority in her own right, which was not unusual for the times.8 Finally, Hildegard was able to explore the spiritual gifts she had been suppressing since her youth. It is worth noting that her greatest achievements and visions happened only after the death of her mentor Jutta and their departure from the monastery at Disibodenberg.9 Hildegard’s first book on her mystical experiences was called Scivias. She was hesitant to publish at first, having kept quiet about her visions for so long, but the compulsion to share with the world what she had seen was too strong, and publish she did. The English translation of this, called The Book of Divine Works, opens with Hildegard’s own timeline of her visions: “When I was sixty-five years old, I saw a vision of such mystery and power that I trembled through and through, and then fell ill because of the weakness of my body.”10 Seven years later she “completed the vision” by writing it down to share with others. Though by most accounts she had been experiencing these visions for most of her life, it is only now, in her sixties, that they become truly transformative.11 In her vision a voice said to her: Commit to fixed writing these things you see with the inner eyes and perceive with inner ears of the soul to be useful for humankind; so that through them humans might understand their creator and not flee from worshiping him with worthy honor.12 Hildegard also asserts that these visions do not come to her in fits of passion as dreams or “ecstasies,” but that they are truly perceived by the eyes and ears of her soul.13

4 Flanagan, Hildegard of Bingen, 1098-117: A Visionary Life, 2 5Ibid., 3 6 Ibid., 12-13 7 Ibid., 14 8 Ibid., 29 9 Ibid., 30 10Hildegard. The Book of Divine Works. Translated by Nathaniel M Campbell. The Fathers of the Church. Mediaeval Continuation, Volume 18. (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2018) 29 11 Flanagan, Hildegard of Bingen, 1098-117: A Visionary Life, 10 12 Hildegard, The Book of Divine Works, 30 13 Ibid., 31

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Hildegard’s first vision appears to be strikingly unchristian on the surface. It begins with a strange, glowing woman surrounded by animal heads hovering in the southern sky.14 This apparition calls itself “life” and goes on to explain the Trinity to Hildegard and illustrate how God moves through all creatures and the world itself.15 The image in the sky is not, of course, God Himself, but a representation of man’s relationship to Him.16 This is a vastly different way of speaking and thinking about God than what is done later in Catholic scholasticism, which would come to define medieval Christianity, or even modern theology. Here is a woman who is, by all appearances a true Christian, who is taking her faith as it comes to her; but rather than the typical pious actions of prayers, masses, and charity work, God has seen fit to give her special visions to better explain Himself to those who rely on Hildegard for instruction. Her visions are like a strange, mystic catechism. The established church was originally wary of her visions, and according to her biographer Godfrey sent the bishop of Verdun and his deputy to scrutinize her works for marks of heresy. They found no flaws and returned to the pope with a copy of a portion of the Scivias. After reading it, the pope and the college of cardinals commanded her to complete her book.17 Hildegard von Bingen is, in many ways, very similar to the Old Testament prophets, and her visions were seen as reminiscent of the wisdom to be found in scriptures such as the “Wisdom of Solomon,” “Ecclesiasticus,” and the “Wisdom of Jesus ben Sirach.” The female divine which was the center of Hildegard’s first vision has also been related to the allegory of “Sophia,” or “wisdom,” which is often used in the books listed above. Newman posits that the reason for the female gender of both the personification of wisdom in the apocryphal wisdom books, which certainly influenced Hildegard, was not an innate feminist agenda, but rather that in Latin most abstract nouns have a feminine gender assigned to them. 18 In Hildegard’s writing the main purpose for this allegorical being seems primarily to be for the exploration of the Platonist concept of the cosmos, and the ultimate expressions of the Creator’s relationship to His creation, which was the incarnation of Jesus Christ. However, when speaking about the linear, historical story of salvation, Hildegard continues to refer to the Trinity in masculine terms. It is only when discussing the eternal mutual dwelling of God in the world, and the world in God that she uses the feminine.19 It is worth noting, however, that Hildegard is not consistent with her use of grammatical genders, as she claimed not to be familiar with the rules of Latin, and thus exercised much creative freedom in her personifications.20 It took Hildegard three years to finish her book; this is not surprising because although her fame as a mystic continued to grow, it did not diminish her duties as abbess.21 Rather, it increased her convent’s popularity, and c. 1150 she moved the whole operation to a new location at Rupertsberg. During this time, Hildegard did much writing, though rather than a singular large project such as the Scivias, this is when many of her hymns, music, and the Physica (Natural

14 Ibid., 33 15 Ibid., 34-35 16 Ibid., 36 17 Flanagan, Hildegard of Bingen, 1098-117: A Visionary Life, 4 18 Newman, Barbara. Sister of Wisdom: St. Hildegard's Theology of the Feminine. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997) 37 19Ibid., 38 20 Ibid., 54 21 Flanagan, Hildegard of Bingen, 1098-117: A Visionary Life, 4

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History), which survive as fragments only.22 Though the new convent had a rather rocky start, it can be mainly attributed to human frailty and resistance to change, though not of Hildegard herself. Between the years 1158 and 1163, Hildegard wrote her next book Liber vitae meritorum (Book of Life’s Merits), perhaps as a response to the grumblings of the nuns of the convent. Hildegard was active in the community outside of the convent as well, maintaining correspondence with Frederick Barbarossa from the beginning of his reign through the end, most notably during the schism which followed the election of Pope Hadrian IV’s successor from 1159-1177. In addition to this she also went on a series of preaching tours.23 This may seem counter-intuitive, for in the twelfth century women could not be ordained, but female prophets often preached, as they were seen to represent the didactic (teaching) aspect of the apostolic tradition, rather than serving in the sacramental role as priests did.24 Hildegard von Bingen was not, in the grand scheme of Christianity, particularly revolutionary or important to modern theology. Her effect during her life was a local one, and it is no wonder that there is little modern scholarship on her, from a historic or theological perspective. This is perhaps because mysticism as a flavor of Christianity is not very prevalent in the West. Though that may seem to make Hildegard and her visions even less relevant, the opposite is true. In order to understand how Christianity became what it is today, it is important to understand where it came from, and that includes medieval mystics such as Hildegard. When studying Western Civilization, especially from the perspective of modern Christian scholarship, the medieval church tends to be painted as rather one-sided. Hildegard, though unusual in her own right, was not the only Christian mystic of the middle ages; however, as a woman, an abbess, and a “visionary” theologian, she stands out from the crowd. Certainly, men like St. Benedict and the monastery at Cluny were representative of the lives of medieval monks and other cloistered holy men and women, but what they did is not lost to modern Christianity. There are still many monasteries around the world which follow the Benedictine rule. There are not, however, many Western Christian mystical writers, especially in areas such as the United States, which are rather dominated by Protestantism. In order to have a well-rounded, thorough understanding of the history of the Christian church, it is important to also understand historic approaches to faith and teaching that have perhaps been mostly lost to time and appear to be at odds with how modern Christians understand and practice their own faith. Hildegard von Bingen is exactly that; if she were alive and having these visions today, it is likely that she would simply be written off as mad or heretical. However, she represents the union of two common ways of approaching personal faith in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries: that of careful study of doctrine and church teaching, an example of which would be the way the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod teaches the catechism, and then personal interpretation and revelation of the Scriptures as well as divine revelation directly from God, as seen in movements such as the Anabaptists of the sixteenth century.

22 Ibid., 5 23 Ibid., 6 24 Newman, Sister of Wisdom: St. Hildegard's Theology of the Feminine, 54

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“My Fellow Citizens…” The Cultural Effects of American Foreign Policy during the 1950s on the Literary Works of Heller and Updike

Jacob Lange

The 1960s and 1970s are often seen as culturally formative periods in American history, with events such as the Vietnam War, the Watergate scandal, and the counterculture movement often dominating historical discussions. However, the roots of these political movements can be seen in literature arising in the early 1960s, such as Joseph Heller's Catch-22 and John Updike’s Rabbit, Run. These novels tackle issues intimately connected with American foreign policy in the preceding decade, which was entirely controlled by the rhetoric of containment. American political leaders such as President Eisenhower often appealed directly to the American people, framing the Cold War as an existential struggle between opposed nations to create a broad support base for ambitious foreign policy objectives. But, American grand strategy simultaneously began to rely more on covert operations and soft power to achieve its ends, thereby creating a cultural phenomenon in which American men suffered an existential crisis when they were unable to realize the political identity with which they had been ascribed. This ideological trend was transcribed into the previous novels of the early 1960s, which serve as prime examples of the moral crisis that American foreign policy imbued into the culture following the cessation of World War II. Immediately following the war, America found itself in an odd geopolitical situation. The old bastions of European power had been consumed by war, the American military stood ascendant on the world stage, and the American economy had launched itself out of the Great Depression and stood ready to take global preeminence. With victory in Europe achieved, President Truman traveled to conquered Berlin to meet with Britain and the Soviet Union. While there, he witnessed the immense power of the American conventional forces that had swept back the German Wehrmacht. Given the opportunity to review the American Second Armored Division, the president took a twenty-two-minute drive down a highway with lines of men and vehicles arrayed on either side of his sedan.1 While the Soviets and British were undoubtedly invaluable in the Allied victory, neither nation could boast the same power that the Americans could. The British were financially and militarily decimated during the Blitz, losing significant men, infrastructure, and capital. Furthermore, Britain's traditional mastery of the seas was decisively surrendered to the influential American fleets that patrolled the world's oceans, and its hold on its colonial possessions had grown weak. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union retained an army of seemingly impressive strength but would not have survived the German onslaught without massive American logistical support. "The real secret of America's strength was to be found… in the countryside of Michigan", in the form of gargantuan, geometrically efficient factories dotting the plains of the Midwest.2 These structures had flowed the bullets, boots, rations, uniforms, trucks, half-tracks, and entire locomotives that formed the lifeblood of the Red Army.

1 H. W. Brands, American Dreams (New York: Penguin Books, 2011), 7. 2 Ibid., 9.

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Throughout the war, American factories, shipyards, and plants had produced "1,600 warships, 5,800 transport ships, 88,000 tanks, 300,000 airplanes, 635,000 jeeps, 2.4 million trucks, 6.5 million rifles, and 40 billion bullets".3 Without American support, the Soviet military would not have been able to stay on the field, much less project power outside of its borders. On top of all of these advantages lay the secret weapons project hidden in the deserts of New Mexico. Early in the morning on July 16, 1945, the first atomic detonation illuminated the sky and stunned the watching scientists into silence. America's apocalyptic weapon, unmasked to the world over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, ensured that no conventional army would be able to challenge American might for the foreseeable future. This unique global dominance heavily influenced the foreign policy decisions that Truman and later American leaders would make. After World War II, American power allowed the foreign policy to be uniquely defined by an aggressively and unapologetically anti-communist stance. This hatred towards communism was informed by the failed efforts of democratic countries to negotiate with expansionist Nazi Germany during the 1930s and the resulting conflict.4 American lawmakers feared that allowing communism, deemed a “malignant parasite” by George Kennan in his infamous Long Telegram, to spread without repercussion would simply encourage Soviet leaders in their efforts to gain further influence on the global stage, which could eventually culminate with another, even more catastrophic, European war.5 Upon taking the presidency, Truman immediately took a hard stance against Stalin and the Soviet Union, confronting the Kremlin about broken promises and aggressive behavior with blunt, harsh language.6 He berated the Russians for reneging on allowing democratic elections in Poland and missing the Allied deadline for the removal of troops from Iran. This bold approach to foreign policy eventually culminated with the advent of "containment," which was coined by Kennan.7 This policy dictated that America “patiently and persistently” resist any Soviet attempts at expansion by financially and, if necessary, militarily supporting free nations threatened by the Red Army.8 Containment began with Greece and Turkey, as Truman requested $400 million in aid to defend against "subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures."9 Most Democrats and a good number of Republicans supported this policy, and it went on to be the definitive object of foreign affairs for the next several decades. Whereas containment had debuted under Truman, it became a cornerstone of American policy under Dwight Eisenhower's administration. The immensely popular general decided to accept the Republican nomination precisely because the likely candidate, Robert Taft, was a staunch isolationist who might remove American influence from the growing global conflict. Eisenhower might have been satisfied ending his career as the commander of the nascent North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces, a position he seemed destined to claim until he learned that Taft was poised to win the White House after Truman's political disaster in Korea and the first Soviet atomic bomb test. Eisenhower feared that Taft's aversion to foreign entanglements would

3 Ibid., 10. 4 Brands, American Dreams, 45. 5 George Kennan, “Long Telegram,” Wilson Center, 1946, https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/116178.pdf, 10. 6 Brands, American Dreams, 30. 7 Ibid., 33. 8 Brands, American Dreams, 33; "NSC-68 'United States Objectives and Programs for National Security," Wilson Center, 1950, https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/116191.pdf?v=2699956db534c1821edefa61b8c13ffe. 9 Brands, American Dreams, 33.

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jeopardize American security and give the Soviet Union a gilt-edged opportunity to surpass American supremacy. So, the architect of the Normandy invasion handily disposed of Taft in the Republican primaries and went on to claim the presidency.10 Eisenhower's commitment to maintaining an American presence globally was evident in that two of his three major platforms, containment, and Korea (the third platform being corruption), were centered around foreign affairs.11 The president did not just pay lip service to the idea of containment, and he fully believed that America had a "moral obligation to employ its power to contain international communism."12 In his first speech as President, Eisenhower boldly claimed that "we are persuaded by necessity and belief that the strength of all free peoples lies in unity; their danger, in discord."13 America controlled not only its destiny but also that of every free nation in the world. In conjunction with this, he recognized that the international instability that might arise if the United States retreated from world affairs would almost certainly threaten the American domestic sphere. One of his long-term visions for his presidency was to turn the Republican Party towards a more internationalist political approach. This attitude ensured that vehement aggression towards communism and the sustainment of a firm, liberal international order became hallmarks of Eisenhower's presidency during the prosperous 1950s. President Eisenhower also quickly realized that the American people had to be heavily inundated in a liberal internationalist ideology to become a reality for his foreign policy objectives. Thus, he began a campaign to create a "broad domestic consensus" among the American people to support his lofty international goals.14 This consensus was reliant that "containment rested on American values while serving American national interests and then conveyed these truths to the American public."15 In addition to this, Eisenhower also identified the American economy as a crucial element in the fight against the expansion of communism, as the dollar could bolster the reeling nations of Europe and strengthen weak leaders in the Third World.16 American leaders correctly identified that the common American man would play a pivotal role in this struggle. He was the gatekeeper of American values and an essential cog in the American economy. In his first inaugural address, Eisenhower asserted that "each citizen plays an indispensable role… No person, no home, no community can be beyond the reach of this call".17 Thus, political rhetoric became centered around the moral responsibility of the American nation and, correspondingly, the average citizen to fight communism to protect the American way of life.18 Even issues such as the federal budget became the subject of vigorous debate. American leadership came to recognize the power of emotional pleas in every policy area that was remotely connected to the international existential struggle of nations.19 Resultingly,

10 Ibid., 60-61. 11 Richard Melanson and David Meyers, Reevaluating Eisenhower (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1989), 41. 12 Ibid., 43. 13 Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Inaugural Address.” Eisenhower Presidential Library, 1953,” https://www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov/sites/default/files/research/online-documents/inauguration-1953/1953-01-20- inaugural-address.pdf, 3. 14 Melanson, Reevaluating Eisenhower, 39. 15 Ibid., 33. 16 "Third World" was used historically to denote countries, not under Western democracies or the USSR. 17 Eisenhower, "Inaugural Address," 5. 18 Melanson, Reevaluating Eisenhower, 37. 19 Chester J. Pach and Elmo Richardson, The Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower (Lawrence, Kansas: University of Kansas Press, 1991), 169.

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the American people came to have a stake in the vast geopolitical conflict of the day and were credited with a moral charge in the fight against communist expansion. However, these average Americans were granted increasingly few opportunities to impact global events as the government turned towards increasingly unconventional means to fight the Cold War. In terms of military expenditures, Eisenhower looked to reduce the financial burden on the American public by turning to atomic and air power rather than conventional ground forces. Eisenhower reasoned that the potential for "massive retaliation" from the United States would be enough to subdue any potential threats, thereby reducing the need for large ground formations for use abroad.20 As a result, American men who did join the army during the 1950s often saw no combat whatsoever, leading to a feeling of disappointment in the greater purpose they believed existed in the armed forces. This reliance on atomic threat was combined with increased use of covert operations by the American government during the 1950s. This had the dual effect of sidelining conventional soldiers in foreign affairs and shielding the government's actions from the public eye. These operations were carried about by the United States' first peacetime intelligence agency, the CIA. Created in 1947 by the National Security Act, the organization was designed to "coordinate military and diplomatic intelligence" for the American government.21 However, George Kennan, who was the director of the State Department's Policy Planning Staff, had designs for an operational side to the agency. He pushed Truman's administration to approve a memorandum that authorized the CIA "to undertake propaganda, economic warfare, sabotage, demolition, subversion, and assistance to guerilla groups" that would further the fight against global communism.22 The operational side of the CIA quickly became an essential tool for American policymakers, burgeoning in size and importance in a way that Truman could not have anticipated. Eisenhower then took the clandestine organization he inherited from his predecessor and employed it routinely, gathering information and toppling leaders that threatened the international order being built by the United States. One of the main appeals of these covert operations was that they "reduced the political risk to the United States of failure."23 Eisenhower's administration could easily deny involvement if it's meddling in foreign affairs went south, thereby lessening the likelihood of a confrontation with the Soviet Union. However, this also reduced the transparency of the government's actions to its citizens, who quickly found themselves powerless bystanders in foreign affairs. This increase in fraud and covert operations further removed the average citizen's involvement with the foreign policy with which he was told he was intimately involved. Finally, American foreign policy was also increasingly enacted through soft power – economics and culture – rather than conventional hard power. In 1957, as Eisenhower's administration faced the prospect of growing Soviet influence in the Middle East, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles argued that states in the area needed not only the assurance that the American military would support them in the event of an attack, but also assistance to strengthen their militaries and to settle their economic and domestic issues.24 In another instance, Eisenhower sought to support Third World nations becoming critical battlegrounds in the Cold

20 Melanson, Reevaluating Eisenhower, 54. 21 Timothy Melley, The Covert Sphere Secrecy, Fiction, and the National Security State. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=671529&site=ehost-live. 123. 22 Melley, The Covert Sphere Secrecy, Fiction, and the National Security State, 124. 23 Brands, American Dreams, 64. 24 Pach, The Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower, 160.

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War through the Mutual Security Program. He reasoned that if Third World states were allowed to fall into economic turmoil, communist elements would be able to take control of the country, which would, in turn, strengthen the international influence of the Soviet Union. To combat this, the president proposed sweeping changes to American foreign aid policy that would provide developmental loans for Third World countries, an emergency relief fund to be used at the discretion of the executive, and a clear separation between military and civilian aid.25 While Congress only approved a severely reduced version of his $3.87 billion plan, the change in policy still created significant avenues for the use of American soft power abroad. Finally, Eisenhower and Dulles recognized that public posturing could play a pivotal role in American foreign affairs. The novel power of American advertising companies and the political prowess of American politicians allowed the administration to influence other nations through simple statements, promises, and threats, without actually needing to employ any hard power.26 These influencing global politics were indeed practical but concurrently further removed the common American man from the games being played by politicians and foreign leaders. This intensity of American grand strategy and foreign policy between 1945 and 1960 was pivotal in constraining the expansion of global communism and undoubtedly had harmful domestic effects on the American culture that it purported to defend. American men, in particular, were inundated with images of a war hero, morally culpable for the fate of global politics, and fully capable of changing the course of the Cold War. Despite this popular conception of the role of the average man in world affairs, foreign policy consistently moved progressively further out of reach of the American populace. This created a situation in which men could not assume the political identity they were publicly given, which often resulted in a feeling of existential angst as they searched for meaning in their mundane lives. These cultural patterns had a significant impact on American life during this era. They were correspondingly well documented by political novels released in the early 1960s, namely Joseph Heller's Catch- 22 and John Updike’s Rabbit, Run. Heller's famous novel is set on the fictitious island of Pianosa in the Mediterranean during World War II amongst a group of Allied bomber pilots struggling with the toils of combat. The protagonist, John Yossarian, almost directly reflects Heller's own war experience as a bombardier in the American Air Force who flew over sixty combat missions. Because of Yossarian's connection with Heller and the setting in general, much of the debate around the novel centers on its antiwar criticisms about the Second World War. However, interpreting the novel solely about this conflict ignores the very context in which it was written and correspondingly raises confounding questions over Heller's critiques of war. Catch-22 was published in November of 1961, after a decade in which the draft was still in force, and military service was perceived as standard. Contemporary author Norman Podhoretz comments that "like most American kids who had been old enough at the time to be aware of World War II but too young to fight in it, I had a kind of yearning to see what the army would be like, to share in an experience so universal in our day that one felt somehow incomplete without it."27 American militarism dominated political rhetoric and popular imagination in the 1950s, Heller's work cannot be seen purely as a criticism of war but rather a complaint of a culture that accepted the moral rhetoric surrounding warfighting. This becomes even more evident when one realizes that

25 Ibid., 165-166. 26 Melanson, Reevaluating Eisenhower, 56. 27 Sanford Pinsker, "Reassessing "Catch-22"," The Sewanee Review 108, no. 4 (2000): 602-10, Accessed March 14, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27548930, 602.

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the absurd terms in which war is couched in Catch-22 mirror the vague objectives of the Cold War far more closely than the defined goals of World War II. Although of Armenian descent in the novel, John Yossarian reflects both the American soldier was fighting against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan and the American man who has been told he has a moral responsibility to fight a war with comical means with no apparent end. The first indication of Heller's nuanced criticism of war is that only Yossarian seems able to recognize that there is a real war going on. His life is constantly in imminent, personal danger as a result. Outside of the relative safety of the hospital, "the only thing going on was a war, and no one seemed to notice but Yossarian and Dunbar. And when Yossarian tried to remind people, they drew away from him and thought he was crazy".28 Even other airmen, embodied by the figure of Clevinger, accuse Yossarian of this craziness when he tries to bring up the danger of the war. Clevinger tells him that no one is trying to kill him, “they’re shooting at everyone… they’re trying to kill everyone”.29 Yossarian refuses to distinguish between targeted attacks against himself and the genuine danger he faces in war because they could both end in his demise. The intent does not matter to him, purely the end. However, this is seen as folly by almost every other character in the book, who knows the conflict between nations as far removed from themselves, despite their immediate involvement. Ideology and national loyalty are given precedence over individual lives, and the destruction of millions of men is seen as a reasonable sacrifice in war. This forms the basis of Heller's criticism of a societal assumption that national conflicts are based on duty and morality. This same foolish assumption that individual lives should be subject to the fortunes of war also manifests itself like the missions that the airmen are ordered to fly. Yossarian and his squadron are constantly risking their lives on bombing raids over Europe, yet these dangerous missions are quickly revealed to be almost entirely pointless. At one point, the airmen discover that they have been ordered to obliterate a "tiny undefended village" that is altogether insignificant to the war's outcome.30 Nominally, the purpose is to delay German reinforcements, but the Allied forces are not even planning an offensive in the area, so the raid is effectively pointless. It is revealed that the actual purpose of the attack is not to hinder German operations but rather to capture "a good clean aerial photograph he [Colonel Cathcart] won't be ashamed to send through channels."31 Yossarian and his comrades said that they are fighting for freedom and country and are risking their lives so that their commanders can impress one another and play the bureaucracy. Given these circumstances, it is no wonder that Yossarian quickly becomes disillusioned with the war he is fighting. Of course, the nature of the missions is just one example of the massive disconnect between the bomber crews and the officers that command them. In another egregious instance, the airmen on Pianosa find themselves amid a jurisdictional dispute between General Peckem and General Dreedle. The two officers clash over topics as mundane and insignificant as the direction that tents must face in camp, yet the men find themselves subject to these petty whims.32 In another instance, Colonel Cargill approaches a group of enlisted men and confidently (and incorrectly) asserts, "You're American officers. The officers of no other army in the world can make that statement. Think about it", before redirecting the same statement to

28 Joseph Heller, Catch-22 (New York: Simon and Schuster, Inc., 1961), 16. 29 Ibid., 17. 30 Ibid., 318. 31 Ibid., 321. 32 Ibid., 26.

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the group of men he was supposed to address.33 While Cargill is characterized as an inept man, the vast gulf between fighting men and officers is demonstrated by this interaction. However, the most damning piece of evidence against the officers' intentions is Colonel Cathcart's refusal to allow his men to be discharged from the military. According to the Air Force, Yossarian should be allowed to return home after flying forty combat missions.34 But, Cathcart, his commanding officer, continually raises this requirement. At the start of the novel, Yossarian learns he has to fly fifty missions to be sent home. By the end of the narrative, he is required to pass eighty. Even though Cathcart is directly countermanding orders given by his superiors, his men have no choice but to follow them. Thus Yossarian is forced to stay on and continue flying pointless missions that risk his life. This lack of control over his own life finally pushes Yossarian first to disobey his orders to fly more missions and ultimately to his desertion and flight to Sweden. After seeing the deaths of several of his comrades, Yossarian flatly refuses to take part in any more combat missions, traveling to Rome without a pass and witnessing widespread human depravity in the streets. However, he is discovered by Colonel Cathcart and Colonel Korn and given a choice: either fly the eighty prescribed raids for a cause in which he has no stake at significant personal risk or be honorably discharged on the condition he publicly supports Cathcart's increased mission count.35 The bombardier initially agrees to these terms but quickly reneges when he realizes the disservice he will be doing to his comrades. To escape this ultimate Catch-22 – whether to save his own life or those of his fellow airmen – Yossarian decides to desert and flee to Sweden.36 On its face, an act of cowardice, this decision is depicted by Heller as the ultimate act of bravery, throwing off the shackles imposed by the officers and looking after oneself. John Updike’s titular character, Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, of his 1960 work Rabbit, Run shares many of the same confusions as John Yossarian, despite the difference in their settings. Harry Angstrom, the central character of John Updike’s Rabbit Tetralogy, is the epitome of the average American man subject to the grandiose geopolitical debates of the 1950s. He works an unassuming job as a vegetable peeler salesman in a provincial town in Pennsylvania with his wife and young child. He has little hope for significant social or economic advancement, and his professional aspirations seem almost comical. He and his family are fiscally dependent on the older generation, severely limiting his independence. Harry's life as a young adult appears to be a tale of unfulfilled potential, a star basketball player in high school who has slowly faded into obscurity after graduation. He is too young to have served in the Second World War yet is convinced of the moral uprightness of the American nation. He never questions his country's role in his consistently downcast circumstances but looks to blame either himself or those around him for his perceived failures. In short, Harry Angstrom is the archetypal American citizen that forms the basis of the broad domestic consensus necessary for the political leadership to enact their sweeping foreign policy goals. However, it becomes increasingly apparent that, while Harry is told that he is a necessary part of the fight against communism, he can never actually achieve anything in his personal life that will further this existential ideological battle. As a young high school graduate, Harry attempts to fulfill the role he has been ascribed by joining the Army to fight against the far-off threat of the Soviet Union. However, his time as a soldier is ultimately fruitless, and the

33 Ibid., 27. 34 Ibid., 58. 35 Ibid., 415. 36 Ibid., 438.

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culmination of his identity as an American man comes to nothing. Updike's protagonist spends his entire military career in Texas, as far removed from foreign affairs as humanly possible . He participates in no noble contest or existential combat but instead finds himself distinctly unsatisfied with his time in the Army. Harry's political identity is wrapped in the imagery of a noble American warrior fighting against the ever-present threat of communism. Yet, he cannot escape the base and mundane in his everyday life, leading to an existential crisis in himself that results in a loss of purpose and direction. This loss of direction is further reinforced by Harry's coming of age in the Army. He certainly leaves Pennsylvania as a child and returns a man, but perhaps not in the way he envisioned when he joined the proverbial great American struggle. While talking with her husband and Reverend Eccles, Harry's mother remarks that "when he[Harry] came back from Texas, he was a different boy."37 She explains how Harry was a driven and dedicated student and athlete before his time in the Army, but everyone sees him as lazy after his return. Harry's father interjects that "all he cares about is chasing ass."38 This change in character almost certainly arises from an encounter that Harry has with a prostitute in Texas. He and a group of young soldiers meet up with several prostitutes in a modest suburban house. Harry recalls that the girls are "just ordinary factory-looking women, you wouldn't even call them girls."39 Yet these women "pelted the soldiers with remarks like pellets of dust and the men sneezed into laughter and huddled together surprised and numb."40 Updike makes the irony in the situation obvious, as the uniformed fighting men are assailed and conquered by ordinary civilian women. The soldiers, expecting to serve their country against the menace of communism, are instead forced to confront their maturation into adult members of American society, and they fail miserably. Furthermore, this is not an experience unique to Harry. When Ruth, Harry's mistress, learns that he was in Texas with the Army, she retorts that "that doesn't count. Everybody's been to Texas with the Army".41 An entire generation of young men is brought up on the idea that they have a moral duty to serve their nation in an armed conflict and are subsequently emasculated by their experience. Harry also purchases his first car, symbolizing independence and adulthood, while in Texas. But his '39 Nash is looked down upon by his potential in-laws, and they force him to purchase a new Ford that sets him back $1,000.42 His coming of age in the Army, which should mold him into a functioning adult in American society, is entirely invalidated by his sexual experiences and the reception of his hometown, destroying any semblance of assurance or self-confidence that Harry might have once had. This cognitive dissonance between the political identity Harry is given and what he is reasonably able to achieve is a significant factor in his inability to live up to any potential he once had as a high school basketball star. He returns to his hometown of Brewer, Pennsylvania, having gained nothing substantive from his time as a soldier, without a college degree, and lacking any marketable skills or talents. He becomes a vegetable peeler salesman who struggles to support his family, a far cry from his glory days as a sports star. Early in the novel, Harry attentively watches a "big Mouseketeer" on an advertisement in hopes of improving his sales

37 John Updike, Rabbit Angstrom: A Tetralogy (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995), 140. 38 Ibid., 141. 39 Ibid., 41. 40 Ibid., 42. 41 Ibid., 54. 42 Ibid., 21.

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technique while he becomes increasingly frustrated by the attentions of his wife.43 This laughable scene reinforces the ridiculous nature of his situation. Updike seeks to portray the average American man – a man entrusted by his leaders with the very fate of the free world – finds himself sitting on his sofa, hanging on every word of a children's advertisement. The closest contact Harry now has with the American military establishment is a silent tank sitting in a community park, pointing its empty gun at unfinished tennis courts.44 He is so far removed from American politics that he only hears the voice of President Eisenhower once in the entire novel, on a news program while driving.45 Harry was told that he had a moral obligation to serve his country and stem the growing tide of communist power. Still, his experiences in the Army leave him an empty and uninteresting man, desperate for meaning and looked down upon by all around him. This dilemma causes Harry Angstrom to flee from his home, just as John Yossarian fled from war. Disappointed by his marriage, pressured by his parents and in-laws, and embarrassed by his career, he takes his car and decides to drive south until he hits the Gulf of Mexico. When he finds himself traveling back to Brewer despite his best efforts, metaphorically trapped by the American infrastructure, he seeks out his old high school basketball coach rather than returning to his family. He is frantically searching for some semblance of purpose in his life. Still, his experiences in the Army affected him so drastically that he can no longer find meaning in anything outside of his pleasure. Not even the birth of his child can draw him back home for more than a few days, after which he is inevitably drawn back to his self-imposed exile. The subsequent death of his newborn still cannot hold him in one place, as he frantically flees from his own daughter's funeral, returning to his mistress. Yet, at the close of the novel, he runs even from the woman he ran to when he left his family. Forced to confront his utter lack of purpose, Harry "doesn't know what to do, where to go, what will happen, the thought that he doesn't know seems to make him infinitely small and impossible to capture. Its smallness fills him like a vastness".46 Harry is indeed the average American man, raised high on an ideological pedestal, left with no way down but to fall. The striking parallels between these two novels, one set in war and the other in peace, reveal the damaging effects that American foreign policy during this era has on the commoner's psyche. The first of these similarities is the absurdity woven through both narratives. Yossarian constantly finds himself in the hospital not because he needs treatment but because it is the only place he is truly safe. When he is fighting, no one seems to realize he is in any danger whatsoever. The missions he is assigned are utterly ridiculous, the officers' motivations are unrecognizable from the interests of their men, and, in the end, he is morally praised for cowardice. Likewise, the appropriately nicknamed Rabbit runs away from every challenge he is faced, prides himself on his ability to sell a vegetable peeler, and is the subject of constant mockery from everyone around him. The ever-present, ridiculous tone of both novels highlights the absurd state of the American man who cannot participate in a war for which he has been told he is instrumental. The other notable parallel between the novels is the flight of the protagonist from his prescribed responsibilities. Upon hearing of Orr's successful escape to Sweden, Yossarian determines that he will desert from the army, travel to Rome, and then make his way to join Orr

43 Ibid., 10. 44 Ibid., 96. 45 Ibid., 28. 46 Ibid., 264.

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in neutral Sweden. By doing this, he avoids the Catch-22, in which he finds himself torn between his survival and the good of his fellow pilots. Thus, escape is the clear moral choice for Yossarian, as he can save himself from a seemingly pointless war while not endangering his comrades even further. Rabbit commits himself to a similar flight by running away from his commitments to family. But, while Yossarian's act is seen as upright, Rabbit's is portrayed as morally deficient. This is again reflective of the disconnect between the Cold War's militaristic rhetoric and the average lives of American citizens. Yossarian can desert because his self- preservation is more important than the vague, unachievable war aims pursued. Still, Rabbit cannot flee from his family because they are reliant upon his presence. Rabbit runs because he is disrespected and emasculated after his return from the army, but by doing so, he jeopardizes the livelihood of his entire family. Herein lies the problem created by the rhetoric surrounding American foreign policy in the 1950s. If the misleading rhetoric only affected soldiers who could recognize their part in the façade of war, there would be no adverse effects. But, the language of American political leaders instead deliberately targeted average men who could not achieve the lofty goals they were given and could not run away once they lost this sense of purpose. In conclusion, novels such as Rabbit, Run, and Catch-22 reveal how the language surrounding the American foreign policy of containment between 1945 and 1960 created a moral obligation for American men to contribute to the Cold War effort without providing them any means to do so, resulting in an existential crisis of political identity. In essence, it created an inescapable Catch-22, one in which men could never fulfill the expectations set for them yet could not escape from the emasculation of failing to live up to these pressures. Eisenhower even anticipated this problem in his farewell address, stating that a balance must be struck between "our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the country upon the individual”.47 Unfortunately, his advice was not heeded, and a generation of men fanatically loyal to the values espoused by the American government and its policy of containment was created. As a result, when American soldiers finally did fight communist forces in Vietnam, these men could not accept any flaws in American planning, despite growing numbers of casualties and very loosely defined war aims. The rhetoric of containment took the place of definable ends; the American government was locked in an ideological duel, and thus the American people could not question its methods. But when catastrophic failure in Vietnam and government scandals finally revealed the two-faced nature of American politics in the 1970s, public confidence in government turned decisively to cynicism, and the strong faith in institutions of the American people was severely, possibly irreparably, shattered.

47 Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Farewell Address.” Eisenhower Presidential Library, 1959. https://www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov/sites/default/files/research/online-documents/farewell-address/reading-copy.pdf, 11.

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The Lost King of the Gilgamesh Epic

Jacob Lange

Introduction Religious and cultural artifacts offer great value in the historical study because they can reveal the roots of political and historical developments that cannot be understood through a purely narrative view of history. For instance, the Epic of Gilgamesh was a nearly ubiquitous story in ancient Mesopotamian society that communicated many of the deeply held values of the culture. The report offers commentary on a variety of topics such as religion, friendship, and death. Yet, the political ethos provided by the epic does not seem to be consistent with many of the contexts in which it has been found. The ideals of kingship portrayed by Gilgamesh do not reflect the practices of the Assyrian and Babylonian courts that held this epic in esteem. This historical anomaly can only be understood by examining the development of religion as a political phenomenon in the region of Mesopotamia. The widespread reverence for the Gilgamesh epic in later Mesopotamian empires, despite the apparent departures of these empires from the political values found within the epic, reflects the evolution of religion and myth from a naturally occurring societal phenomenon in early Sumerian culture to a unifying organism of the state that served a primary role of justifying imperial rule over a set of previously independent and disparate polities.

The Ideal King of the Gilgamesh Epic The Epic of Gilgamesh is the oldest recorded epic in human history. It originated in Mesopotamia, and the cuneiform tablets that bear the many variations of the story have been found in cities across the region, from Assyria to Babylon. Fragments of the story have been found in a myriad of languages, the oldest in Sumerian and later transcriptions in Akkadian. This diversity of source material ensures that the Gilgamesh epic appears in a wide variety of iterations depending on the time and place in which it was written. It remained a cultural staple in Mesopotamia, the Levant, and Anatolia from the earliest recorded histories in the 3rd Millennium B.C. until the great Assyrian and Babylonian empires of the 1st millennium B.C. The epic touches on a myriad of themes, ranging from the nature of friendship to the relationships between gods and men to a discussion on human mortality. Among the many didactic elements of the Gilgamesh Epic, one of the most striking is its portrayal of the kingship in the figure of Gilgamesh and its criticisms of his failings. Gilgamesh’s inadequacies as king stem from the conflict between his nature as an epic hero and his role as the king of Uruk, as argued by Tzvi Abusch.1 This can be seen in the opening of the first tablet, in which Gilgamesh is depicted as a cruel king. He allows his desires to rule over him, and he can enforce these desires on his people because of his martial prowess. Tablet I of the poem relates that "By day and by night his [Gilgamesh's] tyranny grows harsher."2 He bothers the young men and women of his city, keeping them from their parents, and refuses to let the young women go

1 Tzvi Abusch, "The Development and Meaning of the Epic of Gilgamesh: An Interpretive Essay," Journal of the American Oriental Society 121, no. 4 (2001): 618. 2 Andrew George, The Epic of Gilgamesh, (London: Penguin Books, 1999), 1.169.

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to their bridegrooms.3 Yet, no one can challenge him because of his skill with weapons. Gilgamesh is failing in his role as king due to his self-serving attitude and lack of accountability to any man. Because of Gilgamesh’s unopposed tyranny, his people appeal to the gods for respite from their oppression. In response, the gods call upon Aruru, the creator of humanity, to mold a man who can defy the will of Gilgamesh. This leads to the creation of Enkidu, a wild man with the strength to challenge even the mighty king. Enkidu does not come to face Gilgamesh immediately; he is raised amongst the wild herds in the forest rather than within human society. He only enters civilization when a hunter is forced to appeal to Gilgamesh for aid because Enkidu has impeded him from doing his work. The king sends Shamhat, the harlot, back with the hunter to seduce Enkidu. She does this successfully, and once Enkidu has lain with a woman and thereby gained reason, the beasts of the wild reject him. Only after this rejection does Enkidu enter civilization, and only when he hears of Gilgamesh’s practice of sleeping with brides on their wedding nights does he travel to Uruk. Gilgamesh has set himself up to be like a god in his arrogance, and Enkidu reacts with anger, attacking the king.4 The creation of Enkidu is a check on the wanton power of Gilgamesh, who has allowed his unmatched ability to corrupt his station as king. Gilgamesh is still unable to recognize his failures as a king and continues to transgress against the gods. Instead of acknowledging that the gods created Enkidu to check his misuse of power, Gilgamesh enlists his new companion to help him travel to the Forest of Cedars to fight the ogre Humbaba. He claims that the monster has been charged by the god Enlil to terrify men, and so Gilgamesh and Enkidu should slay Humbaba for the good of his people. Enkidu and the city elders are skeptical of this plan, reminding him of the dangers posed by attempting to face Humbaba. Nevertheless, Gilgamesh acts against the wishes of both his friend and his subjects and leaves to seek out Humbaba with Enkidu.5 Before searching for the beast, the king visits his divine mother, Ninsun, to ask for her blessing. Ninsun is saddened by this news and appeals to the other gods to help her son on his journey. Gilgamesh and Enkidu then travel to the Forest of Cedars, where, after an arduous journey, they finally encounter Humbaba. They can only defeat him after the god Shamash binds the guardian of the forest with winds. Enkidu then urges his friend to kill Humbaba quickly so as not to arouse the anger of the gods and take the glory of the hunt for himself. Gilgamesh takes this advice, and the two men proceed to fell many trees in the forest before returning to Uruk with the head of Humbaba as a testament to the ability and strength of Gilgamesh.6 Even after his contest with Enkidu humbles him, Gilgamesh still seeks to expand his glory with martial conquests. However, Gilgamesh quickly realizes that his martial glory does not allow him to create a lasting legacy for himself. Following his victory over Humbaba, Gilgamesh rebuffs an advance by the goddess Ishtar, who demands that he become her lover. In retaliation, she unleashes the bull of heaven against him, and Enkidu and the king must contend with this new threat to their safety. However, once they defeat this monster, the gods decide that the two men have become too powerful, and thus one of them must die.7 As a result, Enkidu is struck down by illness, introducing the discussion of human mortality into the epic. The death of his companion forces

3 Ibid., 4. 4 Ibid., tablet II. 5 Ibid., Tablet II. 6 Ibid., Tablet III. 7 Ibid., Tablet VII.

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Gilgamesh to consider the lasting impact of his actions. The glory and renown he might acquire for his martial prowess will not survive past his own life, and thus he leaves his city in search of a cure for his mortality. Rather than recognizing that his mortality and subordination to the gods should inform him in his role as king, he leaves his people in a vain attempt to avoid death, thereby immorally wishing to rise above the station assigned to him by the gods. Gilgamesh’s final journey to seek out Uta-Napishti represents his ultimate failure as king – the abandonment of his people for his survival. His fear of death spurs him to leave his city and seek out the immortal Uta-Naptishti.8 Gilgamesh must undergo many trials to arrive at the island of the immortal man finally. Yet, upon his arrival, Uta-Napishti lectures him on the fleeting nature of life and a king's duties. Undeterred, Gilgamesh asks how he can achieve this immortality, and the undying man tells him that he must stay awake for a week. But, Gilgamesh is unable to defeat sleep, much less avoid death. Ironically, once Gilgamesh fails to achieve immortality, Uta-Napishti instructs his ferryman to robe Gilgamesh in "royal robes, the dress fitting his dignity."9 Gilgamesh is only fit to be king once he has accepted his mortality. Yet, Gilgamesh seeks one last cure for death, diving into the deep to retrieve a vital coral. Even this success is snatched away by a snake at the washing pool that signifies Gilgamesh’s return to his kingdom. He then washes himself off and looks to the walls he has built, recognizing that they are the only form of immortality he can possess.10 This episode in the epic demonstrates that a virtuous king does not run from his death but instead uses his life to benefit his people and worship the gods. In summation, the Gilgamesh epic portrays an ideal of kingship in which the king exists to protect and benefit his people above all else. Furthermore, this king is supported by the gods. Still, he is first and foremost a servant of the gods. His humanity and mortality are essential to his character in that he does not act for his glorification but rather for the lasting benefit of his city. Gilgamesh fails as a king when he works as an epic hero would, seeking out opportunities to prove his martial prowess and attempting to avoid his inevitable death. He can only understand his failings as a king when he recognizes that his heroic characteristics will not save him from death and will only hinder his reign. Thus, he must do what good he can for his city while the gods allow his life to last.

Historical Survey This conception of kingship can be geographically and historically traced to Sumer, a region in lower Mesopotamia composed primarily of city-states in the Early Dynastic Period (2900-2350 B.C.) was culturally dominated by the city of Uruk. The artistic depictions of royalty from this region, which make up most historical icons from the era, support the figure of the ideal king of the Gilgamesh epic. For example, despite the apparent importance of individualized political leadership in the form of a king, royal figures in Sumerian art are never named nor given a specific royal title.11 Instead, they are consistently carved as a type rather than as a particular manifestation of the office of the king. The royal figure is always garbed in the same manner, wearing a net-like kilt and a brimmed hat.12 He is cast in various roles, ranging from

8 Ibid., 9.3. 9 Ibid., 10.258. 10 Ibid., 11.305. 11 Piotr Steinkeller, History, Texts and Art in Early Babylonia : Three Essays, Studies in Ancient Near Eastern Records (SANER). Berlin: De Gruyter (2017), 26. 12 Ibid., 26.

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military leader to hunter to political figurehead, and there is never a historical record of the deeds of any specific king. Furthermore, this is not a symptom of a lack of a writing form to convey such names or deeds. Sumerian artists were fully capable of employing cuneiform in their artwork, yet they intentionally chose not to create royal iconography. In addition to this, the authority of the king of Uruk came not from heredity but rather from the divine election. The king did not deserve to rule because of his familial connections but rather because of the direct will of the gods. Dependence on the supernatural for royal authority is further supported by the lack of a divine cult of the kings in Sumer. The king was not worshiped as holy, and he was only seen as selected by the gods as a fitting ruler for the people.13 This creates an image of a king who exists primarily to protect and benefit his city, not for conquest or self-aggrandizement, reflecting the ideal king developed in the Gilgamesh epic. However, this model was contrasted by the political organization of Kish, north of Sumer, which took the form of a solid hereditary monarchy, rather than city-states, during the same period. While historical artifacts from this region are scarce, one plaque found records the taking of prisoners, relating the military prowess and political influence of the state of Kish. 14 This indicates that the northern state was far more concerned with territorial considerations than the Sumerian city-states in the south. Furthermore, it reflects an understanding of kinship based on hereditary succession and imperial rule, rather than the model of divine election found in both the southern states and the Gilgamesh epic. The expansionist nature of the state of Kish would eventually lead to either its direct or indirect succession by the Akkadian Empire in the late 3rd Millennium following the close of the Early Dynastic Period. The formulation of the Akkadian Empire under Sargon following the Early Dynastic Period signaled the beginning of the end of the Gilgamesh model of the king in Mesopotamia. The expansionist northern empire subsumed the city-states of Sumer, and their conception of kingship was eliminated in favor of the hereditary model of the Akkadian Empire. The kings of the Sargonic period were highly authoritarian, relying purely on their royal lineage for legitimacy and "giving priority to personal decision and initiative."15 They emphasized conquest and personal ambition over subservience to a religious pantheon. This is evident in both text and art recovered from this time. The historical sources are primarily defined by the phrase "I[the king] went and conquered, no ruler has done it before me."16 Similarly, the art from this period focuses on the superhuman qualities of the king and his achievements, a complete diversion from the earlier Sumerian models. But, early rulers of the Akkadian Empire struggled to control the southern region of Sumer, as the traditionally independent city-states were reluctant to accept imperial power. The political system of Sumer had traditionally been organized along the lines of a model of a divine society in which a god patronized each city-state. That god was the owner of all property in that particular state and was responsible for its protection and flourishing. As a result of this system, early attempts at unifying the region were unsuccessful because they were perceived as the encroachment of one god upon the territory.17 Similarly, the Akkadian Empire faced constant revolts from the south because of this religious system. Naram-Suen, the grandson of Sargon, was forced to take substantive action after the entire southern region rose against his reign. His

13 Ibid., 24-27. 14 Ibid., 35. 15 Ibid., 36. 16 Ibid., 36 17 Ibid., 119.

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solution was to justify his control over the states by exalting himself, thereby placing himself amongst the pantheon of gods above any of the individual rulers of the southern states.18 To remain consistent with the religiopolitical structure, he named himself the god of Akkad, the capital of the empire, claiming that the existing gods had elevated him in response to the appeals of the Akkadian peoples. This is a deliberate subversion of the Gilgamesh model of kingship in which the king remains subservient to the gods and acts in the interest of the people. Naram- Suen placed himself on the same plane as the gods to justify his assumption of more power than the rulers of the Sumerian city-states could ever have possessed beforehand. However, this could not prevent the collapse of the Akkadian Empire shortly after that, which was succeeded by a return to the city-state organization in the south under the Gudea Restoration. One hundred years after the fall of the Akkadian Empire, the region was once again unified under the Third Dynasty of Ur around 2100 B.C., and, once again, political fragmentation was countered by the deification of a monarch. Shulgi, the founder of the dynasty, proclaimed himself a god to secure his hold over Sumer and protect massive institutional change of the empire. His deification allowed him to lay a legitimate claim to the economic resources traditionally linked to the gods, such as temples and arable land.19 Again, this reflects ideals in direct contrast with the model of a king presented in the Gilgamesh epic. Royal assumption of economic resources and temples traditionally attributed to the gods was the assumption of authority by the state historically held by the gods in Sumer. This vastly increased the monarchy's power, allowing the kings of the Third Dynasty of Ur to secure their hold over the region. By the time of the unification of Babylon under the great king Hammurabi in 1750 B.C., the cultural distinctions between Sumer and the northern pastoral regions of Akkad had disappeared. The area's culture had developed from the disparate Sumerian and Akkadian systems into a single cohesive state of Babylon with a shared language and religion.20 As a result, unification under a single ruler was a natural progression. There was no more extended opposition from a religious element that appealed to the uniqueness of the city-states. Instead, the religion supported the centralized authoritarian system prescribed by Hammurabi. As a result of this, Hammurabi did not need to assume an exalted status to consolidate his control. The Gilgamesh model of a king that was subservient to the gods that determined political boundaries and actions had become an outdated concept. This progression of the conception of kingship can be followed into the 1st Millennium with the rise of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. The king's primary function in Assyrian society was acting as the embodiment of power and order on earth. As a result, it was his job to expand Assyrian borders, thereby bringing outlying peoples living in chaos into the civilization promised by the imperial structure.21 The expansion was not simply reasonable, and it was a moral pursuit of converting chaos to civilization. The Assyrian king was not seen as divine but rather as divinely appointed. This created a uniqueness in which he was the only rightful king, and therefore his decisions could not be challenged. Even this sustained the system through the usurpations of Tiglath-Pileser III and Sargon II.22 The usurpers did not appeal to a royal lineage

18 Ibid., 123. 19 Ibid., 124-125. 20 Ibid., 128. 21 Bradley J. Parker, "The Construction and Performance of Kingship in the Neo-Assyrian Empire," Journal of Anthropological Research 67, no. 3 (2011), 363. 22 Ibid., 367.

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or moral right as justification for their actions. They claimed that the gods appointed them to take leadership of Assyria to lead them forward. This model of kingship is contrary to the image of a king in the Gilgamesh epic, yet certain parallels exist between the two. Gilgamesh's role is to serve his people, not to tame the chaos and expand the borders and power of Uruk, as seen in the Humbaba episode of the epic. In contrast, the Assyrian king's primary responsibility is to expand the empire to include new peoples and new lands. Yet, the principles of divine election and subservience to the gods are present in both the epic and the Assyrian idea of kingship, which is a development from the earlier empires that emphasized the deification of their rulers. The Assyrian rulers are explicitly mortal and reign at the discretion of the gods. Yet, they exercise power in a much different way than the king portrayed in the Gilgamesh epic would. How can this disconnect be understood?

Historical Analysis The tension between the cultural appeal to the Epic of Gilgamesh and the clear diversion from the principles of moral kingship laid out in the story reflects religion's development from a natural, cultural phenomenon in Sumer to a unifying organism of the imperial state in later epochs. In Summer in the Early Dynastic Period, the concepts of religion develop alongside society to strengthen cultural bonds and explain the emerging interactions between various city- states. Each major city was owned by a particular member of the divine pantheon and his or her family, while minor deities owned outlying villages and towns. As a result, the ruler of each state traditionally adopted the title of “ensik" (steward) to reflect his subservience to the will of the gods.23 His role was to govern in the stead of the divine entity who entrusted him with power. Furthermore, these gods were related to the patrons of the neighboring cities, with Enlil of Nippur acting as the head of the divine family. This assumed a closed system within Sumer in which either mass unification or territorial expansion of any one state was antithetical to political theology. The existence of this religious system was a logical extension of the political development of the region, in which flourishing city-states developed religious ideologies that unified their burgeoning cultures and connected them with their neighbors. This religious system can be observed in the model of kingship found in the Gilgamesh Epic because the religious figures that play a significant role in the story were created within the political development of Sumer. This explains why the southern states protested the development of an imperial system in Sumer and why the religious and cultural iconography, such as the Epic of Gilgamesh, does not reflect the political structures of the subsequent Mesopotamian Empires. The creation of an imperial system was not possible in the developing states of Sumer. Therefore the religion that developed in the region did not account for such a unifying force. However, the cultural elements of this religion had become so ingrained by the time of the accession of the Akkadian Empire that imperial rulers necessarily had to adopt and convert existing religious motifs to justify their rule. Thus, the deification of rulers like Naram-Suen and Shulgi was a crucial step in developing an imperialized political system that ran contrary to existing religious structures. This theme can be further observed in the reverence that the Third Dynasty of Ur exhibited towards the customs and culture of Sumer while realistically serving as a continuation of the earlier Sargonic Empire. The kings of this dynasty publicly decried the values of the earlier Akkadian Empire while practically adopting many of the same values as the earlier imperial rulers. This created the first contradiction that can be observed in the perception of kingship in the region, in which the king

23 Steinkeller, History, Texts, and Art in Early Babylonia : Three Essays, 120.

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was seen as both divinely elected and the divine himself. The religious peculiarities of the culture had been hijacked to support the political ends of the Third Dynasty of Ur. The same trend of adopting religious and cultural values for imperial unity can continue to be observed up through the reign of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. The Assyrian emperor was not the ideal king pictured in Gilgamesh; he was overtly expansionist and primarily concerned with geopolitics rather than the fortunes of his people. Yet, explicit cultural appeals to the Sumerian archetypal king in the form of reverence for divine election and ritual subservience to the gods. In addition to this, a common epithet of the Assyrian kings was that of "shepherd," which was another common term used to describe the rulers of early Sumerian cities.24 This divorce of religious elements from the practical manifestation of the king demonstrates that Mesopotamian religious concepts had evolved from natural, cultural developments to a unifying force of statecraft. One explicit example of this was how revenue from distant provinces was often directed towards religious institutions to connect provincial and inner elites through the religious establishment.25 Despite no longer reflecting the political practices of the era, religious structures continued to exist to create a sense of shared culture under one ruler.

Conclusion The cultural appeal to the archetypal king found in the Epic of Gilgamesh by later Mesopotamian rulers that did not follow the ethos of the Sumerian ideal demonstrates the shifting role played by religion from a naturally occurring extension of society to a state-driven tool of unity and cohesion. The Gilgamesh idea of a king is one subservient to the gods who act primarily in the interest of his people. This was aptly demonstrated by the Sumerian culture in which the epic was written, in which rulers (ensiks) were entrusted with their authority by the gods and did not record their accomplishments or often seek the expansion of their power. However, the imperial states that eventually subsumed the region of Sumer, such as Akkad, the Third Dynasty of Ur, Babylon, and Assyria, did not follow this model of kingship and yet still maintained a religious and mythical connection with the Gilgamesh archetype. This discrepancy reveals the importance of spiritual practices and cultural icons for the continued unity of a state, even if the religion's conditions no longer exist. This speaks to the dangers of assuming virtue in traditional culture without recognizing the values at the source of those traditions and how societal values can develop and adapt independently of the cultural elements they historically produced.

24 Ibid., 120. 25 Parker, “The Construction and Performance of Kingship in the Neo-Assyrian Empire,” 369.

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The Reader is Dead: The Legitimacy and Impacts of Social Media Poetry

Zoie Moore

Poetry is what happens when your mind stops working, and for a moment, all you do is feel. Atticus

Literature breathes within a unique capacity. At all times, literature exists simultaneously in the past and the present. Once pen has met paper, the work is forever a product of that exact moment, frozen in time and reflective of the unique circumstances surrounding its conception. That same work is consistently born anew, as each reader’s encounter with the language lives in the present and is placed in a contextual frame built by a lived reality. Poetry, in particular, adds another layer to this complexity of existence, as the distinct outpouring of human emotion threaded through the lines of each verse leaves an irrevocable trace of the poet in every word, fostering a connection between the emotions present in the reader and the art in the way that magnets are drawn together instinctively. Poetry is and always has been an expression of human emotion, an outgrowth of the culture and society in which it is constructed. The historical context in which a work is written undoubtedly impacts the form, content, and audience, as can be understood through various literary movements throughout history. From lines written for royalty to epic tales read aloud to the common people, poetry has been permanently intertwined with history and culture. In today’s landscape, society is heavily influenced by immediacy, a force from which poetry is not immune. The craft has adjusted to fill the mold defined by the available forms of communication, namely social media. Poetry’s expansion into the realm of social media has allowed for a completely new sense of immediacy in the art form, emphasizing the grounding reality of literature rooted in the here and now. This poetry takes on the form of short, easy-to- read, and emotionally striking lines, the hallmark of which is simplicity. Despite the widespread popularity and increased profitability of this short-form creativity, critics of the form seek to distinguish social media poetry from more traditional poetry, drafting pointed arguments against the craft, poets, and readers. Though characteristically distinct from traditional poetry, the rise of social media poetry is a natural, historical progression of artistic expression, the intrinsic value of which cannot be invalidated based on the media through which it is being presented. The dismissal of this modern art form from critical dialogue surrounding poetry neglects the positive and quantifiable impacts social media poetry has been creating in society, namely an increased accessibility to a once elitist art form, a broader invitation to the study of poetry as a whole, and the creation of a space for the artistic expression of marginalized voices.

If fairy tales have taught us anything, it’s that we fall in love with

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short stories the most. K. Towne Jr.

As social media has risen in popularity, a new space has been created for many artists, including poets, to present their work in a constantly evolving format. These social media poets, often dubbed “Instagram poets” due to the popularity they have gained on the app, have been granted access to an audience of one billion, all with the touch of a button. When scrolling through the Instagram explore page, the user can readily stumble upon a white square with black text in a font reminiscent of a typewriter, spelling out a few short lines and adorned with a simple line art illustration. Posts like these from popular poets amass millions of likes daily, drawing significant followings as they are circulated. Among the stars of this new realm of literature are figures such as Atticus, an anonymous poet writing short laments of love; Rupi Kaur, a Punjabi woman who self-published her poetry at twenty-one and reached massive fame; and R.M. Broderick with his piercing lines about sorrowful love. The success of these poets is not altogether shocking when considering the concept of social media, particularly Instagram. The app’s design creates the ideal atmosphere for the widespread sharing of poetry, as “you can come across a pithy statement, double-tap the square it’s in, and reflexively scroll past it all in a matter of seconds” (Hill and Yuan). Instagram’s unique structure allows for concise, straightforward, relatable poems to enjoy the spotlight, and poets have used the opportunity to their advantage. The influence of these poets has broken free from the square constraints of an Instagram post, and in the last six years since the publishing of Kaur’s milk and honey, “the poetry genre has become one of the fastest-growing categories in book publishing” (Hill and Yuan). Poets who specialize in short-form poetry have been able to thrive in the ecosystem social media outlets have constructed.

your art is not about how many people like your work your art is about if your heart likes your work if your soul likes your work it’s about how honest you are with yourself and you must never trade honesty for relatability rupi kaur

Instagram poetry, though evidenced to be well-received by the millions of followers amassed by these poets, has also been met with backlash and criticism. Many authors and critics have made a point of distinguishing social media poetry from more traditional poetry, claiming that the two categories are far too distinct to be reconciled. Informed engagement with this discussion requires a clear understanding of what poetry is and the specific qualities that

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delineate poetry as unique in comparison to other forms of literature. Without a defined limit to what poetry is and is not, it is impossible to determine the validity of Instagram poetry as a contribution to literature. Thus, the age-old question rears its head: what is poetry? Emily Dickinson, a fairly reputable source, states, “If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry” (Hargrove 10). While aesthetically beautiful, as expected from a poet, this criterion leaves something to be desired in terms of a quantifiable definition. However, this type of answer is fairly typical of poets. Paul Engle, American poet, critic, and teacher, among other titles, claims that “poetry is ordinary language raised to the Nth power. Poetry is bonded with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words” (Hargrove 10). Former laureate poet Robert Pinsky is “content … to accept a social, cultural definition of poetry: poetry is what a bookstore puts in the section of that name” (Ribiero 189). As evidenced by these authors, poetry is less strictly defined by observable characteristics and more centered around feeling and the expression of human emotion. If this is the case, and there is no definitive way of drawing a boundary between poetry and other types of literature, those who claim Instagram poetry to be illegitimate are standing on a very weak argument. As noted by Robert Pierce, there is no specific criterion that is “necessary or sufficient for a text to count” as a poem (Ribiero 189). The Encyclopedia Britannica attempts to box poetry into a definition, stating that it is “literature that evokes a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience or a specific emotional response through language chosen and arranged for its meaning, sound, and rhythm” (“Poetry”). Though this is the closest to a definition provided thus far, the boundaries set by the encyclopedia are still quite fluid, really giving the power of defining poetry to the reader and poet. To phrase it less academically, no one can truly say what poetry is or is not, but they know it when they see it. Poetry is an art form that is culturally and socially defined, which creates a scenario in which it is understandable that the responses to social media poetry would be mixed. To the authors, and many of the readers, a few black lines on a white screen portray a strong emotional experience, welcoming critical analysis through artistic simplicity. For others, the world of social media poetry “means the complete rejection of complexity, subtlety, eloquence and the aspiration to do anything well” (Watts). Critics of the art form have drawn a firm line, arguing that social media poetry does not qualify as poetry or, at the very least, is poetry done poorly. Poet Elisabeth Deanna Morris Lakes defends her opinion by explaining that, in her own definition, poetry requires revision, something that is not achievable in very short works, at least to the same degree as with longer works (Myers). This division in the literary world necessitates an evaluation of the impacts and validity of this new art form, as social media and the artists who use it as a platform do not seem to be fading from the scene anytime soon. Critical engagement with this topic requires the reader to decide whether a firm distinction between social media poetry and “traditional” poetry is inherent, or even necessary, or if there is a potential for both forms to peacefully coexist under the same label.

So much hope in prayer (poetry); breathing life into lungs that have spent years starving. Alison Malee

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As an art form dependent on social and cultural conventions, poetry has always been living, evolving, and adapting. At first glance, it is easy to see the rise of social media poetry as a radical change, but when evaluated in light of living, breathing art, it can be understood as a natural progression of an adaptive art form. Poetry has a complex history, and nearly every aspect of the craft, including the use of language, form, meter, and intended audience, has changed over time. Oftentimes, poetry is considered highbrow and elitist, which is mainly an outcome of the modern period, spanning from the mid-19th century and into the 20th. Prior to this period, however, there have been many literary movements that have pulled poetry off of its hightower and into the arena of the common man, a concept highly visible in social media poetry today. An examination of the main literary movements that have molded the current poetry scene allows for a more thorough understanding of social media poetry within the context of the larger literary dialogue. In the nineteenth century, the world of poetry experienced an outpouring of diversity, with several prominent directions emerging within the art form. Of particular note to the present discussion are pastoralism, romanticism, the Parnassians, and symbolism. The pastoral movement dates back to ancient Greece and the oral poet Hesiod. Its first written examples are generally attributed to Theocritus, a Hellenistic poet in the third century (“Pastoral”). His “idylls” depicted the rustic life of the common man, subject matter that was revived in the eighteenth through nineteenth centuries. This more modern interpretation of pastoral poetry sought to elevate the rural subject, even to the point of being unrealistic. This return to the common man and the idealization of rural life was unique to the poetry scene at the time, and accompanied many outgrowths of change in literature. The romantic movement of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries complemented pastoral poetry in that it “turned toward nature and the interior world of feeling, in opposition to the mannered formalism and disciplined scientific inquiry of the Enlightenment era that preceded it” (“Romanticism”). Rather than being built around logic, romantic poetry was written in celebration of creativity, and poets often “found parallels to their own emotional lives in the natural world” (“Romanticism”). In response to the looser, emotionally-driven writing of the pastoral and romantic movements, other movements and groups took the art form in a very different direction. The Parnassians, a group of French poets, rejected the emotionalism and loose structure characteristic of the romantic era, choosing instead to emphasize restraint, technical perfection, and exacting descriptions (“Parnassian”). Symbolism, on the other hand, sought to capture fleeting emotions, immediate sensations, and absolute truths, simultaneously rejecting plain meanings and straightforward descriptions (“Symbolism”). These four distinct movements, all occurring simultaneously in the nineteenth century, demonstrate the ever-changing nature of poetry as a living art form, proving that criticism and dismissal of new styles is not a recent concept.

can we speak in flowers. it will be easier for me to understand. — other language Nayyirah Waheed

The current development of poetry, particularly in the space of social media, is more deeply understood through an examination of nineteenth-century movements. Historically, a very important parallel can be drawn between the two eras. In the nineteenth century, literacy rates drastically increased as an outpouring of the Enlightenment and a direct result of increased

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education, particularly for working-class children. This spike in literacy impacted poetry in a key way: accessibility. Suddenly, the group of people interacting and engaging with poetry was exponentially expanded, and as a natural result, various new forms emerged. This was a key contributing factor to the poetry movements that significantly impacted the art form throughout the nineteenth century. When compared with modern-day poetry, a striking similarity can be found. The rise of social media has achieved a result reminiscent of the nineteenth century; the widespread use of social media has resulted in a drastic increase in accessibility. Suddenly, a person can open their phone and have access to a billion people, a billion new ideas. This new and highly available form of communication has caused a natural response from the world of poetry. Just as poets responded to the shift in literacy in the nineteenth century by developing new forms, poets today have created a new format of poetry in response to widespread accessibility to the craft. In a similar fashion to the Parnassian rejection of romantic ideals, “traditional” poets and critics today tend to pull away from social media poetry, disregarding its legitimacy and denying its space within the art form. In hindsight, however, it is clear that all of the distinct and even opposing movements of the nineteenth century had their place, and each had lasting contributions to the craft. The coexistence of dissimilar forms added diversity to the field rather than detracting from its beauty or development. In fact, the diversification of poetry in the nineteenth century opened the door for dozens of movements that burst onto the scene in the twentieth century. It is quite possible that the impacts of social media poetry existing alongside traditional poetry will have similar implications for the craft. Rachael Allen, poetry editor for Granta, notes that “poetic form has always been affected by the medium in which it’s presented … there are whole movements built out of poems embedded in landscape, or carved into stone” (Hill and Yuan). Rather than being viewed as a complete rejection of traditional forms of poetry, social media poetry should be seen as a natural progression of the art, and is simply an adaptation of the craft to fit a new method of communication. Though the two take on very different formats, and seem at times to reject the other, both have something unique to offer to the art form, and will likely pave the way for continued change in centuries to come.

our backs tell stories no books have the spine to carry — women of colour rupi kaur

Critics of social media poetry have been abundant in recent years, often delegitimizing the art based on the medium through which it is being delivered. One particularly outspoken critic with a prominent article in the field is Rebecca Watts, whose “The Cult of the Noble Amateur” serves as much as a review of Instagram poetry as a whole as it does a pointed criticism of the creators and consumers of the art form. Her article makes bold claims, such as “once you care about the person you’ll consume anything they produce — especially if it makes you feel better about your own lack of talent” (Watts). “The Cult of the Noble Amateur” deconstructs social media poetry from three different angles: against the form and subject matter, the reader, and the poet. Watts’ claims summarize the critiques of social media poetry from all

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sides, granted, much more harshly than other critics would dare to write. Each of the arguments can be weighed against the legitimacy and positive, quantifiable impacts of social media poetry. First, Watts examines the form and subject matter of Instagram poetry, quoting Kirsty Melville, publisher for Rupi Kaur: “The medium of poetry reflects our age, where short-form communication is something people find easier to digest or connect with.” Melville’s commentary can be understood as an acknowledgment of the changing and growing nature of poetry, and not necessarily as a rejection of longer and more traditional poetry. Watts, however, states that “in the redefinition of poetry as ‘short-form communication’ the floodgates have been opened.”. She continues to describe the content produced by these poets as making readers “more confused, less appreciative of nuance, less able to engage with ideas, more indignant about things that annoy us, and more resentful of those who appear to be different from us,” and questions “what good is a flourishing poetry market” when these factors are taken into account. Social media poetry rises to the challenge Watts poses with the counterargument of accessibility. As poetry moved through the modern movement of the 20th century, the craft became intentionally inaccessible, with one of the main characteristics of this movement being the elitist and highbrow nature of the language. The movement away from this period, however, coupled with the direct results of social media poetry, has caused the accessibility of the art form to skyrocket. Unless the purpose of poetry is to remain as elitist as possible, increased accessibility to the common man should be viewed favorably. Thanks to Instagram poets, art is being brought directly to readers who would not have otherwise been exposed to it in the same capacity. For example, poet Fatiah Asghar’s book If They Come For Us, which details her experience as an immigrant, made it into the hands of an audience of readers who would not have had access to a critically renowned book of poetry without the influence of social media. To disregard this form of poetry as a legitimate expression of the craft would be “throwing a bunch of readers away,” and defining Instagram poetry as a valid form of poetry is, as poet Natasha Murdock decides, “worth the risk … because we’re risking nothing” (Myers). The only risk, she concludes, is pushing poetry into the hands of a wider audience, which proponents of the expanded accessibility of poetry would argue for rather than against. Surely, an increase in readers of poetry through a highly accessible network of communication is something to be celebrated rather than discouraged. Watts’ critique continues on to target the reader of social media poetry, directly questioning their intelligence with an air of hopelessness and claiming, “the reader is dead: long live consumer-driven content and the ‘instant gratification’ this affords.” Social media is described as having a “dumbing” effect, and a strong aversion to the classics is described. In Watts’ opinion, and the opinion held by other critics of Instagram poetry as well, the acceptance of social media poetry is synonymous with the rejection of traditional poetry; the reader has chosen one in favor of the other and cannot reconcile the two. Rather than necessitate a rejection of traditional poetry, social media poetry extends a broader invitation to the study of poetry as a whole, acting somewhat like a gateway to a more formal interaction with poetry. It has been proven in recent years that, despite the increase in Instagram poetry’s popularity, longer works are still being published and M.F.A. programs in poetry are still well-attended (Hill and Yuan). Rather than forcing out more traditional forms in favor of only what is new, social media poetry is actually serving to draw in readers who may not have otherwise interacted with poetry. When the craft is presented in a much more casual format, such as through a five-line Instagram poem, a broader audience is likely to interact.

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Finally, Watts makes pointed remarks about the authors of social media poetry, directly referencing a few poets in particular and closely analyzing their work. She is skeptical of the followings amassed by these poets, pointing out to readers that “the ability to draw a crowd, attract an audience or assemble a mob does not itself render a thing intrinsically good.” The truth of this statement in itself is undeniable, but it supposes that the poet is aiming to assemble a mob, which is rarely a positive thing, and that the reader does not have the faculty to decipher which poems are worth their time. Watts continually refers to these new poets as “products of a cult of personality,” insinuating that social media poetry places very little weight on the actual quality of the work being presented. In her favor, Watts acknowledges the positive impact of poetry’s increased accessibility, noting that it has become something anyone can do, which decreases the likelihood of the craft being viewed as elitist, and therefore losing mass appeal. This recognition, however, is immediately followed by the criticism that “because poetry is taken to be the loftiest of the literary arts it is the most susceptible to invasion by those intent on bringing down all barriers on the grounds of fairness” (Watts). According to Watts, removing the barriers that limit the accessibility of many poets to engage with poetry is an invasion. One of the most significant impacts of the rise of the social media poet has been the creation of a space for the artistic expression of marginalized voices, particularly women and people of color. Watts’ idea of maintaining all barriers is not a protection of the art form from destruction, it is a protection of the art form from the empowerment of historically marginalized communities. This surely is not a worthwhile defense of traditional poetry, but a step backwards. Social media and self-publishing has created an environment in which a much more broad variety of perspectives can be celebrated and allowed to create. Instagram poetry is elevating voices that American society is not used to hearing, and the benefits are plain to see. Adults from ages 18-34 have drastically increased their consumption of poetry within the last nine years (Myers). Of the top 20 best-selling poets of 2017, Instagram poets took 12 spots, comprising nearly half of all poetry books sold in the United States that year (Hill and Yuan). Minority groups also have seen a rise in poetry reading, with groups like African American and Hispanic Americans having numbers that doubled, and groups such as Asian Americans having numbers nearly tripled (Myers). Readers comprising these minority groups are directly benefiting from the rise in poets of color in the community, as stories are finally being told that describe the human experience from a vast spectrum of cultures and experiences. As Murdock points out, “to get people to read poetry or understand the nuance … you have to start with something that they can relate to” (Myers). This idea has been a driving force behind Rupi Kaur’s work. Kaur immigrated from India to Canada at a young age, and much of her work unpacks the experiences, feelings, trauma, and triumphs of a family who has immigrated to a new culture. One of the most recognizable features of Kaur’s work is the lack of capitalization or punctuation beyond a period in any of her poems. The common misconception is that poets make artistic choices such as these to challenge the conventional rules of English and define an aesthetic, but Kaur’s punctuation choices are intended to send a clear message. She explains that within the Gurmukhi script, one of two scripts used in writing her mother tongue, Punjabi, there are no capital or lowercase letters, and no punctuation besides the period. She explains that “in order to symbolize and preserve these small details of my mother language, I ascribe them within my work … a visual manifestation and ode to my identity as a diasporic Punjabi Sikh woman” (Kaur). In interviews, Kaur emphasizes the importance of her last name on a bookshelf, as it provides a level of representation that she never saw in her youth. Representation in literature is critical, particularly

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for children. It signifies that a person and their culture are welcome in a space, that they are meant to be there, and that they have something worth saying.

My hunger for writing will die when I have bled for the humans who never found the strength to find the words themselves. Christopher Poindexter

The concept of poetry evolving is nothing new; poetry has always adapted, grown, and developed to fit society and culture. This does not mean that poetry of the past will be rejected. Instead, it is still being engaged with, and social media poetry has arguably increased that engagement. The dismissal of social media poetry based on the platform it is communicated through is a dismissal of the natural progression of art, a hindrance to growth. Critics like Watts are delegitimizing a main method of communication and platform for creative expression, notably the platform most often inhabited by the next generation. To keep the barriers around poetry intact would be to limit accessibility, representation, and a much more broad education for society as a whole. Our classrooms, our poetry slams, our published literature, all of these spheres should be reflecting the dynamic changes and broad diversity of society, welcoming and encouraging creative expression rather than safeguarding it.

we began with honesty let us end in it too us — rupi kaur

Social media poetry takes on a format that is distinctly different from more traditional poetry, but should be seen as a natural progression of poetic expression rather than a dramatic change in the craft. This poetry has intrinsic value as art breathed to life with human emotion, and cannot be invalidated based on the format in which the poet chooses to present it. The rejection of social media poetry from serious discussions of the art form disregards the quantifiable impacts and benefits that Instagram poetry has on society, including the increased accessibility to a once elitist art form, a more broad invitation to the study of poetry as a whole, and the welcoming of marginalized voices into the dialogue. Poetry has ebbed and flowed throughout history, from the diversification of form in the nineteenth century to a paralleled development happening in society today. The long-term impacts of this movement are unknown as of yet, as its leaders are still putting pen to paper and text to screen. One thing is certain: the social media poet is taking up space and does not dare to back down. Long live the reader.

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bravery

a confession — the answer is simple.

like the wind whistling through everything,

take up as much space as you dare.

Alison Malee

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The Tyrant’s Triumph: How Pindar Extols Hieron of Syracuse Through Poetic Innovation

Emily Yamada

Often considered the greatest of the nine canonical lyric poets of ancient Greece, Pindar remains distinguished in the modern age for his innovation and mastery of lyric skill. Born around 518 B.C. in Thebes, Pindar was known for his epinicia, or lyrical odes that celebrated the victors of the Panhellenic games. These odes were often sung by a chorus at a public celebration honoring the victor, though they were also preserved and passed down through generations. One of Pindar’s best-known epinician poems is Olympian 1, an ode written for Hieron I, king of Syracuse, who won the single horse race at the Olympic Games in 476 B.C. Along with being an example of Pindar’s mastery of the form of epinicia, Olympian 1 is an excellent reflection of the poet’s innovation in his refashioning of the myth of Pelops. Departing from the standard myth where Pelops was slaughtered, dismembered, and served to the gods as a meal by his father Tantalus, Pindar instead presents a story where Poseidon abducted Pelops. The relationship between the significance of this shift in tradition and Hieron’s victory and tyranny, as well as Pindar’s own poetic authority, are reasons why Olympian 1 is considered one of the poet’s masterpieces. Indeed, Pindar’s rewriting of the Pelops myth not only legitimizes Hieron’s superior authority through wealth and divine patronage, but also provides Pindar with the opportunity to make his own definitions of what constitutes a beneficial or perverse tyranny. The second in the line of the Deinomenid tyrants, Hieron I inherited his tyranny of Syracuse and Gela in Sicily after the death of his older brother, Gelon, around 478 B.C. Though the word “tyrant” has negative connotations in the modern-day, the Greek word tyrannos referred to a king who seized absolute power of the state through unconstitutional means; in Hieron’s case, he had inherited his tyranny. The legacy Gelon had left on Syracuse was staggering, from his athletic and military victories to his architectural projects, to the extent that Gelon was honored as a hero after his death.1 In order to gain his own hero cult and establish his authority as the new tyrant of Syracuse, scholars believe Hieron intentionally paralleled his brother’s achievements. Hieron established the city of Aetna as Gelon had established Syracuse and Gela, won the Battle of Kumai and matched Gelon’s victory at Himera, and gained the same athletic victories at the Panhellenic games.2 While Hieron’s colonization efforts and military victories in Sicily established his influence in the domestic sphere, his victories at the Panhellenic games gave him political renown in the broader Hellenic world.3 Fifth-century tyrants, however, often faced threats to their power such as political subversion, negative stereotyping in cultural portrayals such as theater, or assassination.4 Thus, tyrants often looked to poets to laud their achievements in odes, creating favorable propaganda that would simultaneously consolidate their domestic power while expanding their political

1 Sarah E. Harrell, "King or Private Citizen: Fifth-Century Sicilian Tyrants at Olympia and Delphi," Mnemosyne, Fourth Series, 55, no. 4 (2002): 441. 2 Kathryn A. Morgan, Pindar and the Construction of Syracusan Monarchy in the Fifth Century B.C. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 85. 3 Steven Instone, ed., introduction to The Complete Odes (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 2007, viii. 4 Ibid.

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reach. Great poets, believed to be divinely-inspired, also provided wise advice for the tyrant’s autocratic rule; Hieron’s legacy was recorded in the epinician odes of Pindar and his rival, Bacchylides, both notable poets who resided at Hieron’s court. As Syracuse was an inherited domain on the edge of the Hellenic world, Hieron’s poetic commissions aimed to make the kingdom his own by exerting control over his cultural influence, while also legitimizing his authority by creating a link between Sicily and mainland Greece. Pindar begins Olympian 1 with a priamel highlighting Hieron’s extraordinary wealth, a motif that underlines the rest of the poem. He juxtaposes the superior elements of the world from water to gold and the sun's greatness in order to display the superiority of the Olympic games to the other Panhellenic games, such as the Pythian or Delphic games. Hieron, an Olympic victor, is therefore glorified as superior over the victors of other competitions. By describing how “gold gleams like blazing fire in the night, / brightest amid a rich man’s wealth” and comparing both to the sun, Pindar naturalizes the element of gold and Hieron's possession of exceptional wealth in a context of superior athletic achievement.5 Pindar also connects the gold and fire imagery with the “rich and blessed hearth of Hieron” and his “hospitable table,” incorporating the motifs of feasting and hospitality in demonstrating Hieron’s superior material wealth to those of other Greek tyrants.6 This wealth allows Hieron to gain even more fame and exert his tyrannical influence, from having the economic stability needed to prepare for more athletic victories, to wielding cultural influence in his ability to commission poets and playwrights to praise his achievements at extravagant public celebrations.7 However, while Pindar praises the great wealth of Hieron, not all of his contemporaries would have looked favorably upon the luxuriousness of the tyrant’s court. The Syracusan tyrants during this era were known for their lavish banqueting and overall decadent lifestyles. Dr. Kathryn Morgan, in her book Pindar and the Construction of Syracusan Monarchy, notes how the stereotype of “Sicilian obsession with food contemporary with Hieron” was often the subject of parody and was later considered by Socrates to be a corrupting influence of one’s character.8 Pindar, however, turns this decadence into an indicator of Hieron’s benevolent kingship by describing the cultural richness of his court and then immediately presenting an alternative negative paradigm in the form of Tantalus, a wealthy king who had been corrupted by luxury. It is following this rich banquet imagery of Hieron’s table that Pindar introduces the corrupt table of Tantalus. Morgan writes that Tantalus, King of Sipylus and the father of Pelops, was considered an archetype of wealth in Greek culture a century prior to Pindar’s writing.9 The poet’s emphasis of Pelops’ lineage within the incorporated myth emphasizes this “dynasty that was preeminent in the Greek imagination for its wealth and royalty, qualities that Pindar wishes to foreground in his treatment of Hieron.”10 Supreme wealth and renown as present in banquet imagery in particular is present throughout Olympian 1, as indicated in Hieron’s current symposium, the sympotic banquet of Tantalus and the gods, and later, Pelop’s cult symposium. By connecting the material wealth and imagery of feasting in Tantalus’ house to the vast riches

5 Pindar, Olympian 1, 2-3 in The Complete Odes, trans. Anthony Verity, ed. Stephen Instone. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 3. 6 Ibid. 9, 16. 7 Rosalind Thomas, et. al, “Fame, Memorial, and Choral Poetry,” in Pindar's Poetry, Patrons, and Festivals: From Archaic Greece to the Roman Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 143. 8 Morgan, Pindar and the Construction of Syracusan Monarchy, 238-9. 9 Ibid., 228-229. 10 Ibid.

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of Hieron, Pindar establishes foils in the nature of the kingships of Tantalus and Pelops, the latter of whom he parallels with his patron’s greatness. These two kings, while related, were familiar to Pindar’s audience as a negative and positive paradigm of kingship, respectively, due to their achievements and actions. However, Pindar diverts from the traditional cannibalistic myth of Pelops by changing the crime Tantalus commits. Instead of cooking and serving his son to the gods to test their omniscience, Tantalus instead steals nectar and ambrosia from the gods at an Olympian banquet. As Pindar tells us, he “could not digest his great prosperity, / and by his excesses brought overwhelming ruin on himself.”11 The tyrant Tantalus, in stealing from the gods, violates the laws of hospitality out of hubris—a major offense to the Greeks—and destroys his own prosperity. Hieron, a tyrant who has not fallen into the same mistakes despite his own excessive wealth, is exalted in contrast. In presenting this godly but corrupted banquet, Pindar changes the motivation of Tantalus’ transgression from one of testing the gods to one of gluttony on account of greed. When considering how Pindar has just established Hieron’s significant wealth, this passage has been interpreted by some scholars, such as Morgan, as a warning to Hieron against overindulgence. However, other scholars, such as Adolf Köhnken, interpret this change in Tantalus’ crime not as a warning, but as Pindar’s method of resolving the narrative plot hole he created earlier in having Poseidon abduct Pelops to Olympus.12 As Pelops was known by the contemporary audience to have established a dynasty in the Peloponnesus, where the Olympic games were later held, Pindar had to manufacture a way to bring the prince out of Olympus and back down to the mortal realm. Therefore, Pindar finds a solution in creating an alternative crime for Tantalus to commit, with the king’s transgression resulting in his son being expelled from Olympus. While this latter interpretation is not improbable when considering Pindar’s development of the narrative of the poem, the context and emphasis of Hieron’s great wealth that precedes this crime makes Morgan’s interpretation of a warning against greed more likely. The cannibalistic crime of Tantalus in the traditional myth, Pindar claims, instead has its origins in the rumors from an “ill-intentioned neighbour.”13 It was not uncommon for tyrants to be the subject of malicious rumors, and Pindar turning the myth of Tantalus into a product of jealousy, likely due to his wealth and power, suggests that rumors might arise against Hieron for the same reasons.14 Pindar also emphasizes the cultural effects of poetry on the Greek populace, as these “rumors” of Tantalus had been embedded and thus immortalized in poetic narratives such as Homer’s Odyssey. Poetry in the Greek world was wide-reaching because it was related orally and could spread and reach a wider audience because it was not limited to a physical, textual form. Hieron’s wealth and his sponsorship of Pindar and other artists thus ensure his beneficial tyranny will be remembered favorably by both his citizens and the citizens of other polises. Pindar’s motif of wealth as connected to the imagery of banqueting appears again at the end of the Pelops myth, where the hero is depicted as enjoying posthumous cult, or worship as a hero, and “luxuriates in splendid blood-offerings / as he reclines beside the ford of Alpheus.”15 Just as Pindar uses Tantalus’ greedy theft from the banquet of the gods to warn Hieron of the

11 Pindar, Olympian 1, 58-59 in The Complete Odes, trans. Anthony Verity, ed. Stephen Instone, 4. 12 Adolf Köhnken, “Pindar as Innovator: Poseidon Hippios and the Relevance of the Pelops Story in Olympian 1,” The Classical Quarterly 24, no. 2 (1974): 202. 13 Pindar, Olympian 1, 49 in The Complete Odes, 4. 14 Morgan, Pindar and the Construction of Syracusan Monarchy, 236-238. 15 Pindar, Olympian 1, 90-91 in The Complete Odes, 5-6.

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dangers of potential avarice, the poet portrays the table at Pelops’ altar and his cult as a potential future for Hieron due to his achievements. The late sixth to early fifth century B.C. saw great athletic victors, many of whom were kings like Hieron, gain such renown that their legacy was carried on in cults and legends.16 Just as Pelops, who was also a supreme king and athletic victor, had tremendous wealth and renown even beyond death, Pindar insinuates that Hieron could gain his own lavish cult worship after death. The imagery of crowds visiting Pelops’ altar by the Alpheus is a reminder of and parallel to Pindar’s earlier imagery of the poets and artists flocking to Hieron’s court, with the result of connecting the two kings in their cultural wealth and renown and tying the whole poem together. Divine patronage and its relation to tyranny and athletic prowess is another major theme explored in Olympian 1. In Pindar’s “corrected” version of the Pelops myth, the god Poseidon desires Pelops and sweeps him away “in a golden chariot / to the lofty palace of widely honoured Zeus” in Olympus.17 Pindar’s introduction of the god Poseidon into the Pelops myth is a significant and intentional choice, especially in the context of Hieron’s recent athletic victory; apart from being the god of the ocean, Poseidon is also the god of horses. As Olympian 1 was written by Pindar to celebrate Hieron’s single-horse race victory at the Olympic Games, this correspondence to divine favor would have been clear to Hieron and the rest of his court. The motif of divine horses is prominent throughout Pindar’s poem; Pelops’ story begins with his abduction by a golden chariot pulled by Poseidon’s divine horses and closes with his athletic victory over Oenomaus thanks to the “golden chariot with tireless winged horses” given to him by Poseidon.18 This motif of divinely-given horses not only unifies the ode’s structure, but also emphasizes how Poseidon’s divine patronage of Pelops is the only reason why Pelops achieves victory, establishes his widespread fame, and has his own posthumous cult. Poseidon’s favor is also why Pelops is able to establish his kingdom in the Peloponnesus—where the Olympic games were held, and where Hieron had recently won. Pindar thus appears to extend this divine favor to Hieron by association; both Pelops and Hieron are kings who have gained glory through athletic victories, and so Pindar insinuates that Hieron must have had a god’s favor as well. Additionally, Pelops wins a chariot race thanks to the horses Poseidon gives him. Hieron, in contrast, won the single-horse race at the Olympics with his horse Pherenikos and his jockey. Thus, Pindar elevates Hieron to be not only the parallel of a mythological figure who was known as the archetype of kingship, but one who had also reaped the benefits of being favored by a god—and the god of horses, no less. This connection was significant as the Syracusan tyrants were separated from the rest of mainland Greece by the Ionian Sea. Any connections between a major god and Hieron’s rule held the implications of his tyranny having political legitimacy as dictated by a divine figure, and therefore gave him greater status on the Hellenic political stage. A god’s favor also insinuates that the favored one is a just and beneficial king. Pindar references how “Hieron holds the sceptre of justice in sheep-rich Sicily, / where he chooses for himself the finest fruits / of every kind of excellence.”19 This description not only characterizes Hieron as a just tyrant, but one who wields a scepter that has Homeric connections within the

16 R.R.R. Smith, et. al, “Pindar, Athletes, and the Statue Habit,” in Pindar's Poetry, Patrons, and Festivals: From Archaic Greece to the Roman Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 100. 17 Pindar, Olympian 1, 42-43, 4. 18 Ibid. 87-88, 5. 19

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context of the Pelops myth. This scepter of justice alludes to the scepter of King Agamemnon in Homer’s Iliad, which is described as having been given “to Pelops, driver of horses,/ and Pelops again gave it to Atreus, the shepherd of the people.”20 Zeus had been the one to give Pelops, the paradigm of good kingship, his kingly scepter through Hermes, and Pelops, in turn, had given it to his son Atreus, whom Pindar mirrors with the flock imagery of Hieron.21 The scepter of Hieron, therefore, carries the authority of justice as given by Zeus, the king of the gods, and marks Hieron’s tyranny as the embodiment of a just kingship as it had marked Pelops’. The ability to enact justice, after all, was seen as an indicator of good tyrannical rule in the Hellenic sphere, as bad tyrants operated outside the laws and acted however they pleased.22 By also addressing the scepter as a potential allusion to Agamemnon, Pindar further heightens the connection between Hieron and these epic Homeric kings, establishing the character of the tyrant’s rule as similar to the epic paradigms of kingship. Unlike Agamemnon or Tantalus, who both failed in their kingly characters and lost the favor of the gods, Pindar assures his audience and his sponsor that “there is no host today / more acquainted with glorious deeds / or more established in his power” than Hieron.23 Hieron’s character, being parallel to Pelops, is able to support the tyrannical authority and responsibilities bestowed upon him by the king of the gods in the form of his scepter of justice. His victory at the Olympics, which were held in honor of Zeus, appears to be proof of his divine patronage by possibly Poseidon or even Zeus himself due to Hieron’s good character as a tyrant. However, while Pindar tells Hieron that he must be favored by a god, he also adds his wish that the god “does not desert [him],” a subtle warning to Hieron to not overstep any mortal boundaries in his rule.24 Showing deference to the gods, then, is necessary for good kingship, as the gods have given the tyrant his kingship and could potentially take it away like they had with Agamemnon and Tantalus. Pindar also uses the motif of divine patronage in order to establish his own authority as a poet and commentator on the nature of Hieron’s tyranny. In Olympian 1 and his other epinician odes such as Nemean 6 and Nemean 8, Pindar claims the Muses as the source of his inspiration. The Muses were the Greek goddesses of the sciences and arts, including poetry, and were often associated with creativity, intelligence, and wisdom. Fifth-century poets were often commissioned by tyrants to provide wise political advice in addition to glorifying the tyrant’s achievements.25 By appealing to the Muses as his source of inspiration, Pindar not only establishes his own divinely-given legitimacy to present a revision of the well-known myth of Pelops, but also establishes his authority to use that myth as a vehicle to comment on his perceptions of beneficial and perverse kingship. Of course, Pindar’s claim of divine patronage by the Muses must have also had personal motivations. By establishing his authority as a poet and then lauding Hieron as a good tyrant for his athletic prowess and for his poetic patronage, Pindar attempts to increase his chances of getting future commissions from his patron. While the poetic aspect of Olympian 1 is certainly notable, this epinician ode is a fascinating study in the way Pindar rewrites a common myth in order to both connect his patron

20 Homer and A. T. Murray, The Iliad (London: W. Heinemann, 1967), 2.104-105 21 Homer and A. T. Murray, The Iliad (London: W. Heinemann, 1967), 2.105; Morgan, Pindar and the Construction of Syracusan Monarchy, 225-226. 22 Mitchell, Lynette. “Tyrannical oligarchs at Athens” In Ancient Tyranny, 178-187. (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006), 179-180. 23 Pindar, Olympian 1, 104-105, 6. 24 Ibid. 108, 6. 25 Instone, The Complete Odes, viii-ix.

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to a broader cultural narrative and to explore different models of kingship. Pindar uses his poetic commission by Hieron as an opportunity to not only glorify Hieron’s achievements as a victor of the Olympic games by extolling his wealth and divine patronage, but also to explore the qualities the poet sees as separating a good tyrant from a bad one. Pindar’s detailed and constant glorification of Hieron of Syracuse, done mainly through his revised myth of Pelops, displays his mastery of epinician poetry while cementing Hieron’s reputation as a beneficial tyrant in contemporary culture. By juxtaposing Hieron to Pelops, Tantalus, and Agamemnon, Pindar illustrates the qualities that the good tyrant must adhere to and avoid, and thus provides political advice within his writings. Whether Hieron was truly a beneficial tyrant is unsure, but Pindar must have believed he was enough to memorialize him in several odes. Indeed, Hieron’s commissioning of Pindar has done what it had been intended to do; as Pindar’s poetry has been preserved into the modern age, so also does Hieron’s legacy live on alongside those of great ancient kings.

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Author Biographies

Luca Azuma is an M.A. Candidate at the California State University Fullerton, and an alumnus of Concordia University Irvine with a B.A. in History/Political Thought in 2019. He intends to pursue a PhD in History in the near future with research interests in American conservatism/libertarianism, political philosophy, and financial history. In the meantime, he intends to teach at the college level and spend as much time as possible in the Santa Ana mountains.

Godesulloh Bawa was born and raised in Abuja, Nigeria. He graduated from Concordia University Irvine with a BA in History and Political Thought in the Fall of 2020, and is interested in African history, specifically African philosophy as it relates to the current state of the continent and the mind of the African. At Concordia, he was also a part of the music department and studied guitar and composition. Godesulloh is an active composer and arranger.

Ryan Dunn is a junior majoring in History & Political Thought. Beyond the The Franciscan, he is also involved in Enactus, CUI Forensics (Parliamentary Debate), and works for the Writing Studio. In his study of history, he enjoys researching the function of politics, ideology, and government.

Evangeline Gahn is a junior at Concordia University Irvine, where she is pursuing a History/Political Thought major with a double minor in Creative Writing and Philosophy. Her historical interests range from the history of ideas from Ancient Greece to the modern day to the study of society through the lens of fashion/textiles in all eras, as well as history and literature combined to provide a holistic understanding of the human experience. After graduation she hopes to pursue a Master’s degree in Library and Information Science, with the goal of working as a research librarian in a museum or university setting.

Jacob Lange is the Senior Editor of this year’s edition of The Franciscan. He is a graduating senior History and Political Thought major at Concordia University, Irvine, with minors in English, Law and Politics, and Classical Languages. He is also an active member of the music program at Concordia, playing trumpet in the Wind Orchestra, Sinfonietta, and Jazz Band. On campus, he works as a Writing Studio consultant and as the Honors student worker. After graduation, he is planning on attending graduate school to continue his education in history.

Zoie Moore is a Liberal Studies major graduating this May on the path to becoming an elementary school teacher. Zoie has worked as a Resident Assistant for the Honors LLC for three years, as well as at the Writing Studio, and is grateful for the opportunity to be published in The Franciscan.

Emily Yamada is a junior majoring in History and Political Thought with a minor in Creative Writing, and is on track to graduate as an Honors Scholar. She has participated in Concordia’s

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women’s choir, the Donne di Canto, and recently presented her research on Pindar at the TriCampus Undergraduate Conference hosted by Concordia. Her academic interests currently include the history of ideas, especially within politics and literature, early modern Europe, and Post-Impressionism. Outside of academia, she enjoys writing fiction, drinking coffee, and reading classic literature.

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Editorial Staff

Faculty Advisor Professor Rebecca Lott has been an adjunct faculty member at Concordia University Irvine since 2017 and taught the Historical Editing class responsible for publishing The Franciscan. Professor Lott is a current Ph.D. candidate at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. Her research interests include early modern poor relief, charity, and migration.

Senior Editor Jacob Lange is the Senior Editor of this year’s edition of The Franciscan. He is a graduating senior History and Political Thought major at Concordia University, Irvine, with minors in English, Law and Politics, and Classical Languages. He is also an active member of the music program at Concordia, playing trumpet in the Wind Orchestra, Sinfonietta, and Jazz Band. On campus, he works as a Writing Studio consultant and as the Honors student worker. After graduation, he is planning on attending graduate school to continue his education in history.

Editors Autumn Borg is in the publishing department for this year’s journal. She is a sophomore majoring in History and Political Thought with a minor in Lutheran Teaching. Beyond the journal she is involved with Senate, Women’s Ministry, and works for Campus Safety.

Ryan Dunn is in the submissions department for this year’s journal. He is a junior majoring in History and Political Thought. Beyond The Franciscan, he is also involved in Enactus, CUI Forensics (Parliamentary Debate), and works for the Writing Studio. In his study of history, he enjoys researching the function of politics, ideology, and government.

Mackenzie McMullen is in the marketing department for this year’s journal. She is a sophomore majoring in History and Political Thought with a minor in business. Her interests include law and politics.