Odds and Ends

Thanks everyone for a very good second week. If you have any difficulty finding any of the items on your map assignment this weekend, take a look at this website, a great resource for ancient maps.

In a class earlier this week, one student asked if Theseus was a real person, or strictly a legendary one. There appears to be some historical debate on the subject. Professors Morford and Lenardon, experts on the subject and authors of a major textbook on Greek mythology, write that "Theseus of all the legendary heroes has the strongest claims to being a real person. As stated above, he was for Plutarch a historical figure and he very likely was one of the kings of Athens perhaps in the ninth or eighth century B.C. But serious historical and chronological problems arise when we try to understand how he appears as the great conqueror of the legendary Minotaur and a king of Athens in the earlier Mycenaean Age and also a later king of Athens." You can find out more at the link.

In another class, when we were discussing democracy as it exists today, compared with during Classical Greece, Taylor asked about the electoral college and whether that serves to limit democracy in the US. The electoral college is a fascinating subject and one of the best overviews of its historical development comes from an article by Tara Ross on the Heritage Foundation website. (Note - the Heritage Foundation is a conservative-leaning organization. But, the article is carefully constructed around detailed evidence.)

Ross describes the creation of the electoral college as a check on what were perceived to be the worst excesses of democracy. Her quotations from the founders are particularly revealing: "Alexander Hamilton agreed [with James Madison] that "[t]he ancient democracies, in which the people themselves deliberated, never possessed one feature of good government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure, deformity." Other early Americans concurred. John Adams, who signed the Declaration of Independence and later became President, declared, "[D]emocracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide." Another signatory to the Declaration of Independence, Benjamin Rush, stated, "A simple democracy . . . is one of the greatest of evils.""

As I wrote, it's a compelling read, and worth a look if you're interested in the subject.

Finally, as I mentioned in class, "Education for Death" is just one of a number of anti-Nazi and anti-Japanese propaganda films produced by Disney in support of the war effort in WWII. The most famous cartoon from this period features Donald Duck - "Der Fuhrer's Face." I've embedded it below. As with the other cartoon, consider what they have chosen to mock and criticize about Nazi Germany - and what, by comparison, they are promoting as good and right about America.