the peloponnesian war v. the cold civil war

persia v. russia?

According to this conjecture, US liberals should be especially wary of any proposed expeditions to conquer Sicily.

note that the identifying color of Syracuse (University) is ORANGE

Hilary = Alcibiades. Exiled by their countries for their prowess (lets ignore the joining your enemies bit)

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played the magistrate in lysistrata a couple months ago. had never read it but had somehow internalized someone else's authoritative weariness about how it's Not Actually feminist/antiwar/subversive. it indeed has no problem with war per se and yeah turns out ancient greek men weren't third-wavers, but i was surprised to find it genuinely anti-imperialist. lysistrata's org doesn't just withhold sex. in metaphorical parallel they physically block access to the league treasury-- symbol and mechanism of athenian empire-- and lysistrata is repeatedly explicit that the treasury doesn't just fund the war but causes it. (enjoyed the reliability of the laugh i managed from delivering "so MONEY is the CAUSE of the war??" as if humoring an idiot stoner.) in this she arguably agrees with her (unmentioned but v present) enemy alcibiades, who implies in his pitch for the sicilian expedition that the athenian empire, being an empire, has no choice but to seek new wars. at the end of the play, the symbol of simultaneous reconciliation and release is that everyone gets drunk and fucks in the room with the money in it, which i thought was more interesting than people say.

anyway no idea what this thread's about obv but

US liberals should be especially wary of any proposed expeditions to conquer Sicily.

lil late to apply this partic lesson imo

I studied the P war for an entire year in school so it’s close to my heart

(we have learned well the difficult lesson of sicily: stay out of sicily)

another thing i didn't expect btw was the direct reference or two to the expedition, which in the background of the play is still being debated but which when it was written had already failed, which all of a sudden grants the stupid farce a weird tragic cast: it's a dream not of a generic "end to the war" but of a specific alternate history, where this trauma didn't happen, because it was stopped by stupid farce. painful at the time no doubt-- more painful a few years later, after the Thirty-- still painful now.

i've been thinking about this poll for 7 months and still can't decide

I studied the P war for an entire year in school so it’s close to my heart

my only lifechanging class was "plato as literature"

the dialogues as lil one-acts set in an anxious aftermath

RIP

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[thucydides smirks hollowly]

Democracy lives