

Future Work to Be Done on the Tyrannicides? It’s Time to “Get” Religion and Understand Propaganda
Periclean Athens and American Democracy
Democratic propaganda and the battlefields of the American Civil War
Of generous boys in happiness thus bred–/
Saturnians through life’s Tempe led,
Went from the North and came from the South,
With golden mottoes in the mouth,
To lie down midway on a bloody bed.



Nor the measur’d march of soldiers, nor the tents of camps,
Nor the regiments hastily coming up deploying in line of battle;
No more the sad, unnatural shows of war.
Ask’d room those flush’d immortal ranks, the first forth-stepping armies?
Ask room alas the ghastly ranks, the armies dread that follow’d.
(Pass, pass, ye proud brigades, with your tramping sinewy legs,
With your shoulders young and strong, with your knapsacks and your muskets;
How elate I stood and watch’d you, where starting off you march’d.
Pass–then rattle drums again,
For an army heaves in sight, O another gathering army,
Swarming, trailing on the rear, O you dread accruing army,
O you regiments so piteous, with your mortal diarrhoea, with your fever,
O my land’s maim’d darlings, with the plenteous bloody bandage and the crutch,
Lo, your pallid army follows.) [44]
Democratic Propaganda and World War I











how can you tell a guy’s a hundredpercent when all you’ve got’s a gunnysack
full of bones, bronze buttons stamped with the screaming eagle and a pair of roll puttees?
… and the gagging chloride and the puky dirtstench of the yearold dead
busboy harveststiff hogcaller boyscout champeen cornshucker of Western Kansas bellhop at the United States Hotel at Saratoga Springs office boy callboy fruiter telephone lineman longshoreman lumberjack plumber’s helper,
worked for an exterminating company in Union City, filled pipes in an opium joint in Trenton, N.J.
Y.M.C.A. secretary, express agent, truckdriver, fordmechanic, sold books in Denver Colorado: Madam would you be willing to help a young man work his way through college?
The shell had his number on it.
* * * * *
The blood ran into the ground
. . .
The identification tag was in the bottom of the Marne.
The blood ran into the ground, the brains oozed out of the cracked skull and were licked up by the trenchrats, the belly swelled and raised a generation of blue-bottle flies.

Enslaved religion, markets, laws,
Borrow our language now and bid
Us to speak up in freedom’s cause.
It is the logic of our times,
No subject for immortal verse —
That we who lived by honest dreams
Defend the bad against the worse. [86]
Pericles: What does all this mythmaking and propagandizing have to teach us about the Tyrant Slayers, Pericles and Athens during the Pentecontaetia?
- Each took a leading role in a coalition of allies that defeated a mortal threat, Persia in the case of Athens and Germany and Japan in that of the USA.
- Athens led in forming the Delian League while the U.S.A. led in forming the United Nations.
- For Athens, alliance turned into hegemony, but for the U.S.A., alliance evolved into the Pax Americana with American troops stationed throughout the world and large subsidies being paid to many foreign nations.
- The Delian League treasury became an Athenian war chest which was replenished thereafter by payments of tribute by the states of the Athenian Empire, but the American taxpayer became a major funder of the United Nations and many foreign military forces.
- Proxy wars were fought by both Athens and America and both were major naval powers.
- Pericles reacted to the forces arrayed against the Athenian democratic polis by taking steps that seem eerily similar to those measures pushed not by liberals but by conservatives in present day American politics.
- Curtailment of the citizenship. [89]
- Physical isolation of Athens as if it were an island with the building Long Walls from the City of Athens down to the port of the Piraeus.
- Abandonment of agriculture for finance and trade.
- Obsession with autochthony — see, the Cyzikene electrum staters with Athenian symbols such as Erichthonios, the cicada and Harmodios and Aristogeiton.
What does the historical example of Pericles and Athens during the Pentecontaetia teach us about the present and future of America?
Close study of Antiquity richly repays the effort and can provide understanding and methodology as we grapple with seemingly new and unsolvable problems that are really only reprises of those our ancient forebears encountered. A final example reveals the need for absolute clarity on issues of propaganda and motivation: