WSJ Historically Speaking: Why Walls Rarely Keep Enemies Out

Photo: DEAGOSTINI/GETTY IMAGES

Photo: DEAGOSTINI/GETTY IMAGES

News of the latest theft of sensitive American information— this time of some 4 million records from the federal government’s Office of Personnel Management, allegedly by Chinese hackers—highlights the unfortunate truth about defensive walls. They may offer great psychological  comfort, whether as firewalls in the online world or stone walls and natural barriers in the real one, but they rarely work.

In the Book of Joshua, the Israelites engineered a brilliant victory by stamping their feet for seven days and blasting the walls of Jericho with their trumpets. In “The Aeneid,” Virgil described how the Trojans brought about their own downfall by bringing the famous wooden horse inside their gates. In his monumental “The Histories,” Herodotuslauded the courageous but futile last stand of the Spartans at the Battle of Thermopylae (480 B.C.) after they were betrayed by Ephialtes of Malis, who showed the Persians a secret route through the mountains that led to the back of the Greek lines. But these striking failures didn’t deter subsequent generations from believing that walls could keep them safe.

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WSJ Historically Speaking: The First Ladies and Their Predecessors

Photo: CSU ARCHIVES/EVERETT COLLECTION

Photo: CSU ARCHIVES/EVERETT COLLECTION

Dolley Madison was born this month in 1768. One of the greatest first ladies in U.S. history, she had a style and energy that brought a uniquely American twist to the role of political spouse. She transformed the White House, not only giving the interiors a much-needed face-lift but also making the presidential residence the social epicenter of Washington, D.C. Among her many gifts to the nation was her insistence that George Washington’s portrait be rescued when the British burned the city in 1814.

But Dolley Madison’s greatest achievement was in creating the role of first lady. President Zachary Taylor used the term for the first time at her funeral in 1849. After her time in the White House, Americans expected first ladies to play a public part, one that was above day-to-day politics and often national in its scope.

The idea of the political spouse has deep historical roots. Livia Drusilla, the ruthless and powerful wife of Caesar Augustus, was instrumental in shaping the destiny of the Roman Empire. Yet even she was imitating a role model that had its original expression in ancient Mesopotamia, the cradle of civilization.

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WSJ Historically Speaking: The Many Meanings of May Day

Photo: ART MEDIA/PRINT COLLECTOR/GETTY IMAGES

Photo: ART MEDIA/PRINT COLLECTOR/GETTY IMAGES

The Law of Non-­‐Contradiction states that it isn’t possible to be both Y and Not-­‐Y at the same time—which suggests that the law never encountered May Day, the public holiday celebrated on May 1,  which both is and isn’t a celebration of summer. May Day owes its origins to the ancient festivals—from the Roman Floralia to the Celtic Beltane—that celebrated the first plantings of the season and the coming of the solstice.

May Day owes its origins to the ancient festivals—from the Roman Floralia to the Celtic Beltane—that celebrated the first plantings of the season and the coming of the solstice.

By the end of the Middle Ages, the day had become one of the most important on the calendar. Just as the fir tree has become a popular symbol of Christmas, the flowering hawthorn—also called the May tree—became the sacred emblem of summer. (When Shakespeare wrote, “Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May” in his famous Sonnet 18, he meant the tree, not the month.)

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WSJ Historically Speaking: Even Poets Get Spring Fever

Photo: GETTY IMAGES

Photo: GETTY IMAGES

Spring is finally dispelling the cheerless gray of winter. In a few more weeks, city dwellers will begin the time-­‐honored practice of heading to the countryside in search of pristine nature, tranquility and cooler climes.

In the third century B.C., Theocritus of Syracuse became one of the earliest poets to celebrate nature for its own sake. His deceptively simple poems about shepherds and farmers inspired a new poetic form, the pastoral elegy.

Almost two centuries later, the great Roman poet Virgil (70-19 B.C.) freed the genre from its literal underpinnings to give it a certain philosophical bent. His pastoral poetry was more than just an elegant commentary on the countryside; fundamental to its purpose was the exploration of our relationship with nature. “Let me love the rivers and the woods,” Virgil declares in “The Georgics,” before going on to ponder whether he should spend his life contemplating rural delights.

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WSJ Historically Speaking: American Pie’ and the History of Mysterious Rock Lyrics

Photo: MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES/GETTY IMAGES

Photo: MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES/GETTY IMAGES

Earlier this month, one of the greatest mysteries in rock ’n’ roll was finally solved. The unnamed “king” and “jester on the sidelines” in Don McLean’s iconic 1971 song “American Pie” were revealed to be Elvis Presley and Bob Dylan, respectively.

The lyrics of “American Pie” are about “the day the music died”: Feb. 3, 1959, when Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. Richardson (aka “The Big Bopper”) went down in a plane crash in Iowa. Critics have long wanted to know whether the song referred only to the obvious tragedy for music or was also a general cry for a lost era of American innocence.

Mr. McLean himself says that trying to pin down the exact meaning of “American Pie” runs contrary to the song’s spirit. Understanding the lyrics “was not a parlor game,” Mr. McLean wrote in the auction catalog accompanying the recent sale of his original working manuscript at Christies. Nevertheless, he declared that the song was indeed a lament—“an indescribable photograph of America that I tried to capture in words and music.”

The history of “American Pie” highlights a fundamental conundrum in rock music: The intended meaning of lyrics has often turned out to be at odds with the ways they are received.

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WSJ Historically Speaking: Mercy in Victory Is as Ancient as War

Photo: MARY EVANS PICTURE LIBRARY/EVERETT COLLECTION

Photo: MARY EVANS PICTURE LIBRARY/EVERETT COLLECTION

All wars involve suffering and bloodshed, but not all defeats must lead to death or living hell. One reason why next week’s 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War invites national commemoration instead of civil unrest is that, from the outset, the chief Union protagonists consciously promoted the ideal of victorious restraint toward the vanquished South.

When Gen. Ulysses S. Grant met with Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee on April 9, 1865, the Union commander showed he understood that winning the peace would be as important as winning the war. His conditions for surrender included allowing Lee’s men to keep their sidearms for protection, as well as a horse or a mule for the spring harvest. For his part, Lee urged his men to accept their defeat with dignity and to return home for good.

In later years, for all the disappointments that followed during Reconstruction, Grant’s foresight at Appomattox remained a touchstone for peace and rapprochement, helping keep the spirit of unity alive.

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WSJ Historically Speaking: A Night at the Theater Often Used to Be a Riot

Photo: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

Photo: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

Before the era of sky-­‐high ticket prices, the theater functioned much like a public park: a communal space where all social classes could come together. The drama onstage was often just a backdrop for the public theater being enacted by the audience. Political venting, social protesting and even rioting were common occurrences—especially in springtime, when the warmer weather let open-­‐air theaters resume business.

The Nika riots in 6th-century Byzantium (so dubbed because the rioters chanted “Nika,” meaning “conquer” or “win”) remain the deadliest in theater history.

In 532 A.D., during the reign of Emperor Justinian, the two political factions—the aristocratic Blues and the plebeian Greens—unexpectedly united to protest against new taxes during a public spectacle at the Hippodrome. Using the storied arena as their base, the rioters managed to burn down more than half of Constantinople before Justinian had the Hippodrome surrounded and every exit blocked. His soldiers proceeded to slaughter everyone inside. Contemporary accounts claimed that the death toll exceeded 30,000. After that, public theater of any kind was strongly discouraged by the Byzantine authorities.

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WSJ Historically Speaking: Ancient Automatons, Modern Worries

Photo: EVERETT COLLECTION

Photo: EVERETT COLLECTION

Earlier this year, Stephen Hawking was among the scientific luminaries who signed an open letter warning that artificial intelligence offered great benefits to humanity but also posed great risks to our safety. Today, Google’s DeepMind computer is capable of teaching itself how to play new videogames, but what if—some tomorrows down the line—it unilaterally tried something new, such as a war game using real nuclear weapons.

Humans have been experimenting with automatons for centuries, but it is only we moderns who have worried about the consequences. The Greeks saw nothing to fear from artificial life. In their mythology, the god Hephaestus was responsible for the creation of mechanized beings—from the golden slaves he designed for his personal use to the bronze giant Talos, who guarded the island of Crete. Stopping one of these machines was as simple as removing the plug and letting the ichor (immortal blood) run out.

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WSJ Historically Speaking: A Speedy History of Skiing

Photo: GETTY IMAGES

Photo: GETTY IMAGES

Although Northern Europe once again dominated the medal table recently at the 2015 FIS World Alpine Ski Championships in Colorado, the list of competing countries also included such snow-­‐deprived countries as Haiti, Israel and Jamaica.

Not only has skiing grown popular in countries more usually associated with beach barbecues, historians of the sport have now discovered that its roots are far more diverse than originally imagined.

The earliest known ski fragment—unearthed near Lake Sindor, some 745 miles northeast of Moscow—dates roughly to 6,000 B.C. In Norway, Sweden and Finland, archaeologists have found rock carvings known as petroglyphs that depict hunters on skis chasing wild animals. One drawing found in 2001 in Nord-Trøndelag, Norway, often referred to as Bola Man, is thought to be about 5,500 years old.

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WSJ Historically Speaking: From Ancient Greece to the Oscars, Acting Prizes Have Always Meant Drama

Photo: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

Photo: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

Some kind of controversy always seems to surround the Oscars. If it isn’t outrage beforehand over who was snubbed, it is derision afterward about the embarrassing speeches or the taste-­‐challenged outfits that were paraded down the red carpet.

Yet the “Oscar effect” on nominated movies can be transformative. In 2004, a low-key film about a female boxer had earned just $8.5 million. But after being nominated for best picture, “Million Dollar Baby” enjoyed a spectacular resurgence and raked in additional $56.4 million, according to the website Box Office Mojo.

The enormous financial rewards that the Oscars can bring are a far cry from the more modest prizes given out by their spiritual ancestor, the ancient Greek festival of Dionysus. Most historians agree that the festival was responsible for awarding the first drama prizes in history. The original winner, in the sixth century B.C., is said to have been Thespis, from whom the word “thespian” came. Instead of a golden statuette, Thespis received a live goat.

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