I wanted to mark the day, but I’m just not up to cogent thoughts…here’s a reboot from the archives though…
Today is Memorial Day in the US, a federal holiday to commemorate our military dead…specifically, those who died in service. Across the nation there are public parades and speeches as well as countless personal remembrances for loved ones lost. Despite how I might feel about the validity of any particular war, I would never dispute the sacrifices that have been made by tens of thousands of military members and their families. Formal state remembrances of the supreme sacrifice of military members are not unique to the modern world – unfortunately, humankind has a long, long history of warfare. Perhaps one of the most famously recorded episodes of commemoration of the fallen comes from The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides. In Pericles‘ Funeral Oration, to the Athenians who had died in the initial battles of the war, Thucydides shows the Athenian leader lifting up the state as much as the deceased, and…
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