Slave Boy Research Articles

Enslaved Remains: The “Slave Boy” Inscription and the Histories of Racialized Collections

Enslaved Remains: The “Slave Boy” Inscription and the Histories of Racialized Collections

Gods, Goddesses, and Mortals for the 21st Century: The Reinstallation of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts Collection of Ancient Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Art

Gods, Goddesses, and Mortals for the 21st Century: The Reinstallation of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts Collection of Ancient Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Art

Architectural History or a Geography of Small Spaces?

Architectural History or a Geography of Small Spaces?

Onesimus, Philemon’s runaway slave boy: A brief liberation-theological exegesis of Philemon vv. 8–18 in the Nigerian context

Slavery is one of the life’s most odious vices ever experienced in human history. Its abhorrent nature is such that even those involved in the enslavement of others often detest the cruel phenomenon. The Nigerian ruling elite seems to feign ignorance of the hidden agenda of some modern slavers in their employment, but the Nigerian Christian population has come to acknowledge the ignoble policies that are slavery in disguise. Their cry for redemption has been by praying for Nigeria in distress, numerous crusades, and praising and worshiping sessions dedicated to the Lord of peace and salvation. However, many people have become frustrated, as they feel these activities are tedious, outlandish and irrelevant. For them, action is the master key to solving this national ordeal or hardship. This situation is exacerbated by the ever-increasing tension and sour relationship between Muslims and Christians in Nigeria, where it is becoming apparent that there is no political will on the part of the ruling class to promote harmonious living, but that they would rather prefer to gloss over and pay lip service to the enslavement and oppression of the Christian population. The letter of Paul to Philemon, especially verses 8–18, is a relevant biblical resource that we find useful to address the situation. In order to do so, to the best of our ability, we have examined and outlined the undisputed and underlying sensitive levels of religious intolerance, which are making Nigerian Christians to become an endangered species in their fatherland. Indeed, the situation calls for an urgent deployment of the biblical principles that are rooted in, and derived from, the liberation-theological approach to doing contextual biblical exegesis. This study makes use of the liberation-theological approach to argue that liberation is ad rem and considered a relevant tool for this study. It was observed in this study that the current situation in Nigeria is nothing less than slavery and can hardly be described otherwise. If slavery or enslavement of any person, group or ethnic or indigenous people include the overt denial of their God-given freedom, accountability, good governance and social justice that make up the hallmarks of a democracy, then there is enslavement.Contribution: This study contributes to authentic Christian existence and enhancement of principles such of love, justice and solidarity in the Nigerian public domain, as that would render enslavement agenda existing in Nigeria a contradiction. It endorses the values of peace, justice and maintenance of strong institutions.

Inquiry in plato's meno what are we supposed to learn from the experiment with the slave boy?

Inquiry in plato's meno what are we supposed to learn from the experiment with the slave boy?

Title of the Paper-Concept of Soul in the Meno

Meno belongs to the earlier dialogues of Plato. This dialogue deals with the concept of virtue and the recollective argument for the immortality of the soul. The main question of the Meno is whether virtue can be taught or not. Plato’s Socrates presents this concept by demonstrating the example of the slave boy. In this dialogue, Plato’s Socrates tries to connect the concept of Virtue and knowledge with the concept of soul.

Quest for Freedom in Lorraine Hansberry’s The Drinking Gourd

Lorraine Vivian Hansberry was one of the most prolific African-American women dramatists who revolutionised the American theatre with her realistic portrayal of the oppression caused by racism, slavery and colonialism on African-Americans. Her play The Drinking Gourd exposes the horrible and the dehumanised conditions of the slaves of the plantations of Southern America. The play focuses the unquenchable thirst for freedom in Hannibal, a slave boy who is the son of Rissa. The masters of the plantations manhandle the slaves, impose lots of punishments and deny all the basic rights of them. The masters have thought that educating the slaves is a crime. Hannibal firmly believes that getting education is the only way to attain freedom and always breaks all rules of the plantation. The play ends when Hannibal faces the horrible punishment of losing his eyes for educating himself.

Exhibit Review: The John P. Parker House, Ripley, Ohio

Exhibit ReviewThe John P. Parker House, Ripley, Ohio Martha H. Good The John P. Parker House is on the northern bank of the Ohio River in Ripley Ohio, fifty-two miles east of Cincinnati. Born a slave, Parker bought his freedom in 1845 and settled in Ripley a few years later, molding iron by day and helping fugitive slaves cross the Ohio by night. The original two-story red brick structure at 300 North Front Street was built by Parker in 1849; he lived there with his wife and six children until his death in 1900. When Parker’s widow moved to Cincinnati, the house deteriorated. The roofless shell was near collapse when the John P. Parker Historical Society purchased it and began restoration in the mid-1990s. From May to October Parker House is open to visitors Fridays and Saturdays, 10:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m. and Sundays 1:00 p.m.–5:00 p.m. Admission is $4 for adults, $2 for students five to eighteen, and no charge for children under five. Group tours are available year-round by calling 937-392-4188. Visitors enter through the side entrance, where there is a small gift shop and elevator to the second floor. From there, they enter the front hall and parlor, which is an orientation room. Docent Dewey Scott provides an engaging chronology of John P. Parker’s life as a slave, abolitionist, inventor, entrepreneur, husband, and father. Behind the front parlor is a larger room displaying powerful paintings commissioned for Parker House. Because there are no known portraits or photos of Parker, the artists used their imagination to create his image. Louisville artist Mark Priest created four canvases depicting the life of Parker from [End Page 88] slave boy in Virginia to his freedom in Alabama at eighteen; each is based upon and accompanied by quotes from Parker’s memoir, His Promised Land. Click for larger view View full resolution John P. Parker and his family lived in this house for more than fifty years. (Source: Photo by Martha H. Good) On the opposite wall, a replica of the boat he used to carry runaway slaves across the Ohio is filled with seven paintings showing scenes of fugitive slaves’ journey by Ripley artist Allen Schwartz. Above the boat is a three-panel painting showing Ripley in pink while a giant Parker, with feet on both sides of the Ohio, stoops down, his hands guiding a small boat of escaping slaves across the river. The second-floor front room is outfitted as a bedroom with period furniture and accessories. But visitors are reminded of the authenticity of the site by a sign painted on the original floor telling them that they are standing where Parker once stood. All four walls of the rear second-floor room are covered with additional information about Parker and events of his time. One wall documents his transition from slave child in Virginia to freedman in Ripley. Another wall provides information about the Underground Railroad, the Black Brigade, [End Page 89] the United States Colored Troops, and post–Civil War amendments to the Constitution. A third wall details Parker’s three patents and the recognition he received for them. There are models of his inventions in display cases in the middle of the room. The fourth wall conveys “The Parker Legacy,” including how Parker’s memoir was discovered and published, the formation of the Parker Historical Society, the Parker House restoration, and the individuals and groups who helped create this charming museum. This compact museum is a delightful place to visit and it is an easy daytrip from Cincinnati. A visit to Parker House can be combined with a tour of the John Rankin House, high on a hill just minutes from Parker House. In addition, the route from Cincinnati to Ripley along the Ohio River Scenic Byway (Route 52), passes by Ulysses S. Grant’s birthplace in Point Pleasant and through New Richmond, another charming Ohio River town well worth a visit. [End Page 90] Martha H. Good Friends of Harriet Beecher Stowe House Copyright © 2016 The Kent State University Press

Freeing Meno's Slave Boy

Freeing Meno's Slave Boy

Samuel Johnson, Francis Barber, and 'Mr Desmoulins['] Writing School'

JAMES BOSWELL, alone among Samuel Johnson’s early biographers in according full dignity and humanity to Francis (‘Frank’) Barber—the Jamaican-born former slave boy who became Johnson’s valet, friend, virtually a ward, and eventual principal heir—made an effort to seek out and record some details of his early history, and to register his importance in Johnson’s life. As part of his researches in the 1780s for the Life of Johnson (first edn 1791) he wrote Barber a series of questions in a letter of 15 July 1786, just over a year and a half after Johnson’s death, about his origins, early associations with Johnson, and Johnson’s circumstances at this time, and noted in his own hand Barber’s replies, evidently from Barber’s dictation.1 What Boswell recorded has become, since this letter’s recovery among Boswell’s private papers in the early twentieth century, and then its publication (first in 1969) in the Yale Boswell Editions Research Series, the chief primary source for information about Barber’s early years, as well as for Johnson’s emotional condition at the time Barber joined his Gough Square household, just after his wife’s death. In Boswell’s record of Barber’s answers to his first set of questions (there are eight sets of questions, numbered from 1 to 8), Barber reported that he came to live with Johnson, at Gough Square, ‘a forthnight or three weeks’ after the death of Elizabeth (‘Tetty’) Johnson (in the night of 17/18 March O.S., 1752.) In a later letter to Boswell, of 20 December 1789 (part of their continuing correspondence after the appearance of Sir John Hawkins’s Life of Johnson (1787), in which Hawkins severely maligned Barber), Barber wrote that ‘at my coming to Live with him, I found that Mrs. Johnson was Dead and was Buried about a fortnight.’2 If, as seems probable, this wording means that he joined Johnson’s household about two weeks after Mrs Johnson’s burial (in Bromley, Kent, on 26 March 26 1752),3 it places his arrival in mid-April. Soon thereafter Johnson put him to board nearby at a Mrs Coxeter’s, so that he could attend school in the Blackfriars. But he lasted only a day there, ‘for he caught the small pox’. A short but unspecified time passed, presumably as he suffered and then recovered from smallpox, and then, ‘After being in the Dr.’s service he went to Mr. Desmoulins writing school’.

Abu Muslim Al-Khurasani: The Legendary Hero of Abbasid Propaganda

This paper narrates the events of Abu Muslim al-Khurasani’s inglorious life. Loved by some and feared and hated by others, Abu Muslim proved to be a man of substance, throughout his life. The paper begins with the introduction, detailing about how he came into play, during disputes with the Umayyad caliphate. It goes on to discussing conflicting views about Abu Muslim’s origin, how one believes him to have come from a prestigious lineage, while the other considers him merely a slave boy, with lucky stars. Following Abu Muslim’s background is a discussion of his contributions in the Abbasid propaganda, which led to a series of events, which eventually led to the worst massacre in all of Khurasan history, the end of the Umayyad caliphate and the birth of the Abbasid caliphate. The paper goes on to discussing Abu Muslim’s tenure as the governor, in the Khurasan, which despite of racial and religious differences, turned out to be a good example of his role, in history. This also led to a difference of opinion with other ruling parties, including his conflict with The Abbasid. Because of this conflict, Abu Muslim made a lot of enemies, which resulted in others rebelling and propagating against him, which eventually took his life.

Nettleford and Rastafari's Inner Landscape

Introduction: Removing the plantation, redeeming the landscapeThe influence of the movement has been very, very far-reaching and deeply penetrating . . . which you [Rastafari] must take every credit for because you really have been forcing people in Jamaica to accept the fact that they are black. I have never seen a blacker country which is afraid of blackness. One of the marvellous things about the Rastafarian is, people like us are not racist. We are not that unsophisticated to be racist - only buttos are racist. But we are not that silly not to be raceconscious. And that's a delicate balance of sensibility which I first found among the Rastafarians . . }Bob Marley, Burning Spear, Bunny Wailer, Sizzla, David Rudder: these are just a few names which come to mind when we think of our articulate black resistance tradition today. This of course would be to confine our scrutiny to the realm of popular/ verb al oratory, without appropriately regarding the facility these artists have been afforded by the pioneering work of one of Jamaica's gigantic cultural magicians, Nettleford. It was Nettleford who, since his rise to national prominence in the late 1950s, was to be at the vanguard, re-presenting and securing a place for culture as the purview of the intellectual. From that space Nettleford was to advise the national and international directorates about the embodiment and integrity of the African Jamaican cultural heritage. To paraphrase Hilary Beckles, Nettleford became the chief consultant on obeah, or perhaps even the chief obeahman in this region.2The idea of African freedom and dignity as a journey, and the struggle continuing, are the key expressions of help and direction that I garnered from the late professor's work, wit and wisdom. A few years ago, I recall him saying after a panel of cultural studies scholars presented aspects of their work ranging from Kumina and Revivalism to Rastafari and dancehall research: The future is secure ... I can die now! When Nettleford made that statement I thought it morbid hyperbole. It was only after his passing, after I shared this comment with Barry Chevannes, also now sadly deceased, that I realised there could be a different reading, one that was not morbid but indeed celebratory, suggesting a sense of accomplishment, as in, work is done. I am now ready to return to my maker.I immediately gained a different appreciation of the years he had spent teaching, training, securing the African cultural presence. Indeed, Nettleford had inherited much from others such as Miss Lou and Mass Ran, Wycliffe Bennett, Ivy Baxter, and Rastafari brethren. It was a relay of sorts - the production, preservation and advancement of this cultural knowledge. And the professor always strived to play his part well. My mother described him as Rex the slave boy, referring to his complexion, his willingness to dance barefoot, half-naked, to the drums of our African ancestors - even quite late in his life. This was her way of commenting on his embrace of rooted Jamaican culture, despite his command of the Queen's English. Although African enslavement in the West crippled the ability to retain Africa or to garner achievement for our people, Nettleford, early in his career, turned this experience of enslavement inward, and upside down on its head. Indeed, where slavery attempted to remould the entire landscape to suit the plantations' need, Nettleford retreated to the inner landscape: a marronage within.For many, slavery was the manifestation of extreme trauma and commencement of a process of silencing. From the silence of slavery came the voice of Rastafari. This Rastafari voice is what Nettleford sought to engage in his treatment of 'landscape', particularly the conversation about the inner landscape. To this extent the 'inner landscape' metaphor employed by Nettleford is not unlike the Rastafari concept of 'word, sound, power' as a means of breaking the silence. In theorising the inner landscape, Nettleford debunks the plantation meta-narrative, having removed the edifices of the great house/plantation system. …

3. Boxing with Tyrants

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. For a full discussion of the social class of Olympic victors, see Young 1984, 89–176. 2. As Nicholson (2005, 21) explains, ‘what motivated anxiety about professional trainers was that, by appearing to add new abilities such as skill to their pupils, they threatened the idea that the qualities on which victory depended were inherited, and, second, that, while the training was traded as a commodity, the relationship between trainer and patron was sufficiently complex that to represent it in other terms was convincing’. 3. The story is told in Pausanias VI.10.1–3: ‘After all of these comes Glaukos of Karystos; they say that by descent he came from Anthedon in Boiotia from Glaukos the daemonic spirit of the sea. But his father was called Demylos, and they say he began as a labourer on the land; when the ploughshare fell out of the plough he stuck it in again using his hand for a hammer. [2] Demylos happened to see what the boy had done, so he took him along to Olympia to box. Glaukos had no experience as a boxer and his opponents hurt him, and when he was boxing with the last one, people thought he was too badly hurt to carry on: and then they say his father shouted out to him “Come on son, the one for the plough”, and he hit his opponent a harder punch and suddenly found he had won.’ 4. According to Kyle (2007, 209); Pausanias says only that his island was named after him. 5. The story is told, in slightly different versions, by Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War VI.56–9), and Aristotle, The Constitution of the Athenians, XVIII. 6. Pericles' Funeral Oration, in Thucydides, Peloponnesian War 2.2 (Jowett translation). 7. Aeschines, Against Timarchus 1.4–5, quoted in Hansen (2004, 177). 8. Morris 2004, 53, citing Ostwald. 9. Arnold (2002, 490) argues that this connection between sport and democracy is one of the things that makes sport an important part of education for democracy. The second connection, equality, is discussed in the next section. 10. The story is recounted by Pausanias, Description of Greece 8.40.4–5. 11. Poliakoff 1978, 70–1. 12. In the Greek mind the two are very closely linked since their conception of freedom (eleutheria) was derived primarily from the idea of not being a slave (Ostwald 2004, 164). 13. Kroton's was apparently a successful strategy; their athletes won 11 of the 26 stadion crowns between 588 and 488, taking the top seven places at one Olympiad (Nicholson 2005, 128). 14. For more on the religious function of the games, see Chapter 2. 15. In case there were odd numbers of competitors, one would draw a lot without a match and be given a bye (ephedros) for that round. Those who won without ever drawing a bye were given the proud title of anephedros (Miller 2004, 50). 16. For a full account of this phenomenon see Nicholson (2005). The enduring effects of this belief is reflected in the stigma attached to coaching by the aristocratic culture surrounding the early modern Olympic Games, as artfully depicted in the movie Chariots of Fire. 17. Mouratidis (1984, 55) explains that women were not allowed to enter the sanctuaries of Heracles or participate in sacrifices offered to him because it was believed their presence might diminish the warriors' or heroes' power. Since the Olympic games was originally a festival in honour of Heracles, women were naturally excluded and the prohibition survived even after the coming of Zeus. 18. Xenophon, Agesilaus 9.6, Plutarch, Ages 20.1, both quoted in Kyle 2007, 191. 19. Socrates' relationship with athletes and gymnasia is the subject of the next chapter. 20. Plato's Meno depicts Socrates guiding a slave boy to find a geometric theorem. 21. Unlike Socrates and Plato, most Greeks believed that women were irrational, and this is precisely why they were excluded from government (Jameson 2004, 286) – only further proving the link between rationality and democracy. 22. This argument is developed in Reid 2006b.

Wilfred M. McClay

March/April 2008 Historically Speaking 15 to be a Tudor-Stuart historian, one was either a Tudor or a Stuart historian and within Stuart history either a student of the reign of James I, Charles I, the civil war, or the Restoration. When an article I wrote on the Restoration period was published, an historian of the era asked if I intended to remain in the Restoration. Once having evaded the critics sufficiendy to achieve a safe berth somewhere, many scholars lose that itch to tackle a whale. How much safer to become an expert in one's small bailiwick, digging ever deeper into that territory and beinginstandy thought of when someone is wanted to add a chapter to a collection or serve on a panel. Venturing further involves an often unwelcome intrusion onto other scholars' turf where the time traveler is likely to commit the sort of blunders the British refer to as "howlers." On the other hand, there are wonderful insights that only someone with great expertise in a field can appreciate. The great popular books lean heavily on the work of such scholarship. There is another problem, one Hochschild's narrative skill leads him to overlook. It is easier to write for one's colleagues than for the public—one doesn 't have to provide all that background information or be scintillating. It is difficult to write riveting prose and hard to produce a book that will pass muster as a scholarly contribution while keeping the lay reader happily flipping those pages. Stephen Ambrose, from his post at the University of New Orleans, took the public route to "write himself" to the top of his profession. His books delighted the public and made him rich and famous but never really put him at the top of his academic field. The academy There is another problem, one Hochschild's narrative skill leads him to overlook. It is easier to write for one's colleagues than for the public—one doesn't have to provide all that background information or be scintillating. often takes a condescending attitude toward popular works. It is hard to please two masters. I tried to please both with moderate success, beginning with my book To Keep andBearArms: The Origins of anAnglo-American Right My most recent book, Peter's War:A New EngkndSlave Boy and the American Revolution, now in press, was a further step in that direction . A biography required novelistic skills to bring the central figure to life. Descriptions were needed to enable readers to envision the landscape and the people and to feel steeped in the ominous atmosphere of the colonies at war. Harry Truman is supposed to have urged that history be taught exclusively through biography. That would be interesting, but a mistake. The historian's detective ability doesn 't naturally translate into dramatic literature, and much would be missed if only narrative were on offer. Still, I wholeheartedly agree with Hochschild that combining analytical history and narrative is worth the effort. There are great stories that deserve telling and, when well told, will attract a wide range of readers. Adding more courses on good writing to the graduate history curriculum will help, as will accepting dissertation topics that are broad. We academic historians need more tolerance of popular work and the courage to attempt it. The best, most exciting history comes from the deep knowledge years of work in a field impart This should be shared with the public and valued by the academy. Future buffs—and even future colleagues —are out there to be seduced into the field. More important, a public with respect for the past and an understanding of history is essential for a government of and by the people. Joyce LeeMalcolm isprofessor of legalhistory atthe George Mason University Schoolof Law. Her book Peter's War: A New England Slave Boy and the American Revolution isforthcomingfrom Yale University Press. Wilfred M. McClay Although one will want to quarrel with some of its details, Adam Hochschild's essay makes many useful points about the current state of historical writing. It does so in a refreshingly upbeat way, urging us to remember the sheer intellectual delight that comes...

Letters from a Slave Boy: The Story of Joseph Jacobs (review)

Reviewed by: Letters from a Slave Boy: The Story of Joseph Jacobs Karen Coats Lyons, Mary E. Letters from a Slave Boy: The Story of Joseph Jacobs. Atheneum, 2007197p ISBN 0-689-87867-2$15.99 Ad Gr. 5-8 Prompted by questions from readers of her Letters from a Slave Girl: The Story of Harriet Jacobs (BCCB 11/92), Lyons takes up the story of Harriet's son, Joseph. Because little is known of Joseph other than the broad outlines of his travels, this is historical fiction rather than biography. Adopting the same format of journal-style letters that are never intended to be mailed to their recipients, Lyons gives voice to Joseph as a young boy living in Edenton, North Carolina, where he is taught to read and write by a white boy his own age. He then moves to Boston to live with his escaped uncle, John, who unwittingly inspires him to join a whaling expedition. He lives on the sea for three years, and then returns to New Bedford until the Fugitive Slave Laws drive him to seek his fortune in the gold rushes of California and Australia. Since Joseph's status as a slave is somewhat ambiguous (he was sold to his white father by his mother's abusive master, but that sale was contested, and his father, though he didn't press his ownership, nevertheless never officially freed Joseph), he is continually haunted by the specter of capture and the temptation to pass as white; both conditions add emotional tension and urgency to Joseph's letters. His missives often lack credibility, though: while Lyons notes that she takes some of his creative misspelling from letters produced by Harriet, the device is too inconsistent to ring true, and their novelistic pacing, dialogue, and tone exudes fiction rather than documentation. Despite these flaws, readers will be absorbed by Joseph's range of adventures, and his musings about race relations, especially between blacks and Irish immigrants, lend themselves to cross-curricular discussions. An author's note, pictures, a glossary of nineteenth-century racial slurs, and suggestions for further reading on related topics are included. Copyright © 2007 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Inquiry in Plato's Meno What Are We Supposed to Learn From the Experiment with the Slave Boy?

Plato's Meno as long been supposed to be one of Plato's transitional dialogues. Trying to understand the Meno in this way, however, gives rise to a number of problems, not the least of which is that positions or arguments from other dialogues are often used to interpret the Meno. In this paper, I propose to interpret one of the more puzzling parts of the Meno by containing my reading to just this dialogue and not importing views from other dialogues. In the Meno, Plato presents and uses the so-called doctrine of recollection to overcome a paradox introduced by the character Meno. Interpretations of this dialogue typically have a problem explaining the connection between the paradox, the use of the doctrine of recollection and the subsequent experiment with the slave boy. Some have argued that the doctrine of recollection is Plato's initial attempt at presenting his epistemological views. 2 Others have argued that the doctrine of recollection is the initial departure by Plato from the Socratic elenchus} Although I shall not address these arguments explicitly, my contention is that these interpretations do not address the specific problem, introduced in this dialogue, concerning the purpose of inquiry. I shall argue that Plato's use of the doctrine of recollection with respect to the experiment with the slave boy serves an explanatory function. More precisely, I shall argue that this doctrine demonstrates how new beliefs are formed and how inquiry can be guided by these beliefs. Before delving in too far, there are at least four reasons we should be suspicious of the traditional understanding of the doctrine of recollection found in the Meno. First, Socrates' retraction is typically overlooked and not taken into consideration. I think this is vitally important, because Plato is telling us that there is more going on in this section than meets the eye. If we fail to take account

Socratic Pedagogy, Race and Power

Rud (1997) wrote in this journal: " Leaving aside the blatant (to my eyes at least) problems of power and dominance of an elderly Greek citizen teaching a slave boy, this example [the Meno] of teaching has always left me cold." Garlikov (1998) addressed Rud's criticism of the Socratic dialogue. The present article addresses and extends Garlikov's response to cover general notions of power, and shows how these may affect Socratic discourse. Socratic pedagogy is not merely an illusory exercise where participants acquiesce to notions of truth because of power differentials. But power relations play a role in all communicative contexts. However, in Socractic pedagogy the adverse effects of power are greatly reduced and the focus is shifted from people to propositions.

“If I Warn't Too Drunk to Get There…”: On Race

The prejudices of one's breeding are not gotten rid of just at a jump. -Mark Twain The Hannibal of Mark Twain's youth was permeated by what Forrest Robinson called bad faith: the unthinking hypocrisy of people who daily violated the moral norms to which they paid lip service while pretending they were doing nothing of the sort. Twain eventually came to understand the phenomenon and the self-delusion and communal collusion required to sustain it. By dissecting the human relations obtained in the world of his childhood, Twain would become an acerbic analyst not only of bad faith but of its close cousin, the lie of silent assertion that could hold an entire nation in its thrall. A whitewashed fence is one thing. A whitewashed history is another. -Shelly Fisher Fishkin The first really beautiful day during my first visit to Berlin was on the day we went to visit the Sachsenheusen concentration camp. The weather seemed out of place somehow-brilliant with a slight chill. As we neared the gates, my German friend pointed to several houses and commented that it was there that the SS officers lived with their families. In slightly strained English he commented on how those officers would come home after murdering hundreds of men, women, and children to their own families where they were good fathers and husbands. Double faced is the term he used, and after some thought I agreed that this term was probably more accurate than because it didn't carry the same negative connotation. A person who is two-faced pretends to be one thing when in fact he is another. These soldiers were not pretending or attempting to deceive-in fact it could be argued that they were genuinely both cold killers and good fathers, pleased with the work they did on both fronts. Each was a part of who they were. It was hard to believe that the people who lived in those houses could be such cold-blooded killers. Everything about the places-the lace curtains at the windows, the gardens in the back, even the fences around the yards-suggested a normal domestic life. For a short period as I stared at those houses, it was easy to fall into the trap of thinking of these men as simply monsters-twisted, lacking the part of humanity which separates us from beasts. could they?! was the constant question in my mind. But as I continued to look at those houses, a strange thing happened. We passed by one with a gated yard, and a memory flashed through my mind of a white picket fence, and a small boy painting it on a Saturday morning. The fence here, north of Berlin, was not so different from a fence Tom Sawyer was painting in Missouri. And I remembered how the little slave boy Jim came along on an errand from Aunt Polly. Whereas I had often taken this image in a romantic setting before, I was now jarred by the discrepancy. How could figures as likable as Aunt Polly, the Widow Douglas, and the other people in that Missouri town support such a notion of slavery? The answer to my earlier outrage was to be found in a small river town thousands of miles away. Those people here in Sachsenheusen, those brutal soldiers were not that different from the rest of us. In truth, their normalcy was one of the things that should make us all the more cautious. We like Aunt Pol, but we must remember that the same woman we like is also the one in charge of Jim the slave. There are many instances in American society where we attempt to distance ourselves from our more shameful moments and embrace those that are more flattering to us. Nor are we the only ones to do so. Twain comments on the phenomena in The Innocents Abroad when he is passing through Versailles and sees that all the images being recalled are of victories, not of their defeats or embarrassments. The same is evident in America. It is impossible not to be moved by the Holocaust Museum on The Mall in Washington, D.C., and one of the underlying motifs of the Museum is how America acted as the Grand Savior in coming in and helping free the Jews from concentration camps. …

Aulus Gellius 17.8: Composition and the Gentleman Scholar

R ECENT WORK ON AULUS GELLIUS has gone a long way toward rehabilitating his reputation as a writer.' The notion that he simply compiled his miscellany in the manner of a Nonius or Isidore is no longer tenable, and he now receives credit for a certain originality and creativity. Nevertheless, even Gellius' admirers have sometimes found it difficult to figure out what he was thinking as he went about his work. In my view, the next wave of Gellian scholarship will include a cautiously speculative inquiry into the genesis of individual chapters of the Attic Nights. This investigation should not be restricted to source-criticism, but should also try to relate the form of the chapter to Gellius' general aims and methods. As an experiment in this sort of investigation, I offer the following study of Noctes Atticae 17.8.2 Despite its rather dry subject-the freezing points of various liquids-this chapter shows us how Gellius assembled and elaborated his researches to make them more attractive to his readers. It also illustrates the connection between his working method and one of his chief objectives, the promotion of the life of the gentleman scholar (vir civiliter eruditus, praef. 13). Like most chapters in the Attic Nights, 17.8 deals with a particular problem which is described in the lemma: cur oleum saepe et facile, vina rarius congelascant, acetum haut fere umquam ... (et) quod aquae fluviorum fontiumque durentur, mare gelu non duretur.3 Most of the time, Gellius is content to handle such problems in a straightforward essay; sometimes, however, he attributes his learning to informal conversations with his teachers. He introduces this chapter by saying that he was invited to the home of his Athenian philosophy professor, L. Calvenus Taurus, for a simple meal of Egyptian lentils and gourds (?? 1-2). He then relates that a young slave boy tried to pour oil from an empty flask and pretended that the oil had frozen

Open-mindedness and muddled minds: Fusion in confusion

During one of the few classic moments in my teaching career, several students accused me of being narrow-minded. Always suspicious that my mind was more narrow than broad, I admitted to the class that I may be narrow-minded. Not about to end the discussion on such a low note (at least for me), I asked each of these students to describe their thinking. "I am open-minded," each said, almost before I could finish the question. "Is it possible," I continued, "that you are narrow-minded? .... No," they replied one after the other, "I am openminded." Few students admit that they are narrow-minded or closed-minded. Their minds are flung open, like the gates of heaven to saints. Narrow-mindedness or closed-mindedness is a lapse in character or at best uncomely. One of the educator's fundamental tasks is to make students aware of their narrowmindedness and to have them aspire to the ideal of the open mind. What this open mind is and how it is to be realized within our students is my chief concern as an educator. The Pythian goddess at the oracle of Delphi pronounced Socrates as the wisest of all human beings. Socrates discovered that his wisdom consisted of knowing his ignorance. A corollary to this lesson is that open-mindedness is contingent upon realizing the real possibility of slipping into narrowmindedness or closed-mindedness. This point is illustrated in the Meno, as the slave boy discovers that doubling the side of square will not create double the space: