Description:

The Department of Classics and the Chabraja Center for Historical Studies present -

The Rise and Defamation of Ancient Greek Democracy, and the Election of Donald J. Trump

A talk by Robert Wallace, Professor of Classics at Northwestern

This presentation rewrites the political history of archaic Greece to explain the rise and ongoing success of early democratic governments, in the teeth of upper-class violence. In Athens, the elite finally refused to participate in government, withdrawing into murderous political clubs and then philosophical schools where they continued to pour out vitriol against the democracy, which by contrast had progressively improved. The Founders of the US government read the vitriol but not
the history, and fashioned a government removed as far as possible from the people. One immediate consequence has been the election of D.J. Trump.