Charlie Roadman, of Austin, Texas, has put together something of a tour de force: A musical album entitled Athens v. Sparta that offers a rendition of the Peloponnesian War based on Thucydides (and Xenophon)! Here's the San Antonio Current:
A combination pop-opera, Greek drama, modern allegory, and historical CliffsNotes created by Trinity University history grad and musician Charlie Roadman, the album resonates on several levels and is likely unlike anything you’ve ever heard. It details how Athens’ cultural hubris, faltering democracy, self-serving oligarchs, indifference to its allies, and ill-considered military adventurism resulted in a war doomed by poor prosecution and overextended forces.
...As the conflict winds chronologically through its 27-year course, the modern-day resonance is striking. In “Civil War in Corcyra: Stasis,” Webster explains that as revolution spread, the meanings of commonly accepted words were changed to suit opportunistic politicians. “Reckless audacity was declared courage. Exhibiting foresight and caution meant you were a coward and deceitful. The ability to see all sides of a question meant that you were unable to act on any. Plotting against your opponents was a justifiable means of self-defense. Party membership and loyalty came to be regarded as the highest virtues,” Webster intones in his measured but forceful delivery.
...The album’s genesis goes back to 1991, when Roadman and Buttercup singer Erik Sanden were assigned Thucydides and Xenophon’s couple-thousand-page tome, and blew off reading it until three days before the final. Justifiably concerned, they crammed by reading alternate chapters then recounting the events to each other, effectively halving the assignment. The story stuck with them, and eight years ago Sanden bought Roadman the definitive edition of the text, The Landmark Thucydides, edited by Robert Strassler.
This encouraged Roadman to write a song about Pericles’ funeral oration, a rabble-rousing rant that provoked the Athenians into war, reminding them of their glorious history and suggesting that “judging happiness to be the fruit of freedom, and freedom of valor, never decline the dangers of war.” It was still more a lark than obsession at this point. “I was just writing songs about whatever amused me, history, news, or National Geographic,” Roadman says.
A few years later, he wrote another song based on the Peloponnesian War, “Life in the Spartan Army,” and then another, and decided to dedicate an entire album to the war. Comparing it to Christo wrapping the Reichstag, he admits that, “I pretty much knew it was an absurd thing, and that’s what attracted me to it. Just the absurdity of doing something I was laughing about the second I thought about it.”
[Thanks to RogueClassicism.]
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