From sesar@noho.com Fri Feb 28 10:09:29 2003
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Date: Fri, 28 Feb 2003 13:10:35 -0500
From: Carl Sesar <sesar@noho.com>
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To: classics@u.washington.edu
Subject: Re: Stalingrad follows Marathon
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" . . . but all [the partisans who hawk war] deliver is an urn of dust
brought back by the money-changer whom they hired . . ."

I don't get "money-changer."  Please explain.

willettstevenj@qwest.net wrote:

> This is the 60th anniversary of the greatest military
> engagement in history: Stalingrad.  About one million Red
> Army soldiers gave their lives in the decisive battle that
> defeated Nazi Germany.  The snows along the Volga buried
> 150,000 Germans who died, eventually and thankfully, for
> nothing.  This put me in mind of Marathon and its minuscule
> losses.  Between Marathon and Stalingrad spins a
> kaleidoscope of war flashing with many tens of millions whom
> the earth has consumed.  Now one likes to think that
> Marathon, which looks (as the poet said) on the sea, stood
> for something.  One likes to think that Stalingrad, for a few
> following centuries perhaps, will stand for something.  But as
> the 2,500-year interval between Marathon and today grows
> ever larger, the sheer unabating accumulation of wars begins
> to erase those of the past.  Marathon means nothing to the
> Greek government in its drive to produce a successful
> Olympics, as Chris Robbins noted.  Marathon means nothing
> to the vast majority of all Americans and Europeans, most of
> whom couldn't even place it accurately in chronology or
> topography.  The same fate will befall Stalingrad.  And after
> all, 10,000 years from now--when some sort of human polity
> may still exist--no one will think or care about all the blood
> that has been spilled for any cause.  All causes will be
> extinguished.  The good, as a Greek poet wisely wrote, die
> young.  Time obliterates everything, but those obliterated
> young lives will still live in their truncated possibilities.  The
> partisans who hawk war speak with the majestic voice of
> temporary expediency, but all they deliver is an urn of dust
> brought back by the money-changer whom they hired just for
> a moment, for a moment, for a moment that stretches so
> often briefly before us.
>
> ======================================
> Steven J. Willett
> Shizuoka University of Art and Culture
> 1794-1 Noguchi-cho, Hamamatsu City
> Japan 430-8533
> Tel/Fax: (53) 457-6124
> willett@suac.ac.jp (Japan)
> willettstevenj@qwest.net (US)

.