Warning: Undefined variable $num in /home/shroutdo/public_html/courses/wp-content/plugins/single-categories/single_categories.php on line 126
Warning: Undefined variable $posts_num in /home/shroutdo/public_html/courses/wp-content/plugins/single-categories/single_categories.php on line 127
Like @jessicak, I too wrote about the comparison of Chicago to the Roman Empire that the author highlights. When I first came across the comparison, it seemed like a ridiculous idea. People are actually comparing the Roman Empire to the City of Chicago, but then I thought more about it. What stuck out to me was not the similarities of urbanization or the eventual downfall caused by corruption that the two cities shared, but the similar way both cities are written about.
Cronon mentions that writers in support of the Chicago-Rome comparison, or “Chicago Boosters” as he calls them, were attempting to gain their city the same recognition and glory that was bestowed on the historically recognized urban empires (42). On page 43 Cronon highlights that the Chicago boosters “were quick to compare their city [Chicago] to Rome” but would habitually forget to mention the accomplishments of another major industrialized city, New York. And on page 45, though this is certainly not the last example of support contained in the text, as stated by William Bross “Chicago has ‘not a particle of jealousy in her nature,’” when addressing the competition of other cities. He continues “the more you prosper, the more you all will contribute to the wealth and the prosperity of Chicago,” suggesting the believe that Chicago was the supreme city that all, should if they do not already, strive to be like.
These examples closely mimic the writers of Ancient Rome. Rome is essentially a city that borrowed Greek culture but does not want to give any credit to the Greeks. The Greeks had Homer’s Epic the Iliad and Odyssey where the Roman’s responded with Virgil’s Aeneid. Where the Greeks had the gods Zeus, Ares, and Poseidon, the Romans has Jupiter, Mars, and Neptune. It could even be said that the stories which make up the battle with the Etruscans, as Horatius Cocles on the bridge, can be seen as an adage to the Battle of Thermopylae; of course three Romans are just as good as 300 Spartan Greeks.
Though the subject matter of the two periods of writing are not identical. The general themes are still the same. Just as the Romans avoided praising the Greeks, the Chicago boosters avoided praising other major and up and coming cities.
Lastly as @Jessicak said, “the city was so focused on the fame they would receive from their advancements in technology… they didn’t worry about other aspects, like corruption, that also lead to the fall of Rome.” Chicago reached its height of prosperity by the end of the century and Conon tells us that “most die-hard champions of other places,” seemed comfortable with Chicago’s success that they were willing to say that it was the “Metropolis of the Great West.”(46)
~Rebekah Daigh
Now our good town has taken a new fit:
Each man you meet by poetry is bit;
E’en I, who vow I never write a verse,
Am found as false as Parthia, maybe worse;
Before the dawn I rouse myself, and call
For pens and parchment, writing-desk and all.
None dares be pilot who ne’er steered a craft;
No untrained nurse administers a draught;
None but skilled workmen handle workmen’s tools:
But verses all men scribble, wise or fools.
-Horace Epistles II.1