Public statues falling everywhere. Robert E. Lee, Christopher Columbus, Thomas Jefferson, and more—memorialized leaders yanked to the ground, no longer heroes to angry crowds demonstrating this summer for racial justice. So which bronze effigies deserve to be (literally) knocked off their pedestal? Or, perhaps less clear, what happens after that? It’s easy enough to decry a general, or statesman or explorer’s historical sins with today’s sharpened retrospection: but what kind of leaders should replace the fallen? Should our public spaces still be graced with grand effigies of leaders at all? (President Trump has meanwhile pondered whether his own likeness should be added to Mount Rushmore).
Expect the broader debate about celebrating—or not celebrating—particular leaders to rage on, raising ever more inflamed emotion. For a cooling pause, and some scholarly perspective, I reached out to Cornell professor Barry Strauss, an esteemed author of page-turning studies of many historical leaders (most recently Ten Caesars: Simon & Schuster, 2019). Our conversation focused on two questions: What can we learn from past civilizations about erecting public monuments to leaders? And how can such lessons inform America’s future commemorations?
Patterns Through History
Strauss first cautioned: “Every civilization has its own political values—lessons about monuments must be contextualized. But there are some common patterns. Also, we need to look beyond statues. Through history leaders have been promoted by whole systems of images and rituals: ceremonies, coins, religious buildings, different forms of art, education.”
As we proceeded, the discussion yielded several insights:
1. Autocracies and democracies monumentalize leaders differently—but always to influence a public audience. Professor Strauss contrasted civilizations like pharaonic Egypt and imperial Rome vs those of ancient Athens or America’s republic: in the former, awe-inspiring projection of a larger-than-life ruler vs in democracies, celebration of distinguished citizens who triumphed serving the people. “But in both cases, you still see promotion of certain heroic values—e.g., strength, courage, or perhaps mercy or duty; and an effort to elevate the leader to a higher plane. In autocracies, statues communicate a mixture of divine reverence and fear; democratic nations tend to inspire more human admiration. But for both the message is always educational—shaping opinions through public images and symbols.”
2. As the politics and values of a nation change, so will its monuments. Thus the central question of today’s debates in America: are we in the midst of a transformation that calls for new approaches in choosing leaders to celebrate? Or are today’s demonstrations more ephemeral, unlikely to affect enduring ideas of historical heroes (Confederate generals perhaps excepted)?
“It’s too soon to know,” Strauss warned. “But ancient Rome has some lessons about how shifting values can play out over time. Early Roman civilization was small and rough: there were few public statues, but instead elaborate funerals for members of the aristocratic families that controlled the state. Later, when Rome grew through conquest, public statues of successful generals started to appear, enhanced by other hero-promotion, like triumphal parades, and god-like images of leaders on coins—a practice Julius Caesar adapted from Alexander the Great in Hellenistic Greece.”
“But when the Emperor Augustus ended the Roman civil wars, he deliberately transformed the cult of warrior personalities, shifting his own public image towards “peaceful divinity” and also endorsing family and more traditional Roman values. The reliefs of his famous Altar of Peace were a brilliant blend of old and new, divine and human, and men buttressed by strong women—signaling his wish for a new era of the imperial culture.”
How will America communicate its own transitions? Will America someday have its own Augustus to help us on our way?
3. Abstraction can sometimes be more powerful than celebrating individual leaders. “The Great Pyramids were a monumental symbol of the strict hierarchical power of ancient Egyptian kings—built by thousands of workers who owed labor to an omnipotent pharaoh. But they were also a public boast to instill cultural pride, like America landing a man on the moon.”
“Consider also classical Athenians, which celebrated the civic dignity of their democracy: sculpting images of anonymous citizens in procession on parts of the great Parthenon; or, in another famous relief, depicting the demos symbolically—the common people as a wise man, crowned by the god of Democracy itself.”
4. Monumental messages can be subtle or even ambiguous. Iconoclastic attacks on contemporary statues may miss the deeper history of their intended messages: “Alexander the Great enhanced his public charisma by managing minute details in all his images, like a modern consumer brand: his hair always windswept, no beard (unlike most Greek men)—indicating a vigorous and eternally young ruler.
He also ennobled particular lieutenants with their own statues, signaling the value of royal loyalty. He was relentless in his messaging.”
Historical monuments can have multiple meanings. “Many Civil War Confederate generals were memorialized in racist support of Jim Crow laws. But some monuments were also dedicated in the spirit of reconciliation, echoing Lincoln’s hope of ‘malice towards none.’” Consider also the silent message of non-monuments—who is and who is not being commemorated: “After the American Revolution there were no statues erected of loyalists who had supported the Crown, even though many were once distinguished citizens. And post WW II Italy is a story of commemorations that should have been removed but weren’t: unlike Nazi monuments almost universally destroyed in Germany, some Italian fascist monuments were sometimes left standing. You can still see some today.”
5. Judge public monuments in the context of the broader national narrative. On the eve of the American Revolution, rabble-rousing patriots in New York pulled down a gilded statue of King George III— a rejection of kingly power of the sort that led to our war of independence. But at the time, nobody knew if and when a new American democracy would be born. But it was, and thus the story of toppling King George can today be added to our national narrative. And of course, so was the other George (Washington) who fought the war and then became our first president.
Today, the second George is now under attack for himself owning slaves: are we on our way to another revolution, that will somehow explain our historical past with a different and more relevant narrative?
Professor Strauss commented with some appropriately sober academic judgment: “We can’t predict the future, but we should honestly confront the reality of today—America is clearly having a debate about the story of its history, and ultimately the story of America itself. It’s been going on since the 1960s, and we’re not near any resolution yet. We shouldn’t be surprised—our society has gone through huge change—greater social freedom for many constituencies (people of color, women, gay people, etc.), lots more immigration and new values, more social inequality. There’s also an ongoing conflict between older generations and the values they hold dear, and a rising younger generation that sees our world very differently. Controversies about statues and leaders are ultimately just signals of deeper clashes about our national story.”
So Where Do We Go From Here?
I closed by pressing this Cornell historian a bit more—what’s the right way to find our new national story, and agree the right heroes to celebrate therein?
He first offered some sound procedural suggestions (forming a diverse and multi-generational, multi-local commission, facilitating a national conversation, blending expert opinions with those of everyday citizens, etc.) But his final thoughts were wisest of all: “We have to engage many different opinions—but ultimately find some common thread, a shared unity that ties us together as a national community. Our future story should combine the best elements of the past, with more forward-looking ideas—respecting the valued core of yesterday but also informed by real innovation now underway. The Romans built a thousand-year civilization on that basis. There’s no reason we can’t reconceive our democratic society the same way.”
Originally published on Forbes.com