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This chapter discusses the sudden emergence of the Hindenburg myth after the Battle of Tannenberg in 1914. It shows that the German population played a central role in exalting this little-known General to mythical heights from below. Once public passion had caught fire, however, the government happily stoked the flames of the cult. The chapter examines popular manifestations of the Hindenburg myth in some detail, including memorabilia and the ‘Iron Hindenburg’ nailing statue erected in central Berlin in 1915. Special attention is also given to the myth's impact on Kaiser Wilhelm II's public standing. While the Kaiser's government actively encouraged Hindenburg's popularity, his myth quickly developed its own momentum; Hindenburg started to eclipse the Kaiser in the eyes of the public, eventually undermining the monarchical idea.

This chapter first considers the philosophical background to Plutarch's representation of erōs, enkrateia (self-control), and sōphrosynē (temperance). It examines Xenophon's Memorabilia to uncover ethical terminology that is more general than what Plutarch set forth in On Moral Virtue (as examined in chapter 1), showing how Plutarch relied both upon technical definitions of self-control, based on Plato and Aristotle, and upon more conventional notions, similar to those espoused by Xenophon. The chapter then considers the political dimension to self-control, establishing that Plutarch shared the generally held belief that one's personal conduct, including restraint of erōs, was perceived to be indicative of how well one would perform as a military or political leader. The chapter concludes with an examination of the Agesilaus–Pompey, arguing that these heroes represent a middle ground, both ethically and politically, between the extreme self-control described in the Alexander–Caesarand the overwhelming passion found in the Demetrius–Antony.

This epilogue discusses the apparent endurance of crusading enthusiasm in the families of King Henry II of England and King Alfonso II of Aragón at the dawning of the thirteenth century. More specifically, it considers how the nobility remained the lifeblood of the crusade movement long after royal governments and broader Christian society deened crusades to be impracticable and undesirable. Both Alfonso and Henry received appeals from within their lands and from outside to lead crusades. In those appeals, their crusading ancestry played a central role. However, the two men died without having acquitted themselves of the crusading responsibilities that were seen as incumbent on them. The chapter also examines some of the changes in crusading practices, including the end of the age of the great dynastic narrative works devoted to the lineage of noble families after the first quarter of the thirteenth century. Finally, it takes note of the fact that the mechanisms developed by noble families—the vibrant, living traditions based on storytelling and crusading memorabilia—continued.

Like the sons of Gama Rex in Princess Ida, devotees of Gilbert and Sullivan are, on the whole, masculine in sex. The male bias is particularly evident among what might be called the ‘inner brotherhood’, that company of enthusiasts who border on the obsessive, collect G & S memorabilia, write books on the subject, know every nuance of every recording, and sit in theatres waiting for a wrong word in a patter song or a move which deviates from the D'Oyly Carte norm. But even in the wider circle of G & S fans, men predominate over women. This chapter holds that the archetypal G & S fan is male, middle-aged, middle-class, and of middle income. He is also quite likely to be a Methodist.

The life of the speech writer Lysias straddled the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. Born about 450 B.C., in his formative years Lysias must have been aware of Pericles, whether he personally had direct contact with him or not. Lysias's wealthy mercantile family was from the city of Syracuse in Sicily and acquired metic or resident alien status in Athens. Neither Xenophon nor Plato, whose prolific writing careers date to the first half of the fourth century B.C., can have known Pericles personally. In the opening sections of the Memorabilia, Xenophon seeks to defend Socrates against the charges laid against him, mainly those of impiety and of corrupting the youth of the city. For Plato, Pericles suffered from the failings endemic to all political leaders: he had not devoted his life to philosophy, to the pursuit of wisdom. Nevertheless, he did stand out among them as one of the best of a flawed breed.

This chapter discusses homosexuality in Greek philosophical texts. Same-gender love among males is a recurring topic in Greek philosophical discourse of the fourth century B.C.E. and later. Fragments from Memorabilia, Charmides, Lysis, Gorgias, Symposium, Phaedrus, Prior Analytics, Nicomachean Ethics, On Regimen, Problems, Diogenes of Sinope, Bion of Borysthenes, Theodorus of Cyrene, Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta, Outlines of Pyrrhonism, and Against Heretical Sects are provided as well.

This chapter examines the material framework around which social memory of the early crusaders was constructed. Precious cloth in general, and silk in particular, was easy to carry, and would have made useful currency. After their return from crusading expeditions in the later twelfth century, Henry the Lion, William Marshal, and William de Mandeville would make presents to their friends and relatives of lengths of silk obtained in the East. The chapter first considers the power and meaning of commemorative objects such as relics and trophies before discussing the personal items carried by crusaders in early expeditions, including weapons, armor, liveries, banners, and other fine materials. It then looks at the use of crusade memorabilia in ceremonies, as well as chapels and collegiate churches as repositories of crusade memorabilia.

This chapter takes up a concept that has achieved a kind of keyword status in Cuban American Studies: nostalgia. The chapter tracks nostalgia not as an ambivalent sentiment but as a public form of diversión, paying special attention to a festival held annually since 1999 in Miami called Cuba Nostalgia. Since 1999, Cuba Nostalgia has celebrated pre-Castro Cuba through a combination of spectacle and consumption. Musical genres popular before the Revolution play while businesses dedicated to selling Cuban memorabilia dot the fairgrounds. With the demographics of Cuban Miami rapidly shifting, Cuba Nostalgia offers not only a means for reveling in nostalgic memories of a pre-Castro Cuba but also a nostalgia for nostalgia—a longing for a feeling that could be counted on to rally a community historically fractured across class and political lines. The event is a kind of monument in motion to an idealized memory of a united, exilic Miami as that generation fades. Through an examination of the event’s focus on education and consumption, this chapter theorizes the ways in which generations of Cubans intersect and interact with this narrative of pre-Castro Cuba in order to reveal the transnational and future-oriented stakes of nostalgia.

This chapter illustrates the importance of the royal family to Margaret Tyler, a dedicated collector of all things royal, whose home in London contains more than ten thousand pieces of royal family memorabilia. As a collector, business owner, and media expert, Margaret performs a variety of social roles that help shape other consumers’ experiences of the RFBC. From historian to brand ambassador, Margaret’s passion ensures she is widely sought after and valued for her knowledge on the royal family, especially by the international media. She has become a minor celebrity in her own right, frequently appearing in the press and on television as “Britain’s loyalist royalist.”

This chapter focuses on how the RFBC consistently intersects with the marketplace in ways both in and out of royal control. From visiting traditional manufacturers and merchants who bear royal warrants to snapping up endless varieties of commemoratives in souvenir shops, people can experience the intersection of marketing and the monarchy in myriad ways. The RFBC’s interface with commerce through the granting of royal warrants dates back many centuries. Yet the strategic decision to develop their own consumer brands (such as the Windsor Farm Shops) is a much newer phenomenon, and, in part, reflects the growing pressure on the royal family to contribute in some meaningful way to Britain’s economy. Other marketplace intersections with royalty are outside the control of the RFBC, such as auctions and internet sites that deal in royal memorabilia and have the power to present the RFBC in less positive ways.

The most obvious limitation of, or constraint upon, the Memorabilia is that the work is overwhelmingly defensive—in purpose, message, and tone. To demonstrate that Socrates lived in accordance with unwritten as well as written lawful custom (nomos), Xenophon highlights throughout the Memorabilia all the ways in which Socrates through his virtues—not only of justice, but of piety and self-control and moderation and prudence—resembled conventionally respectable “gentlemen”. In contrast, the three shorter Socratic writings of Xenophon, led by The Economist, make more vivid how Socrates, in his virtues, or in his peculiar version of “gentlemanliness,” and in his conception of scientific household management or “economics,” diverges from normal gentlemen: from their virtues, from their “nobility-and-goodness,” and from their ideas of sound household management and governmental rule over fellow human beings. In the shorter Socratic writings, both Xenophon and his Socrates are somewhat less guarded, less reticent, more forthcoming than in the Memorabilia.

After examining the role of verisimilitude in the discourse of mimetic contagion, this chapter addresses the anxieties expressed by Xenophon’s Socrates and Aristotle about the ethically persuasive effect of deleterious art on the young and shows these to be philosophical refinements of concepts recognizable from Chapter 2. Next it turns to the aspects of Platonic mimesis that relate directly to mimetic contagion. Some two decades after his infamously suspicious treatment of mimesis in the Republic, Plato revisits the theme of mimesis and, more specifically, of mimetic contagion in the Timaeus. This chapter’s reading of the Timaeus work shows how the ongoing propagation of images from artefact to viewer contributes to a partial recuperation of the concept of mimesis in Plato’s thought, and it also reveals an important connection between Timaeus’ description of the structure of the universe and Critias’ account of the generational propagation of the Atlantis story.