The City and Cities in Greek and Roman Cultures

I expected Professor Boatwright’s talk on the cities in Greek and Roman Culture to reflect the politics, technological advances, and the massive power of the two empires. Many of the students in the lecture hall were at this event for their classics or history classes. When the event began, I quickly became lost in the extensive amount of history covered in the 45-minute speech. Although I have never taken a class in Greek or Roman history, it was not hard for me to see the relationship between the theme of the “Year of the City”, Jane Jacobs’ “The Death and Life of Great American Cities,” and Professor Boatwright’s talk.
Professor Boatwright began her talk by defining what the Greeks and the Romans believed a city to be. She provided two broad definitions, the people and the physical reality, the first of which is a central theme to Jacobs’ work. The central theme to “The Death and Life of Great American Cities,” is the idea that without people, a city cannot survive. A city is not only the physical buildings or roads, but it is all of the people living within those buildings and on those roads. Similarly, the Greek believed the city to be a community of people.
Boatwright provided the audience with a sheet to which she referred to throughout her talk. This sheet contained references to the famous Greek historian Thucydides. As Thucydides relates, “(Nicias to the retreating Athenian troops in Sicily) ‘Look at yourselves! …Reflect that you are yourselves at once a city wherever you sit down. … Men make the city and not the walls or ships without men in them’.” What Nicias is telling the troops is that without the “walls and the ships” and the physical structures, the people of the army alone make a city. Without men, the “walls and ships” though they may create a physical location, do not constitute a city.
Today we live in cities that are defined through the skylines, statues and monuments, and we often get lost in the “physical reality”, and often times forget that the people make each city what it is. We cannot imagine New York without the Empire State Building, or Chicago without the Sears Tower or Baltimore without the stadiums, but even harder to imagine is any of those cities without the people, each of whom represent a different ethnicity. Many of us at Loyola tend to surround ourselves with only those that live within the safety of the university’s walls. The purpose of the “Year of the City” is to break the boundaries that we create around ourselves. This theme was created by Father Linnane in order for us to venture out into Baltimore and represent Loyola and the values of a Jesuit education and to also surround ourselves with the heritage of Baltimore and appreciate the diversity of the people that live within the city, and bring that appreciation and understanding to Loyola.