Thebes was one of about 1,000 poleis (city-states) spread all over the mainland of classical Greece, the islands of the Aegean and Ionian seas, the Black Sea coast, Asia Minor, north Africa, southern France, eastern Spain and southern Italy and Sicily.    There were so many Greeks and Greek city-states in Italy and Sicily the Romans described the region as Magna Graecia. Plato used to joke that the Greeks were like frogs playing in a pond, the Mediterranean. He ignored the Black Sea pond.   Surrounded by Athens and Sparta   Thebes, along with Athens and Sparta, was unusual. It was a relatively strong polis in central Greece or Boeotia, continuously inhabited for five millennia. Yet Thebes’ more powerful neighbors, Sparta and Athens, and, in the fourth century BCE, Macedonia, made the life, the historical life of Thebes unpleasant to the extreme. Thebes almost disappeared from history. Athenians often called Thebans Boeotian swine.   But the Thebans were not swine. They were at the

Congratulations Mr. President-Elect. I am delighted the American people voted for you in the midst of a Trump and Republican Party onslaught on the integrity of elections and American democracy.    Trump’s attack on nature    Trump and his followers have damaged the country at home and abroad. It will take enormous time and talent from your administration to reverse this decline.   Trump denied climate change, thus he diminished the international standing of America. Indirectly, by encouraging oligarchy and the rejection of science, he influenced the leader of Brazil who encouraged the burning of the Amazon and its  conversion to soybean fields.    Trump and his EPA nearly wiped out domestic environmental and public health protection. This dangerous and immoral policy empowered polluters to inflict even more damage to the natural world and public health. The coronavirus plague is one of the unexpected consequences of abusing nature.   Reform or abolish animal farms   Animal farms are a