I had intended to write on inflation for this week’s Then and Now, making some (I’m sure) clever tie-in vis-a-vis President Joe Biden’s bumbling incompetence in handling the economy and the inflated hubris of monarchs from antiquity whose preferred monetary policy was printing coins stamped with their faces. But, thanks to said bumbling incompetence, the topic of inflation will remain fresh for the foreseeable future. Good news for Then and Now, bad news for the middle class.
Accordingly, our space this week will be instead dedicated to the city of Cincinnati, Ohio. More specifically, the city’s newly resurgent NFL team, the Cincinnati Bengals. Led by Joe Burrow, their cigar-smoking, swaggering young quarterback, the Bengals are headed to their first Super Bowl since 1989 after knocking off the No. 1 seeded Tennessee Titans and the Patrick Mahomes-helmed Kansas City Chiefs.
I won’t stoop so low as to make predictions about the outcome of “the Big Game,” but I, like generations of writers before me, am not above shamelessly mining the newsworthiness of spectacle for my own purposes. And wouldn’t you know it, both elements of the Cincinnati Bengals’ name offer interesting historical tidbits.
The town settlement of Cincinnati dates back to the late 1800s. It was given its name shortly after its original settling, in honor of the Society of the Cincinnati, which was “a hereditary, military, and patriotic organization formed in May 1783 by officers who had served in the American Revolution.” This society was named after the great general and statesman of the Roman Republic, Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus.
In the sixth book of his History of Rome, Livy recounts “how Cincinnatus saved a Roman Army.” Cincinnatus, the story goes, was a Roman patrician, former consul, and staunch supporter of the rights of plebs who had retired late in life to tend his farm after losing political favor. Destiny found him, however, in 458 B.C. after the Roman army became trapped by the sieging Aequi tribe. With no one else to turn to, a delegation from Rome approached Cincinnatus on his farm and begged him to take charge. As Livy writes, “In him were the courage and resolution equal to the majestic authority of that office.”
The legend goes that Cincinnatus defeated the enemy almost immediately upon taking power and, following his victory, relinquished his position of supreme authority and returned to his plow (this all was accomplished within a span of 15 days, per the mythos). A true hero of the people, and in a manner very sympathetic to our democratic sensibilities: George Washington is often called “the American Cincinnatus.”
As for “Bengals,” well, the mascot is a tiger. And tigers are awesome. Indeed, at the risk of paraphrasing, humans have found tigers to be “awesome” basically since they encountered the big, stripey cats. Tigers, along with elephants and to a lesser extent lions, were among the most important symbolic animals to ancient Asian cultures — even now, we classify them among “charismatic megafauna,” which is an amusing term I just learned that means they are, essentially, 1) large, 2) popular, and 3) entertaining to look at and make stories about. Hindu mythology casts the tiger as the vahana (“vehicle”) of the goddess Durga, the mother of the universe. The Romans found them so engaging that they transported Bengal tigers all the way from the Indian coast and subcontinent to the Colosseum, albeit for far less respectful celebrations.
In short, Cincinnatus: hero; tigers: awesome. Go Bengals.
