Blood on the Floor in discussions of the US revolution: Ovid in the midst of it

Fascinating to see Robert Parkinson (author of the controversial 2016
book *Common
Cause <https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=3Dhttps%3A%2F%2F=
uncpress.org%2Fbook%2F9781469626635%2Fthe-common-cause%2F&amp;data=3D02%7C0=
1%7CCLASSICS-L%40lsv.uky.edu%7Cd882f271104e487bb29508d775a619e0%7C2b30530b6=
9b64457b818481cb53d42ae%7C0%7C1%7C637107228578417729&amp;sdata=3Dmt%2FkyNRK=
%2FuKdh6avGRm3N01XdzFiqLcOauXg0iwJXqs%3D&amp;reserved=3D0>*)
invoking Ovid to describe historiographical dispute.

Dan

The third and fourth portraits [of the American Revolution] hung next to
one another for the last half  of the twentieth century, as artists
continued to add details and scenes to their preferred painting and
sometimes threw paint onto the other as their disagreements grew
increasingly bitter.3
Now, it seems safe to say another version has arrived. Our new
revolutionary portrait has many facets that distinguish it from those that
came before, although it is not wholly sui generis. First, it does not
place the thirteen mainland American colonies at the center but rather
features other places on the continent, the Atlantic Ocean, and even the
hemisphere. More importantly, it is a chaotic canvas, one Jackson Pollock
rather than John Trumbull would paint, featuring actors of all races,
classes, and genders across the western hemisphere whose stories make for
clashing colors and colliding lines. Finally, even though some of the older
sketches of republican freedom and consent are yet visible, when the viewer
stands back to assess its mood, the hues of this new founding portrait
evoke desperation rather than inspiration, with depictions of blood, smoke,
and iron obscuring but not erasing the representative politics and
constitutions featured in previous iterations. The institutions and the
nationalism or national character depicted in this painting are contested,
problematic, and coercive.
In short, we now have Janus=E2=80=99s American Revolution. Janus, the rever=
ed Roman
god of origins and endings, of doors or thresholds that can be crossed in
either direction, of the past and the future=E2=80=94=E2=80=9Copener of the=
 softly gliding
year, thou who alone of the celestials dost behold thy back,=E2=80=9D as Ov=
id
introduces him=E2=80=94is an appropriate patron for this emerging portrait.=
 Our new
originary revolution is a double-facing one that has retained some of its
awe and inspiration (constitutional experimentations with republican
self-government, religious freedom, antislavery, and opportunity) but also
produced feelings of anxiety and horror, for its experiments were only
possible because of a catastrophic war that strengthened a national
commitment to slavery and legitimized the destruction of Native peoples
through continental conquest. The ideological experimentation and political
creativity so triumphed in previous iterations appear on our new canvas as
the result of violent upheaval and bitter deals that tended toward
exclusion, pain, and suffering. Like Ovid=E2=80=99s dread-filled reaction t=
o
beholding Janus, our American Revolution is one governed by sheer terror,
fear, and wondering eyes, but our eyes, too, are dazzled by the fascination
of possibility and realization of its limits.

3 See Alfred F. Young and Gregory H. Nobles, Whose Revolution Was It?
Historians Interpret the Founding (New York, 2011). For a taste of the
bitterness, see =E2=80=9CForum: How Revolutionary Was the Revolution? A Dis=
cussion
of Gordon S. Wood=E2=80=99s The Radicalism of the American Revolution,=E2=
=80=9D WMQ 51, no.
4 (October 1994): 677=E2=80=93716.  [collection of essays by Wood, Joyce Ap=
pleby,
et al.]

Robert G. Parkinson, =E2=80=9CJanus=E2=80=99s Revolution,=E2=80=9D William =
and Mary Quarterly ,
Vol. 76, No. 3 (July 2019), pp. 545-561