(Roughly) Daily

John Bull (England) as an octopus of imperialism (American cartoon,1888); source: HistoryMike

For more images of this provocative sort (and discussion thereof), see Vulgar Army, “an informal study into the use of the Octopus as an (often unreflective) metaphor in propaganda and political cartoons, and [of] the intersection of the political with popular culture.”

As we contemplate the role of cephalopods in civic discourse, we might doff our hats to Elizabethan poet, courtier, and soldier Sir Philip Sidney, who died on this date in 1586 of an infected thigh wound received in combat with the Spanish at the Battle of Zutphen, after having given his leg armor to a soldier who had forgotten his own.  As he lay dying, he gave his water-bottle to another wounded soldier, saying, “Thy necessity is yet greater than mine.”   Sidney’s Arcadia (or more fully, The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia)– the inspiration for the Gloucester sub-plot in Shakespeare’s King Lear-– was published posthumously.

Sir Philip Sidney