title: German Peasants' War

text: Peasants served in rotation, sometimes for one week in four, and returned to their villages after service. While the men served, others absorbed their workload. This sometimes meant producing supplies for their opponents, such as in the Archbishopric of Salzburg, where men worked to extract silver, which was used to hire fresh contingents of for the Swabian League.


title: German Peasants' War

text: However, the peasants lacked the Swabian League's cavalry, having few horses and little armour. They seem to have used their mounted men for reconnaissance. The lack of cavalry with which to protect their flanks, and with which to penetrate massed squares, proved to be a long-term tactical and strategic problem.


title: German Peasants' War

text: Historians disagree on the nature of the revolt and its causes, whether it grew out of the emerging religious controversy centered on Luther; whether a wealthy tier of peasants saw their own wealth and rights slipping away, and sought to weave them into the legal, social and religious fabric of society; or whether peasants objected to the emergence of a modernizing, centralizing nation state.


title: German Peasants' War

text: One view is that the origins of the German Peasants' War lay partly in the unusual power dynamic caused by the agricultural and economic dynamism of the previous decades. Labor shortages in the last half of the 14th century had allowed peasants to sell their labor for a higher price; food and goods shortages had allowed them to sell their products for a higher price as well. Consequently, some peasants, particularly those who had limited allodial requirements, were able to accrue significant economic, social, and legal advantages. Peasants were more concerned to protect the social, economic and legal gains they had made than about seeking further gains.


title: German Peasants' War

text: Their attempt to break new ground was primarily seeking to increase their liberty by changing their status from serfs, such as the infamous moment when the peasants of Mühlhausen refused to collect snail shells around which their lady could wind her thread. The renewal of the signeurial system had weakened in the previous half century, and peasants were unwilling to see it restored.


title: German Peasants' War

text: People in all layers of the social hierarchy—serfs or city dwellers, guildsmen or farmers, knights and aristocrats—started to question the established hierarchy. The so-called "Book of One Hundred Chapters", for example, written between 1501 and 1513, promoted religious and economic freedom, attacking the governing establishment and displaying pride in the virtuous peasant. The Bundschuh revolts of the first 20 years of the century offered another avenue for the expression of anti-authoritarian ideas, and for the spread of these ideas from one geographic region to another.


title: German Peasants' War

text: Luther's revolution may have added intensity to these movements, but did not create them; the two events, Luther's Protestant Reformation and the German Peasants' War, were separate, sharing the same years but occurring independently. However, Luther's doctrine of the "priesthood of all believers" could be interpreted as proposing greater social equality than Luther intended. Luther vehemently opposed the revolts, writing the pamphlet "Against the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of Peasants", in which he remarks "Let everyone who can, smite, slay, and stab, secretly or openly ... nothing can be more poisonous, hurtful, or devilish than a rebel. It is just as one must kill a mad dog; if you do not strike him he will strike you."


title: German Peasants' War

text: Historian Roland Bainton saw the revolt as a struggle that began as an upheaval immersed in the rhetoric of Luther's Protestant Reformation against the Catholic Church but which really was impelled far beyond the narrow religious confines by the underlying economic tensions of the time.


title: German Peasants' War

text: Friedrich Engels interpreted the war as a case in which an emerging proletariat (the urban class) failed to assert a sense of its own autonomy in the face of princely power and left the rural classes to their fate.


title: German Peasants' War

text: During the 1524 harvest, in Stühlingen, south of the Black Forest, the Countess of Lupfen ordered serfs to collect snail shells for use as thread spools after a series of difficult harvests. Within days, 1,200 peasants had gathered, created a list of grievances, elected officers, and raised a banner. Within a few weeks most of southwestern Germany was in open revolt. The uprising stretched from the Black Forest, along the Rhine river, to Lake Constance, into the Swabian highlands, along the upper Danube river, and into Bavaria and the Tyrol.


title: German Peasants' War

text: On 16 February 1525, 25 villages belonging to the city of Memmingen rebelled, demanding of the magistrates (city council) improvements in their economic condition and the general political situation. They complained of peonage, land use, easements on the woods and the commons, as well as ecclesiastical requirements of service and payment.


title: German Peasants' War

text: The city set up a committee of villagers to discuss their issues, expecting to see a checklist of specific and trivial demands. Unexpectedly, the peasants delivered a uniform declaration that struck at the pillars of the peasant-magisterial relationship. Twelve articles clearly and consistently outlined their grievances. The council rejected many of the demands. Historians have generally concluded that the articles of Memmingen became the basis for the Twelve Articles agreed on by the Upper Swabian Peasants Confederation of 20 March 1525.


title: German Peasants' War

text: A single Swabian contingent, close to 200 horse and 1,000-foot soldiers, however, could not deal with the size of the disturbance. By 1525, the uprisings in the Black Forest, the Breisgau, Hegau, Sundgau, and Alsace alone required a substantial muster of 3,000-foot and 300 horse soldiers.


title: German Peasants' War

text: On 6 March 1525, some 50 representatives of the Upper Swabian Peasants (troops)—the , the , and the Lake Constance —met in Memmingen to agree to a common cause against the Swabian League. One day later, after difficult negotiations, they proclaimed the establishment of the Christian Association, an Upper Swabian Peasants' Confederation. The peasants met again on 15 and 20 March in Memmingen and, after some additional deliberation, adopted the Twelve Articles and the Federal Order (). Their banner, the , or a laced boot, served as the emblem of their agreement. The Twelve Articles were printed over 25,000 times in the next two months, and quickly spread throughout Germany, an example of how modernization came to the aid of the rebels.


title: German Peasants' War

text: The Twelve Articles demanded the right for communities to elect and depose clergymen and demanded the utilization of the "great tithe" for public purposes after subtraction of a reasonable pastor's salary. (The "great tithe" was assessed by the Catholic Church against the peasant's wheat crop and the peasant's vine crops. The great tithe often amounted to more than 10% of the peasant's income.) The Twelve Articles also demanded the abolition of the "small tithe" which was assessed against the peasant's other crops. Other demands of the Twelve Articles included the abolition of serfdom, death tolls, and the exclusion from fishing and hunting rights; restoration of the forests, pastures, and privileges withdrawn from the community and individual peasants by the nobility; and a restriction on excessive statute labor, taxes and rents. Finally, the Twelve Articles demanded an end to arbitrary justice and administration.


title: German Peasants' War

text: Kempten im Allgäu was an important city in the Allgäu, a region in what became Bavaria, near the borders with Württemberg and Austria. In the early eighth century, Celtic monks established a monastery there, Kempten Abbey. In 1213, Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II declared the abbots members of the , or imperial estate, and granted the abbot the title of duke. In 1289, King Rudolf of Habsburg granted special privileges to the urban settlement in the river valley, making it a free imperial city. In 1525 the last property rights of the abbots in the Imperial City were sold in the so-called "Great Purchase", marking the start of the co-existence of two independent cities bearing the same name next to each other. In this multi-layered authority, during the Peasants' War, the abbey-peasants revolted, plundering the abbey and moving on the town.


title: German Peasants' War

text: On 4 April 1525, 5,000 peasants, the (literally: the Leipheim Bunch), gathered near Leipheim to rise against the city of Ulm. A band of five companies, plus approximately 25 citizens of Leipheim, assumed positions west of the town. League reconnaissance reported to the Truchsess that the peasants were well-armed. They had cannons with powder and shot and they numbered 3,000–4,000. They took an advantageous position on the east bank of the Biber. On the left stood a wood, and on their right, a stream and marshland; behind them, they had erected a wagon fortress, and they were armed with arquebuses and some light artillery pieces.


title: German Peasants' War

text: As he had done in earlier encounters with the peasants, the Truchsess negotiated while he continued to move his troops into advantageous positions. Keeping the bulk of his army facing Leipheim, he dispatched detachments of horse from Hesse and Ulm across the Danube to Elchingen. The detached troops encountered a separate group of 1,200 peasants engaged in local requisitions, and entered into combat, dispersing them and taking 250 prisoners. At the same time, the Truchsess broke off his negotiations, and received a volley of fire from the main group of peasants. He dispatched a guard of light horse and a small group of foot soldiers against the fortified peasant position. This was followed by his main force; when the peasants saw the size of his main force—his entire force was 1,500 horse, 7,000-foot, and 18 field guns—they began an orderly retreat. Of the 4,000 or so peasants who had manned the fortified position, 2,000 were able to reach the town of Leipheim itself, taking their wounded with them in carts. Others sought to escape across the Danube, and 400 drowned there. The Truchsess' horse units cut down an additional 500. This was the first important battle of the war.


title: German Peasants' War

text: An element of the conflict drew on resentment toward some of the nobility. The peasants of Odenwald had already taken the Cistercian Monastery at Schöntal, and were joined by peasant bands from Limpurg (near Schwäbisch Hall) and Hohenlohe. A large band of peasants from the Neckar valley, under the leadership of Jakob Rohrbach, joined them and from Neckarsulm, this expanded band, called the "Bright Band" (in German, ), marched to the town of Weinsberg, where the Count of Helfenstein, then the Austrian Governor of Württemberg, was present. Here, the peasants achieved a major victory. The peasants assaulted and captured the castle of Weinsberg; most of its own soldiers were on duty in Italy, and it had little protection. Having taken the count as their prisoner, the peasants took their revenge a step further: They forced him, and approximately 70 other nobles who had taken refuge with him, to run the gauntlet of pikes, a popular form of execution among the . Rohrbach ordered the band's piper to play during the running of the gauntlet.


title: German Peasants' War

text: This was too much for many of the peasant leaders of other bands; they repudiated Rohrbach's actions. He was deposed and replaced by a knight, Götz von Berlichingen, who was subsequently elected as supreme commander of the band. At the end of April, the band marched to Amorbach, joined on the way by some radical Odenwald peasants out for Berlichingen's blood. Berlichingen had been involved in the suppression of the Poor Conrad uprising 10 years earlier, and these peasants sought vengeance. In the course of their march, they burned down the Wildenburg castle, a contravention of the Articles of War to which the band had agreed.


title: German Peasants' War

text: The massacre at Weinsberg was also too much for Luther; this is the deed that drew his ire in "Against the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of Peasants" in which he castigated peasants for unspeakable crimes, not only for the murder of the nobles at Weinsberg, but also for the impertinence of their revolt.


title: German Peasants' War

text: On 29 April the peasant protests in Thuringia culminated in open revolt. Large sections of the town populations joined the uprising. Together they marched around the countryside and stormed the castle of the Counts of Schwarzburg. In the following days, a larger number of insurgents gathered in the fields around the town. When Müntzer arrived with 300 fighters from Mühlhausen on 11 May, several thousand more peasants of the surrounding estates camped on the fields and pastures: the final strength of the peasant and town force was estimated at 6,000. The Landgrave, Philip of Hesse and Duke George of Saxony were on Müntzer's trail and directed their troops toward Frankenhausen. On 15 May joint troops of Landgraf Philipp I of Hesse and George, Duke of Saxony defeated the peasants under Müntzer near Frankenhausen in the County of Schwarzburg.


title: German Peasants' War

text: The Princes' troops included close to 6,000 mercenaries, the . As such they were experienced, well-equipped, well-trained and of good morale. The peasants, on the other hand, had poor, if any, equipment, and many had neither experience nor training. Many of the peasants disagreed over whether to fight or negotiate. On 14 May, they warded off smaller feints of the Hesse and Brunswick troops, but failed to reap the benefits from their success. Instead the insurgents arranged a ceasefire and withdrew into a wagon fort.


title: German Peasants' War

text: The next day Philip's troops united with the Saxon army of Duke George and immediately broke the truce, starting a heavy combined infantry, cavalry and artillery attack. The peasants were caught off-guard and fled in panic to the town, followed and continuously attacked by the public forces. Most of the insurgents were slain in what turned out to be a massacre. Casualty figures are unreliable but estimates range from 3,000 to 10,000 while the casualties were as few as six (two of whom were only wounded). Müntzer was captured, tortured and executed at Mühlhausen on 27 May.


title: German Peasants' War

text: The Battle of Böblingen (12 May 1525) perhaps resulted in the greatest casualties of the war. When the peasants learned that the Truchsess (Seneschal) of Waldburg had pitched camp at Rottenburg, they marched towards him and took the city of Herrenberg on 10 May. Avoiding the advances of the Swabian League to retake Herrenberg, the Württemberg band set up three camps between Böblingen and Sindelfingen. There they formed four units, standing upon the slopes between the cities. Their 18 artillery pieces stood on a hill called Galgenberg, facing the hostile armies. The peasants were overtaken by the League's horse, which encircled and pursued them for kilometres. While the Württemberg band lost approximately 3,000 peasants (estimates range from 2,000 to 9,000), the League lost no more than 40 soldiers.


title: German Peasants' War

text: At Königshofen, on 2 June, peasant commanders Wendel Hipfler and Georg Metzler had set camp outside of town. Upon identifying two squadrons of League and Alliance horse approaching on each flank, now recognized as a dangerous Truchsess strategy, they redeployed the wagon-fort and guns to the hill above the town. Having learned how to protect themselves from a mounted assault, peasants assembled in four massed ranks behind their cannon, but in front of their wagon-fort, intended to protect them from a rear attack. The peasant gunnery fired a salvo at the League advanced horse, which attacked them on the left. The Truchsess' infantry made a frontal assault, but without waiting for his foot soldiers to engage, he also ordered an attack on the peasants from the rear. As the knights hit the rear ranks, panic erupted among the peasants. Hipler and Metzler fled with the master gunners. Two thousand reached the nearby woods, where they re-assembled and mounted some resistance. In the chaos that followed, the peasants and the mounted knights and infantry conducted a pitched battle. By nightfall only 600 peasants remained. The Truchsess ordered his army to search the battlefield, and the soldiers discovered approximately 500 peasants who had feigned death. The battle is also called the Battle of the Turmberg, for a watch-tower on the field.


title: German Peasants' War

text: Freiburg, which was a Habsburg territory, had considerable trouble raising enough conscripts to fight the peasants, and when the city did manage to put a column together and march out to meet them, the peasants simply melted into the forest. After the refusal by the Duke of Baden, Margrave Ernst, to accept the 12 Articles, peasants attacked abbeys in the Black Forest. The Knights Hospitallers at Heitersheim fell to them on 2 May; Haufen to the north also sacked abbeys at Tennenbach and Ettenheimmünster. In early May, Hans Müller arrived with over 8,000 men at Kirzenach, near Freiburg. Several other bands arrived, bringing the total to 18,000, and within a matter of days, the city was encircled and the peasants made plans to lay a siege. On 23 May, the city fathers capitulated and entered into the so-called "Christian Union" with the peasants.


title: German Peasants' War

text: After the peasants took control of Freiburg in Breisgau, Hans Müller took some of the group to assist in the siege at Radolfzell. The rest of the peasants returned to their farms. On 4 June, near Würzburg, Müller and his small group of peasant-soldiers joined with the Franconian farmers of the Hellen Lichten Haufen. Despite this union, the strength of their force was relatively small. At Waldburg-Zeil near Würzburg they met the army of Götz von Berlichingen ("Götz of the Iron Hand"). An imperial knight and experienced soldier, although he had a relatively small force himself, he easily defeated the peasants. In approximately two hours, more than 8,000 peasants were killed.


title: German Peasants' War

text: Several smaller uprisings were also put down. For example, on 23/24 June 1525 in the Battle of Pfeddersheim the rebellious in the Palatine Peasants' War were decisively defeated. By September 1525 all fighting and punitive action had ended. Emperor Charles V and Pope Clement VII thanked the Swabian League for its intervention.


title: German Peasants' War

text: The peasant movement ultimately failed, with cities and nobles making a separate peace with the princely armies that restored the old order in a frequently harsher form, under the nominal control of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, represented in German affairs by his younger brother Ferdinand. The main causes of the failure of the rebellion was the lack of communication between the peasant bands because of territorial divisions, and because of their military inferiority. While Landsknechts, professional soldiers and knights joined the peasants in their efforts (albeit in fewer numbers), the Swabian League had a better grasp of military technology, strategy and experience.


title: German Peasants' War

text: The aftermath of the German Peasants' War led to an overall reduction of rights and freedoms of the peasant class, effectively pushing them out of political life. Certain territories in upper Swabia such as Kempton, Weissenau, and Tyrol saw peasants create territorial assemblies (Landschaft), sit on territorial committees as well as other bodies which dealt with issues that directly affected the peasants like taxation. However the overall goals of change for these peasants, particularly looking through the lens of the Twelve Articles, had failed to come to pass and would remain stagnant, real change coming centuries later.


title: German Peasants' War

text: Friedrich Engels wrote "The Peasant War in Germany" (1850), which opened up the issue of the early stages of German capitalism on later bourgeois "civil society" at the level of peasant economies. Engels' analysis was picked up in the middle 20th century by the French Annales School, and Marxist historians in East Germany and Britain. Using Karl Marx's concept of historical materialism, Engels portrayed the events of 1524–1525 as prefiguring the Revolutions of 1848. He wrote, "Three centuries have passed and many a thing has changed; still the Peasant War is not so impossibly far removed from our present struggle, and the opponents who have to be fought are essentially the same. We shall see the classes and fractions of classes which everywhere betrayed 1848 and 1849 in the role of traitors, though on a lower level of development, already in 1525." Engels ascribed the failure of the revolt to its fundamental conservatism. This led both Marx and Engels to conclude that the communist revolution, when it occurred, would be led not by a peasant army but by an urban proletariat.


title: German Peasants' War

text: Historians disagree on the nature of the revolt and its causes, whether it grew out of the emerging religious controversy centered on Martin Luther; whether a wealthy tier of peasants saw their wealth and rights slipping away, and sought to re-inscribe them in the fabric of society; or whether it was peasant resistance to the emergence of a modernizing, centralizing political state. Historians have tended to categorize it either as an expression of economic problems, or as a theological/political statement against the constraints of feudal society.


title: German Peasants' War

text: After the 1930s, Günter Franz's work on the peasant war dominated interpretations of the uprising. Franz understood the Peasants' War as a political struggle in which social and economic aspects played a minor role. Key to Franz's interpretation is the understanding that peasants had benefited from the economic recovery of the early 16th century and that their grievances, as expressed in such documents as the Twelve Articles, had little or no economic basis. He interpreted the uprising's causes as essentially political, and secondarily economic: the assertions by princely landlords of control over the peasantry through new taxes and the modification of old ones, and the creation of servitude backed up by princely law. For Franz, the defeat thrust the peasants from view for centuries.


title: German Peasants' War

text: The national aspect of the Peasants' Revolt was also utilised by the Nazis. For example, an SS cavalry division (the 8th SS Cavalry Division Florian Geyer) was named after Florian Geyer, a knight who led a peasant unit known as the Black Company.


title: German Peasants' War

text: A new economic interpretation arose in the 1950s and 1960s. This interpretation was informed by economic data on harvests, wages and general financial conditions. It suggested that in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, peasants saw newly achieved economic advantages slipping away, to the benefit of the landed nobility and military groups. The war was thus an effort to wrest these social, economic and political advantages back.


title: German Peasants' War

text: Meanwhile, historians in East Germany engaged in major research projects to support the Marxist viewpoint.


title: German Peasants' War

text: Starting in the 1970s, research benefited from the interest of social and cultural historians. Using sources such as letters, journals, religious tracts, city and town records, demographic information, family and kinship developments, historians challenged long-held assumptions about German peasants and the authoritarian tradition.


title: German Peasants' War

text: This view held that peasant resistance took two forms. The first, spontaneous (or popular) and localized revolt drew on traditional liberties and old law for its legitimacy. In this way, it could be explained as a conservative and traditional effort to recover lost ground. The second was an organized inter-regional revolt that claimed its legitimacy from divine law and found its ideological basis in the Reformation.


title: German Peasants' War

text: Later historians refuted both Franz's view of the origins of the war, and the Marxist view of the course of the war, and both views on the outcome and consequences. One of the most important was Peter Blickle's emphasis on communalism. Although Blickle sees a crisis of feudalism in the latter Middle Ages in southern Germany, he highlighted political, social and economic features that originated in efforts by peasants and their landlords to cope with long term climate, technological, labor and crop changes, particularly the extended agrarian crisis and its drawn-out recovery. For Blickle, the rebellion required a parliamentary tradition in southwestern Germany and the coincidence of a group with significant political, social and economic interest in agricultural production and distribution. These individuals had a great deal to lose.


title: German Peasants' War

text: This view, which asserted that the uprising grew out of the participation of agricultural groups in the economic recovery, was in turn challenged by Scribner, Stalmetz and Bernecke. They claimed that Blickle's analysis was based on a dubious form of the Malthusian principle, and that the peasant economic recovery was significantly limited, both regionally and in its depth, allowing only a few peasants to participate. Blickle and his students later modified their ideas about peasant wealth. A variety of local studies showed that participation was not as broad based as formerly thought.


title: German Peasants' War

text: The new studies of localities and social relationships through the lens of gender and class showed that peasants were able to recover, or even in some cases expand, many of their rights and traditional liberties, to negotiate these in writing, and force their lords to guarantee them.


title: German Peasants' War

text: The course of the war also demonstrated the importance of a congruence of events: the new liberation ideology, the appearance within peasant ranks of charismatic and military-trained men like Müntzer and Gaismair, a set of grievances with specific economic and social origins, a challenged set of political relationships and a communal tradition of political and social discourse.


title: Niall Matter

text: Following recovery from a serious accident sustained while working on an oil rig, Matter chose to pursue a full-time acting career. He received his first significant break in 2007, with a main role in teen drama "The Best Years". Later in the same year, he joined the cast of "Eureka" as bad-boy genius Zane Donovan. In 2009 he had a small supporting role in Zack Snyder's film "Watchmen". He went on to star as Evan Cross in the short-lived 2012 series "". His career subsequently moved away from science fiction, seeing him star in several television movies, as well as joining Canadian series such as "Remedy", "Arctic Air" and "When Calls the Heart".


title: Niall Matter

text: Born in Edmonton, Alberta, of Irish and Russian descent, Matter grew up on his parents' dairy farm. He is a third-generation oil rigger, having worked on the oil rigs in Northern Alberta for eight years. On the recommendation of a school teacher, he enrolled in drama classes at age thirteen, going on to win the Best Actor prize at a provincial drama championship in 1999. However, after getting himself in trouble at age 17, his parents sent him for a three-month stint on the oil rigs to work with his grandfather. He has acknowledged that it was this experience that helped him to focus on his studies and pass his high school exams. He continued to work on the oil rigs alongside his grandfather and brother Trevor until the age of 25, while simultaneously moving to Vancouver and attending Vancouver Film School in pursuit of his long-term goal of an acting career.


title: Niall Matter

text: At the age of 25 Matter had a serious accident while working on the oil rigs, where he was nearly crushed inside the cab of a 17-ton drilling rig. His quad muscle had been detached from his femur, and he nearly lost his right leg. It took six months for him to be fully rehabilitated, having to go through extensive physiotherapy to fully regain his ability to walk. On returning to the oil rigs, he witnessed another accident in which a man lost both his legs. This convinced him that it was time to move on, so he quit, returning to Vancouver, where he lied his way into a bartending job before landing his first acting role.


title: Niall Matter

text: Matter landed his first professional acting job in 2007 playing the lead role of bait shop owner Josh Riley in the Syfy original film "Loch Ness Terror", (broadcast as "Beyond Loch Ness"), which also starred Brian Krause and Don S. Davis. While filming "Loch Ness" he sent an audition tape to the producers of "The Best Years" which led to him gaining the main cast role of bartender, and cocaine addict, Trent Hamilton in the series's first season. He went on to play the role of USAF airman Lieutenant Kemp in a two-episode guest spot on the Syfy television series "Stargate Atlantis".


title: Niall Matter

text: He subsequently auditioned for the Syfy series "Eureka", for what he understood was a one-episode guest star role. By his own admission, he took risks in the audition, playing the character as more flirtatious than he was written. The risks paid off, and he was cast in the role of bad boy genius Zane Donovan, first appearing in the season two episode "E=MC...?". The character would go on to develop a romantic relationship with the town's Deputy Sheriff Jo Lupo played by Erica Cerra. His role was recurring throughout seasons two and three. Season four saw a soft reboot of the show - following a time-traveling incident, the characters return to an alternate timeline, with character dynamics and relationships shifting. This led to Matter's role as Zane being expanded as he became part of the main cast, which continued through to the show's fifth and final season.


title: Niall Matter

text: During this time, he also had guest roles on "Warehouse 13", portraying one half of a married couple alongside "Eureka" castmate Cerra and on NBC's "Fear Itself", playing a lovelorn zombie. In 2009/2010, Matter appeared as a recurring guest star on The CW shows "Melrose Place" (as record producer Rick) and "90210" as Greg, a teacher and subsequent love interest to Erin Silver.


title: Niall Matter

text: In 2009, Matter played a small role in Zack Snyder's "Watchmen" film, portraying one of the Minute Men, Byron Lewis/Mothman. He also appeared in the short film accompanying the 'ultimate cut' DVD release of the film entitled "Under the Hood", a faux documentary on the Minute Men.


title: Niall Matter

text: From 2012 to 2013, Matter played the lead character of Evan Cross, a millionaire inventor searching for anomalies following the brutal killing of his wife by an Albertosaurus, in Space's science fiction series "", a spin-off of the British series "Primeval". In 2013, this role earned him a Constellation Award in the Best Male Performance in a Science Fiction Television Episode category, for his performance in the episode "Truth". He was also nominated for a Leo Award in the Best Lead Performance by a Male in a Dramatic Series category, for the same episode. Due to low ratings, the series was not renewed for a second season.


title: Niall Matter

text: In March 2014, "Deadline Hollywood" announced that he had landed the role of Lieutenant Graden Hales in the TNT commissioned pilot of Marcia Clark's "Guilt by Association" alongside Julia Stiles, which TNT ultimately declined to pick up.


title: Niall Matter

text: He subsequently appeared in guest roles in various American and Canadian series. In CTV's "Motive" he played a man driven to murder in revenge for his sister's death; in the short-lived NBC series "Constantine" he played a father struggling to deal with the supernatural and in the TNT police procedural "Rizzoli and Isles" he portrayed a Detective turned murderer. He also had a recurring role in the third season of the CBC series "Arctic Air" as Tag Cummins, the love interest of the series female protagonist, Krista Ivarson, portrayed by Pascale Hutton. Additionally, Matter appeared in the 'VIP Lounge' online content produced to accompany the show, which was available through the series page on the CBC website.


title: Niall Matter

text: Matter appeared in the 2014 Calgary International Film Festival's closing gala film, dark-comedy/thriller "Ally Was Screaming". He was nominated for a 2015 AMPIA Rosie Award, for his role as Andrew, the abusive estranged husband of the titular Ally. In November 2014 he was announced as one of the Whistler Film Festival's Rising Stars, a program designed to promote the next generation of Western Canadian actors poised for international careers. He also attended the festival's screening of "Ally Was Screaming", alongside his castmates.


title: Niall Matter

text: Matter joined the main cast of Global's medical drama "Remedy" in 2015, for its second season. He played the role of ER Resident Dr Peter Cutler, who develops a romantic relationship with surgeon Dr Melissa Connor, portrayed by Matter's "" castmate Sara Canning.


title: Niall Matter

text: In 2016, he guest starred in two episodes of Bravo's "Girlfriends' Guide to Divorce" as seedy artist Joaquin. In the same year, he starred as surgeon Dr Clay Castleberry in the Hallmark Channel original movie "Stop the Wedding", which was adapted from the novel of the same name by Stephanie Bond. The film's director Anne Wheeler went on to win Best Direction (Television Movie) at the 2017 Leo Awards. He subsequently starred in the W Network film "A Snow Capped Christmas", (broadcast as "Falling for Christmas" in the US on Up), as former ice-hockey player and single father, Luke.


title: Niall Matter

text: 2016 also saw Matter star alongside Erin Krakow in the Hallmark Movies & Mysteries film "Finding Father Christmas", based on the novel by Robin Jones Gunn, as local lawyer/hotelier Ian McAndrick. At the time of broadcast, the film became the most watched premier in the network's history. Matter and Krakow reprised their roles in a sequel to the film, entitled "Engaging Father Christmas" (broadcast as "A Family for the Holidays" in Canada and as "Winter Wedding" in the UK) which premiered on Hallmark Movies & Mysteries in November 2017.


title: Niall Matter

text: He appeared in the 2016 Canadian wrestling-comedy film "Chokeslam" as Tab Hennessy, wrestling manager and boyfriend to the film's protagonist, Sheena 'Smasheena' DeWilde, portrayed by Amanda Crew. Matter attended the film's premiere at the Calgary International Film Festival on October 2, 2016 alongside his castmates. The film won four awards at the 2017 AMPIA Rosie Awards, including Best Director for Robert Cuffley.


title: Niall Matter

text: Matter attended the 2nd annual "Hearties Family Reunion" in December 2016, where it was confirmed he would join the cast of the Hallmark Channel series "When Calls the Heart" for its fourth season, which began airing in January 2017. First appearing in the episode "The Heart of the Community", he portrayed Shane Cantrell, a single father struggling to connect with his son, who later begins a tentative relationship with Faith Carter (Andrea Brooks).


title: Niall Matter

text: 2017 saw Matter make guest appearances in two CW dramas. In May he appeared in the season three episode of "iZombie", "Some Like it Hot Mess", playing the role of nightclub owner Sage Denning. The episode was directed by his "Remedy" castmate Enrico Colantoni. In November he made an appearance on the channel's long-running series "Supernatural", in an episode of the show's thirteenth season, entitled "The Big Empty", playing the character of sadistic shape-shifter, Buddy.


title: Niall Matter

text: In October of the same year, Matter appeared in an episode of the first season of ABC medical drama "The Good Doctor". Based on the South Korean series of the same name, the drama follows the life of autistic-savant surgeon Shaun Murphy (Freddie Highmore). Matter appeared in the episode "Pipes", playing the role of Mark Allen, an expectant father facing life and death decisions over surgery on his unborn child.


title: Niall Matter

text: In late 2017, Matter filmed the role of ice-hockey player Adam in the Hallmark Channel television film "Frozen in Love", which was broadcast in January 2018, as a part of the channel's annual 'Winterfest' programming. The film was developed from an original idea by Matter's co-star, actress Rachael Leigh Cook. Filming took place in British Columbia in November and December 2017. Matter went on to win a Leo Award in the "Best Lead Performance Male, Television Movie" category for his performance in the film.


title: Niall Matter

text: 2018 saw Matter star in the Hallmark Channel original movie "Love at First Dance" as former 'Most Eligible Bachelor' Eric alongside dance instructor Hope,(Becca Tobin), which was broadcast as part of the channel's annual 'June Weddings' event. In July of the same year, Matter starred as college professor Nick Miller in the Hallmark Movies & Mysteries franchise the "Aurora Teagarden Mysteries", which star Candace Cameron Bure, in an installment entitled "The Disappearing Game". He went on to reprise the role in eight further films in the series, broadcast between 2019 and 2021.


title: Niall Matter

text: July 2018 also saw Matter appear in an episode of the first season of ABC series "Take Two", guest starring along with Seamus Dever. The pair played brothers in the episode entitled "Death Becomes Him". He went on to play a supporting role in the 2018 feature film "The Predator", which was released in September 2018.


title: Niall Matter

text: Matter reprised the role of Ian McAndrick in a third film in the Hallmark Movies & Mysteries 'Father Christmas' series, entitled "Marrying Father Christmas" filmed in March 2018 in Vancouver, British Columbia, again costarring Erin Krakow and directed by David Winning. The film premiered in the USA on the Hallmark Movies & Mysteries channel on November 4, 2018, as part of their "Miracles of Christmas" seasonal programming. In the same year he starred in the Lifetime original movie "Christmas Pen Pals" alongside Sarah Drew and Michael Gross, which aired on the channel on December 15, 2018, as part of their "It's a Wonderful Lifetime" seasonal programming.


title: Niall Matter

text: In 2019, Matter was cast in the Hallmark Channel television film "Country at Heart", alongside Jessy Schram, as songwriter Grady Parker. The film aired in October 2020 as part of the Channel's "Fall Harvest" seasonal programming. In August, he joined the cast of Hallmark Channel television film "Christmas at Dollywood" alongside Danica Mckellar and Dolly Parton. Matter played the role of entertainment director Luke Hakman. The film premiered on the channel on December 8, 2019.


title: Niall Matter

text: In November 2020, Matter starred in the Hallmark Channel film "Never Kiss a Man in a Christmas Sweater", alongside Ashley Williams. The film aired as part of the Channel's annual "Countdown to Christmas" programming.


title: Niall Matter

text: In July 2016, he married his girlfriend Sara Bradley in a private ceremony in Hawaii. The couple have two children. Their first child was born in 2016 and their second in 2018.


title: Queens (American TV series)

text: Queens is an American musical drama television series that premiered on October 19, 2021, on ABC. It stars Eve, Naturi Naughton, Nadine Velazquez and Brandy Norwood. In May 2022, the series was canceled after one season.


title: Queens (American TV series)

text: Brianna, Naomi, Jill and Valeria once appeared as the "Nasty Bitches" in the 1990s. Together, the four of them not only turned the world of hip-hop upside down but also achieved legendary status through their music. The four women are now in their forties, unworldly and largely estranged from one another. By reuniting the four, there is now a chance to return to old fame and prestige. But will the former megastars, also known as Professor Sex, Butter Pecan, Jill Da Thrill, and Xplicit Lyrics, manage to achieve this ambitious goal?


title: Queens (American TV series)

text: In January 2021, ABC ordered a pilot for a musical drama titled "Queens" from "Scandal" writer and executive producer, Zahir McGhee. In March 2021, it was announced that Tim Story would direct the pilot episode. On May 14, 2021, "Queens" was given a series order, with an official premiere date of October 19, 2021. On May 6, 2022, ABC canceled the series after one season.


title: Queens (American TV series)

text: In February 2021, Eve was cast to play the role of Brianna. Later that month, Naturi Naughton landed the role of Jill. In March, it was announced that Pepi Sonuga would portray Lauren Rice. On March 8, 2021, Brandy was cast in the role as Naomi. The following day, Nadine Velazquez was cast as Valeria, and the day after that, Taylor Sele was cast as Eric Jones.


title: Queens (American TV series)

text: was released featuring Norwood alongside the cast: Eve, Naughton and Velazquez. A music video, directed by Tim Story, was released on the same day. This was followed on October 18, 2021, by another rap song from the "Queens "soundtrack (“The Introduction”) which was co-written by Nas. A solo song from the soundtrack (“Hear Me”), performed solely by Norwood, was also released worldwide on digital download and streaming sites on the same day. The music producer for the series is Swizz Beatz. To coincide with the second episode of the series, three new tracks were released to all digital download and streaming sites. These were “Belly of the Bitch”, “Heart of Queens” (featuring rapper Cam’ron) and a cover of Miley Cyrus' “Wrecking Ball” performed by Brandy. “Girls Gonna Run That”, rapped by the four leads, was released on November 1, 2021. Another Brandy solo was released on November 8, 2021, a cover of Bill Withers’ “Ain't No Sunshine”. Brandy's "Until My Final Breath" was released on December 13, 2021. On January 3, 2022, "Lady Z Strikes Back (Can't Stop You)" by Brandy and Remy Ma was released.


title: Queens (American TV series)

text: In the United States, the series premiered on October 19, 2021, on ABC. In Canada, the series aired on CTV. The series is also set to premiere on Disney+ via the streaming hub Star as an original series in selected countries. In Latin America, the series will premiere as a Star+ original. In India, Disney+ Hotstar will premiere the show exclusively.


title: Queens (American TV series)

text: The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported a 100% approval rating with an average rating of 8/10, based on 13 critic reviews. Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned a score of 75 out of 100 based on 7 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".


title: Queens (American TV series)

text: "Queens" debuted on October 19, 2021, and reviews were largely positive; Caroline Framke for "Variety" praised the quartet’s musical offering, calling their raps “sharp and distinct […] making clear their talent as both individuals and a swaggering collective”. Liz Shannon Miller for "Collider" enthused the show “may become addictive viewing for longtime fans of the stars, as well as newcomers to the scene.” Joel Keller for "Decider" felt “There’s nothing revolutionary or daring about Queens, […] but, judging by the first episode, it’s well-executed froth that can go in any direction McGhee and his writers feel like going in.”


title: Symposium (Plato)

text: The Symposium (, ) is a philosophical text by Plato, dated . It depicts a friendly contest of extemporaneous speeches given by a group of notable men attending a banquet. The men include the philosopher Socrates, the general and political figure Alcibiades, and the comic playwright Aristophanes. The speeches are to be given in praise of Eros, the god of love and desire.


title: Symposium (Plato)

text: In the "Symposium", Eros is recognized both as erotic love and as a phenomenon capable of inspiring courage, valor, great deeds and works, and vanquishing man's natural fear of death. It is seen as transcending its earthly origins and attaining spiritual heights. This extraordinary elevation of the concept of love raises a question of whether some of the most extreme extents of meaning might be intended as humor or farce. "Eros" is almost always translated as "love", and the English word has its own varieties and ambiguities that provide additional challenges to the effort to understand the "Eros" of ancient Athens.


title: Symposium (Plato)

text: This dialogue is one of Plato's major works, and is appreciated for both its philosophical content and its literary qualities.


title: Symposium (Plato)

text: The "Symposium" is considered a dialogue – a form used by Plato in more than 30 works – but in fact, it is predominantly a series of essay-like speeches from differing points of view. So dialogue plays a smaller role in the "Symposium" than it does in Plato's other dialogues. Socrates is renowned for his dialectic approach to knowledge (often referred to as the Socratic Method), which involves posing questions that encourage others to think deeply about what they care about and articulate their ideas. In the "Symposium", the dialectic exists among the speeches: in seeing how the ideas conflict from speech-to-speech, and in the effort to resolve the contradictions and see the philosophy that underlies them all.


title: Symposium (Plato)

text: The "Symposium" is, like all of Plato's dialogues, fiction. The characters and the settings are to some degree based on history, but they are not reports of events that actually occurred or words that were actually spoken. There is no reason to doubt that they were composed entirely by Plato. The reader, understanding that Plato was not governed by the historical record, can read the "Symposium", and ask why the author, Plato, arranged the story the way he did, and what he meant by including the various aspects of setting, composition, characters, and theme, etc.


title: Symposium (Plato)

text: For a very long time, it was widely believed that Socrates was presented in the dialogues by his admiring disciple, Plato, as an ideal philosopher and ideal human being. It was thought that what Socrates said was what Plato agreed with or approved of. Then in the late 20th century, another interpretation began to challenge that idea. This new idea considers that the "Symposium" is intended to criticize Socrates and his philosophy, and to reject certain aspects of his behavior. It also considers that Socratic philosophy may have lost touch with the actual individual as it devoted itself to abstract principles.


title: Symposium (Plato)

text: The above view, attributed to Martha Nussbaum, can, however, be challenged in favor of the traditional one. The portrayal of Socrates in the "Symposium" (for instance his refusal to give in to Alcibiades' sexual advances) is consistent with the account of Socrates put forward by Xenophon and the theories that Socrates defends throughout the Platonic corpus. Plato shows off his master as a man of high moral standards, unstirred by baser urges and fully committed to the study and practice of proper self-government in both individuals and communities (the so-called "royal science"). The dialogue's ending contrasts Socrates' intellectual and emotional self-mastery with Alcibiades' debauchery and lack of moderation to explain the latter's reckless political career, disastrous military campaigns, and eventual demise. Alcibiades is corrupted by his physical beauty and its advantages; he ultimately fails to ascend to the Form of Beauty through philosophy.


title: Symposium (Plato)

text: One critic, James Arieti, considers that the "Symposium" resembles a drama, with emotional and dramatic events occurring especially when Alcibiades crashes the banquet. Arieti suggests that it should be studied more as a drama, with a focus on character and actions, and less as an exploration of philosophical ideas. This suggests that the characters speak, as in a play, not as the author, but as themselves. This theory, Arieti has found, reveals how much each of the speakers of the "Symposium" resembles the god, Eros, that they each are describing. It may be Plato's point to suggest that when humankind talks about god, they are drawn towards creating that god in their own image.


title: Symposium (Plato)

text: Andrew Dalby considers the opening pages of the "Symposium" the best depiction in any ancient Greek source of the way texts are transmitted by oral tradition without writing. It shows how an oral text may have no simple origin, and how it can be passed along by repeated tellings, and by different narrators, and how it can be sometimes verified, and sometimes corrupted. The story of the symposium is being told by Apollodorus to his friend. Apollodorus was not himself at the banquet, but heard the story from Aristodemus, a man who was there. Also, Apollodorus was able to confirm parts of the story with Socrates himself, who was one of the speakers at the banquet. A story that Socrates narrates, when it is his turn to speak, was told to Socrates by a woman named Diotima, a philosopher and a priestess.


title: Symposium (Plato)

text: The event depicted in the "Symposium" is a banquet attended by a group of men, who have come to the symposium, which was, in ancient Greece, a traditional part of the same banquet that took place after the meal, when drinking for pleasure was accompanied by music, dancing, recitals, or conversation. The setting means that the participants would be drinking wine, meaning that the men might be induced to say things they would not say elsewhere or when sober. They might speak more frankly, or take more risks, or else be prone to hubris—they might even be inspired to make speeches that are particularly heartfelt and noble. This is, of course, excluding Socrates, as Alcibiades claims in his speech that "no one has ever seen Socrates drunk" (C. Gill, p. 61). Implying that these are subjects which Socrates holds personally dear regardless, as evident elsewhere in the book as well, like with his account of the conversation between himself and Diotima of Mantinea.


title: Symposium (Plato)

text: Eryximachus has challenged the men to deliver, each, in turn, an encomium—in this case, a speech in praise of Love (Eros). Though other participants comply with this challenge, Socrates notably refuses to participate in such an act of praise and instead takes a very different approach to the topic. The party takes place at the house of the tragedian Agathon in Athens.


title: Symposium (Plato)

text: It is considered that the work was written no earlier than 385 BCE, and the party to which it makes reference has been fixed in 416 BCE, the year in which the host Agathon had the dramatic triumph mentioned in the text. The disastrous expedition to Syracuse, of which Alcibiades was a commander, took place the following year, after which Alcibiades deserted to Sparta, Athens' archenemy.


title: Symposium (Plato)

text: Walter Hamilton remarks that Plato takes care to portray Alcibiades and Socrates and their relationship in a way that makes it clear that Socrates had not been a bad influence on Alcibiades. Plato does this to free his teacher from the guilt of corrupting the minds of prominent youths, which had, in fact, earned Socrates the death sentence in 399 BC.


title: Symposium (Plato)

text: Aristophanes' comedy, "The Frogs" (405 BC), attacks the new tragedy of Agathon and Euripides, and opposes it to the old tragedy of Aeschylus. In "The Frogs", Dionysus, the god of theatre and wine, descends into Hades and observes a heated dispute between Aeschylus and Euripides over who is the best in tragedy. Dionysus is engaged to be the judge, and decides the outcome, not based on the merits of the two tragedians, but based on their political stance regarding the political figure, Alcibiades. Since Aeschylus prefers Alcibiades, Dionysus declares Aeschylus the winner.


title: Symposium (Plato)

text: That contest provides the basic structure on which the "Symposium" is modeled as a kind of sequel: In the "Symposium", Agathon has just celebrated a victory the day before and is now hosting another kind of debate, this time it is between a tragedian, a comic poet, and Socrates. At the beginning of the "Symposium", Agathon asserts that "Dionysus will be the judge", and Dionysus is, though Alcibiades performs as a surrogate for the god. So the character, Alcibiades, who was the deciding factor in the debate in "The Frogs", becomes the judge in the "Symposium", and he now rules in favor of Socrates, who had been attacked by Aristophanes in "The Clouds". The Symposium is a response to "The Frogs", and shows Socrates winning not only over Aristophanes, who was the author of both "The Frogs", and "The Clouds", but also over the tragic poet who was portrayed in that comedy as the victor.


title: Symposium (Plato)

text: The story of the banquet is narrated by Apollodorus, but before the narration proper begins, it is shown that Apollodorus is telling the story to a friend of his that is not named, and also that the story of this banquet has been told before by others, as well as previously by Apollodorus himself. This section previews the story of the banquet, letting the reader know what to expect, and it provides information regarding the context and the date. The banquet was hosted by the poet Agathon to celebrate his first victory in a dramatic competition: the Dionysia of 416 BCE. Apollodorus was not present at the event, which occurred when he was a boy, but he heard the story from Aristodemus, who was present. Apollodorus later checked parts of the story with Socrates, who was also there. In this brief introductory passage, it is shown that the narrator, Apollodorus, has a reputation for being somewhat mad, that he is a passionate follower of Socrates, and that he spends his days either listening to Socrates or else telling others of what he has learned from Socrates. The story, as told by Apollodorus, then moves to the banquet at Agathon's home, where Agathon challenges each of the men to speak in praise of the Greek god, Eros.


title: Symposium (Plato)

text: Socrates is late to arrive because he became lost in thought on the way. When they are done eating, Eryximachus takes the suggestion made by Phaedrus, that they should all make a speech in praise of Eros, the god of love and desire. It will be a competition of speeches to be judged by Dionysus. It is anticipated that the speeches will ultimately be bested by Socrates, who speaks last.


title: Symposium (Plato)

text: Phaedrus starts by pointing out that Eros is the oldest of the gods, and that Eros promotes virtue in people. Next, Pausanias contrasts common desire with a "heavenly" love between an older man and a young man (before the age when his beard starts to grow), in which the two exchange sexual pleasure while the older man imparts wisdom to the younger one. He distinguishes between this virtuous love, and the love of an older man for a young (immature) boy, which he says should be forbidden on the grounds that love should be based on qualities of intelligence and virtue that are not yet part of a boy's makeup and may not develop. Eryximachus has the next speech (although he has switched with Aristophanes) and suggests that Eros encourages "sophrosyne", or soundness of mind and character, and is not only about human behavior, but also occurs in music, medicine, and many other areas of life.


title: Symposium (Plato)

text: The fourth speech is from Aristophanes, who tells a comic, fantastical story about how humans were at one time two people conjoined, but this was seen as threatening to the gods, so Zeus cut everyone in half just like fish is cut in two parts. The irony in his storytelling is obvious (he praises the "confidence, courage and manliness" of males searching for males "and there is good evidence for this in the fact that only males of this type, when they are grown up, prove to be real men in politics" – which is highly ironical for such a critic of the times' politicians as Aristophanes himself).


title: Symposium (Plato)

text: Love is the desire we have to find our other half, in order to become whole. Agathon follows Aristophanes, and his speech sees Eros as youthful, beautiful, and wise; and as the source of all human virtues.


title: Symposium (Plato)

text: Before Socrates gives his speech he asks some questions of Agathon regarding the nature of love. Socrates then relates a story he was told by a wise woman called Diotima. According to her, Eros is not a god but is a spirit that mediates between humans and their objects of desire. Love itself is not wise or beautiful but is the desire for those things. Love is expressed through propagation and reproduction: either physical love or the exchanging and reproducing of ideas. The greatest knowledge, Diotima says, is knowledge of the "form of beauty", which humans must try to achieve.


title: Symposium (Plato)

text: When Socrates is nearly done, Alcibiades crashes in, terribly drunk, and delivers an encomium to Socrates himself. No matter how hard he has tried, he says, he has never been able to seduce Socrates, because Socrates has no interest in physical pleasure. Despite this speech, Agathon lies down next to Socrates, much to Alcibiades' chagrin. The party becomes wild and drunken, with the symposium coming to an end. Many of the main characters take the opportunity to depart and return home. Aristodemus goes to sleep. When he wakes up the next morning and prepares to leave the house, Socrates is still awake, proclaiming to Agathon and Aristophanes that a skillful playwright should be able to write comedy as well as tragedy (223d). When Agathon and Aristophanes fall asleep, Socrates rises up and walks to the Lyceum to wash and tend to his daily business as usual, not going home to sleep until that evening (223d).


title: Symposium (Plato)

text: Phaedrus opens by citing Hesiod, Acusilaus and Parmenides for the claim that Eros is the oldest of the gods. He confers great benefits, inspiring a lover to earn the admiration of his beloved, for example by showing bravery on the battlefield, since nothing shames a man more than to be seen by his beloved committing an inglorious act (178d–179b). "A handful of such men, fighting side by side, would defeat practically the whole world." Lovers sometimes sacrifice their lives for their beloved. As evidence for this, he mentions some mythological heroes and lovers. Even Achilles, who was the beloved of Patroclus, sacrificed himself to avenge his lover, and Alcestis was willing to die for her husband Admetus.


title: Symposium (Plato)

text: Phaedrus concludes his short speech in proper rhetorical fashion, reiterating his statements that love is one of the most ancient gods, the most honored, the most powerful in helping men gain honor and blessedness – and sacrificing one's self for love will result in rewards from the gods.


title: Symposium (Plato)

text: Pausanias, the legal expert of the group, introduces a distinction between a nobler and a baser kind of love, which anticipates Socrates' discourse. The base lover is in search of sexual gratification, and his objects are women and boys. He is inspired by "Aphrodite Pandemos" (Aphrodite common to the whole city). The noble lover directs his affection towards young men, establishing lifelong relationships, productive of the benefits described by Phaedrus. This love is related to "Aphrodite Urania" (Heavenly Aphrodite) and is based on honoring one's partner's intelligence and wisdom.


title: Symposium (Plato)

text: He then analyses the attitudes of different city-states relative to homosexuality. The first distinction he makes is between the cities that clearly establish what is and what is not admitted, and those that are not so explicitly clear, like Athens. In the first group there are cities favorable to homosexuality, like Elis, Boeotia and Sparta, or unfavorable to it like Ionia and Persia. The case of Athens is analyzed with many examples of what would be acceptable and what would not, and at the end, he makes the assertion that Athens' code of behavior favors the nobler type of love and discourages the baser.


title: Symposium (Plato)

text: Eryximachus speaks next, though it is Aristophanes' turn, as the latter has not recovered from his hiccups enough to take his place in the sequence. First Eryximachus starts out by claiming that love affects everything in the universe, including plants and animals, believing that once love is attained it should be protected. The god of Love not only directs everything on the human plane, but also on the divine (186b). Two forms of love occur in the human body – one is healthy, the other unhealthy (186bc). Love might be capable of curing the diseased. Love governs medicine, music, and astronomy (187a), and regulates hot and cold and wet and dry, which when in balance result in health (188a). Eryximachus here evokes the theory of the humor. He concludes: "Love as a whole has ... total ... power ... and is the source of all happiness. It enables us to associate, and be friends, with each other and with the gods" (188d Transl. Gill). He comes across as someone who cannot resist the temptation to praise his own profession: "a good practitioner knows how to treat the body and how to transform its desires" (186d).


title: Symposium (Plato)

text: Walter Hamilton regards Aristophanes' speech, which comes next, as one of Plato's most brilliant literary achievements.


title: Symposium (Plato)

text: The speech has become a focus of subsequent scholarly debate - it is seen sometimes as mere comic relief, and sometimes as satire: the creation myth Aristophanes puts forward to account for sexuality may be read as poking fun at the myths concerning the origins of humanity, numerous in classical Greek mythology.


title: Symposium (Plato)

text: Before starting his speech, Aristophanes warns the group that his eulogy to love may be more absurd than funny. His speech gives an explanation of why people in love say they feel "whole" when they have found their love-partner. He begins by explaining that people must understand human nature before they can interpret the origins of love and how it affects their own times. This is, he says because in primal times people had doubled bodies, with faces and limbs turned away from one another. As spherical creatures who wheeled around like clowns doing cartwheels (190a), these original people were very powerful. There were three sexes: the all-male, the all-female, and the "androgynous" (half male, half female). The males were said to have descended from the sun, the females from the earth and the androgynous couples from the moon. These creatures tried to scale the heights of Olympus and planned to set upon the gods (190b-c). Zeus thought about blasting them with thunderbolts but did not want to deprive himself of their devotions and offerings, so he decided to cripple them by chopping them in half, in effect separating each entity's two bodies.


title: Symposium (Plato)

text: Ever since that time, people run around saying they are looking for their other half because they are really trying to recover their primal nature. The women who were separated from women run after their own kind - whence lesbians. The men split from other men also run after their own kind and love being embraced by other men (191e). Those that come from original androgynous beings are the men and women who engage in heterosexual love. Aristophanes says some people think homosexuals are shameless, but he thinks they are the bravest, most manly of all, as evidenced by the facts: only homosexuals grow up to be politicians (192a), and many heterosexuals are adulterous and unfaithful (191e). Aristophanes then claims that when two people who were separated from each other find each other, they never again want to be separated (192c). This feeling is like a riddle, and cannot be explained. Aristophanes ends on a cautionary note. He says that men should fear the gods, and not neglect to worship them, lest they wield the ax again and we have to go about hopping on one leg, split apart once again (193a). If humans work with the god of Love, they will escape this fate and instead find wholeness.


title: Symposium (Plato)

text: His speech may be regarded as self-consciously poetic and rhetorical, composed in the way of the sophists, gently mocked by Socrates.


title: Symposium (Plato)

text: Agathon complains that the previous speakers have made the mistake of congratulating mankind on the blessings of love, failing to give due praise to the god himself (194e). He says that love is the youngest of the gods and is an enemy of old age (195b). He says that the god of love shuns the very sight of senility and clings to youth. Agathon says love is dainty and likes to tiptoe through the flowers and never settles where there is no "bud to bloom" (196b). It would seem that none of the characters at the party, with the possible exception of Agathon himself, would be candidates for love's companionship. Socrates, probably the oldest member of the party, seems certain to be ruled out. He also implies that love creates justice, moderation, courage, and wisdom. These are the cardinal virtues in ancient Greece. Although devoid of philosophical content, the speech Plato puts in the mouth of Agathon is a beautiful formal one, and Agathon contributes to the Platonic love theory with the idea that the object of love is beauty.


title: Symposium (Plato)

text: Socrates turns politely to Agathon and, after expressing admiration for his speech, asks whether he could examine his positions further. What follows is a series of questions and answers, typical of Plato's earlier dialogues, featuring Socrates' famous method of dialectics. First, he asks Agathon whether it is reasonable for someone to desire what they already have, like for example someone who is in perfect health to wish he were healthy (200a-e). Agathon agrees with Socrates that this would be irrational, but is quickly reminded of his own definition of Love's true desires: youth and beauty. Putting the two together then, for Love to desire youth he must not have it himself, thus making him old, and for him to desire beauty, he himself must be ugly. Agathon has no choice but to agree.


title: Symposium (Plato)

text: After this exchange, Socrates switches to storytelling, a departure from the earlier dialogues where he is mostly heard refuting his opponent's arguments through rational debating. Socrates tells of a conversation he had with a woman from Mantinea, called Diotima, who plays the same inquiring/instructing role that Socrates played with Agathon.


title: Symposium (Plato)

text: Diotima first explains that Love is neither a god, as was previously claimed by the other guests, nor a mortal but a daemon, a spirit halfway between god and man, who was born during a banquet thrown by the gods to celebrate the birth of Aphrodite. One of the guests was Porus, the god of resource or plenty, who was passed out from drinking too much nectar, and it so happened that another deity arrived, Poverty, who came to the banquet to beg, and upon seeing Porus lying unconscious took the chance to sleep with him, conceiving a child in the process: Love. Having been born at Aphrodite's birthday party, he became her follower and servant, but through his real origins Love acquired a kind of double nature. From his mother, Love became poor, ugly, and with no place to sleep (203c-d), while from his father he inherited the knowledge of beauty, as well as the cunningness to pursue it. Being of an intermediary nature, Love is also halfway between wisdom and ignorance, knowing just enough to understand his ignorance and try to overcome it. Beauty then is the perennial philosopher, the "lover of wisdom" (the Greek word "philia" being one of the four words for love).


title: Symposium (Plato)

text: After describing Love's origins, that provide clues to its nature, Diotima asks Socrates why is it, as he had previously agreed, that love is always that "of beautiful things" (204b). For if love affects everyone indiscriminately, then why is it that only some appear to pursue beauty throughout their lives? Socrates does not have the answer and so Diotima reveals it: Beauty is not the end but the means to something greater, the achievement of a certain reproduction and birth (206c), the only claim that mortals can have on immortality. This is true for men as well as animals that seek an appropriate place to give birth, preferring to roam in pain until they find it. Some men are pregnant in body alone and, just like animals, enjoy the company of women with whom they can have children that will pass on their existence. Others are pregnant in both body and mind, and instead of children they carry wisdom, virtue, and above all, the art of civic order (209a). Beauty is also their guide, but it will be towards the knowledge needed to accomplish their spiritual births.


title: Symposium (Plato)

text: In conclusion, Diotima gives Socrates a guide on how a man of this class should be brought up from a young age. First, he should start by loving a particular body he finds beautiful, but as time goes by, he will relax his passion and pass to the love of all bodies. From this point, he will pass to the love of beautiful minds, and then to that of knowledge. Finally, he will reach the ultimate goal, which is to witness beauty in itself, rather than representations (211a-b), the true Form of Beauty in Platonic terms.


title: Symposium (Plato)

text: This speech, in the interpretation of Marsilio Ficino in "De Amore" (1484), is the origin of the concept of Platonic love.


title: Symposium (Plato)

text: Entering upon the scene late and inebriated, Alcibiades pays tribute to Socrates. Like Agathon and Aristophanes, Alcibiades is a historical person from ancient Athens. A year after the events of the "Symposium", his political enemies would drive him to flee Athens under fear of being sentenced to death for sacrilege and turn traitor to the Spartans. By his own admission, he is very handsome.


title: Symposium (Plato)

text: Finding himself seated on a couch with Socrates and Agathon, Alcibiades exclaims that Socrates, again, has managed to sit next to the most handsome man in the room. Socrates asks Agathon to protect him from the jealous rage of Alcibiades, asking Alcibiades to forgive him (213d). Wondering why everyone seems sober, Alcibiades is informed of the night's agreement (213e, c); after Socrates was ending his drunken ramblings, Alcibiades hopes that no one will believe a word Socrates was talking about, Alcibiades proposes to offer an encomium to Socrates (214c-e).


title: Symposium (Plato)

text: Alcibiades begins by comparing Socrates to a statue of Silenus; the statue is ugly and hollow, and inside it is full of tiny golden statues of the gods (215a-b). Alcibiades then compares Socrates to a satyr. Satyrs were often portrayed with the sexual appetite, manners, and features of wild beasts, and often with a large erection.


title: Symposium (Plato)

text: Alcibiades states that when he hears Socrates speak, he feels overwhelmed. The words of Socrates are the only ones to have ever upset him so deeply that his soul started to realize that his aristocratic life was no better than a slave's (215e). Socrates is the only man who has ever made Alcibiades feel shame (216b). Yet all this is the least of it (216c) – Alcibiades was intrigued to allow himself to follow Socrates (216d). Most people, he continues, do not know what Socrates is like on the inside:


title: Symposium (Plato)

text: He was deeply curious towards Socrates' intelligence and wisdom, but Alcibiades really wanted him sexually at the time that Socrates, a man that gave only platonic love to everyone he has encountered, gave up teaching everything he knew towards Alcibiades because of his pride, lust, and immoral conduct upon him(217a). Yet Socrates made no move, and Alcibiades began to pursue Socrates "as if I were the lover and he my young prey!" (217c). When Socrates continually rebuffed him, Alcibiades began to fantasize a view towards Socrates as the only true and worthy lover he had ever had. So he told Socrates that it seemed to him now that nothing could be more important than becoming the best man he could be, and Socrates was best fit to help him reach that aim (218c-d). Socrates responded that if he did have this power, why would he exchange his true (inner) beauty for the image of beauty that Alcibiades would provide. Furthermore, Alcibiades was wrong and Socrates knows there is no use in him (218e–219a). Alcibiades spent the night sleeping beside Socrates yet, in his deep humiliation, Alcibiades made no sexual attempt (219b-d).


title: Symposium (Plato)

text: In his speech, Alcibiades goes on to describe Socrates' virtues, his incomparable valor in battle, his immunity to cold or fear. On one occasion he even saved Alcibiades' life and then refused to accept honors for it (219e–221c). Socrates, he concludes, is unique in his ideas and accomplishments, unrivaled by any man from the past or present (221c).


title: Orlistat

text: Orlistat, sold under the brand name Xenical among others, is a medication used to treat obesity. Its primary function is preventing the absorption of fats from the human diet by acting as a lipase inhibitor, thereby reducing caloric intake. It is intended for use in conjunction with a healthcare provider-supervised reduced-calorie diet.


title: Orlistat

text: Orlistat is the saturated derivative of lipstatin, a potent natural inhibitor of pancreatic lipases isolated from the bacterium "Streptomyces toxytricini". However, due to its relative simplicity and stability, orlistat was chosen over lipstatin for development as an anti-obesity drug.


title: Orlistat

text: The effectiveness of orlistat in promoting weight loss is definite but modest. Pooled data from clinical trials suggest that people given orlistat in addition to lifestyle modifications, such as diet and exercise, lose about more than those not taking the drug over the course of a year. Orlistat also modestly reduces blood pressure and appears to prevent the onset of type 2 diabetes, whether from the weight loss itself or other effects. It reduces the incidence of diabetes type II in people who are obese around the same amount that lifestyle changes do.


title: Orlistat

text: Benefits aside, however, orlistat is noted for its gastrointestinal side effects (sometimes referred to as "treatment effects"), which can include steatorrhea (oily, loose stools). They decrease with time, however, and are the most frequently reported adverse effects of the drug. In Australia, the United States and the European Union, orlistat is available for sale without a prescription. Over-the-counter approval was controversial in the United States, with consumer advocacy group Public Citizen repeatedly opposing it on safety and efficacy grounds. Generic formulations of orlistat are available in some countries. In Australia it has been listed as an S3 medication, available from a pharmacist without a prescription, since 2000.


title: Orlistat

text: Orlistat is used for the treatment of obesity. The amount of weight loss achieved with orlistat varies. In one-year clinical trials, between 35.5% and 54.8% of subjects achieved a 5% or greater decrease in body mass, although not all of this mass was necessarily fat. Between 16.4% and 24.8% achieved at least a 10% decrease in body fat. After orlistat was stopped, a significant number of subjects regained weight—up to 35% of the weight they had lost. It reduces the incidence of diabetes type II in people who are obese around the same amount that lifestyle changes do. Long-term use of orlistat also leads to a very modest reduction in blood pressure (mean reductions of 2.5 and 1.9 mmHg in systolic and diastolic blood pressure respectively).


title: Orlistat

text: The primary side effects of the drug are gastrointestinal-related, and include steatorrhea (oily, loose stools with excessive flatus due to unabsorbed fats reaching the large intestine), fecal incontinence and frequent or urgent bowel movements. To minimize these effects, foods with high fat content should be avoided; the manufacturer advises consumers to follow a low-fat, reduced-calorie diet. Oily stools and flatulence can be controlled by reducing the dietary fat content to somewhere in the region of 15 grams per meal. The manual for Alli makes it clear that orlistat treatment involves aversion therapy, encouraging the user to associate eating fat with unpleasant treatment effects.


title: Orlistat

text: Side effects are most severe when beginning therapy and may decrease in frequency with time; It has also been suggested that the decrease in side effects over time may be associated with long-term compliance with a low-fat diet.


title: Orlistat

text: On 26 May 2010, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a revised label for Xenical to include new safety information about cases of severe liver injury that have been reported rarely with the use of this medication.


title: Orlistat

text: An analysis of over 900 orlistat users in Ontario showed that their rate of acute kidney injury was more than triple that of non-users.


title: Orlistat

text: A study from 2013 looked at 94,695 participants receiving orlistat in the UK between 1999 and 2011. The study showed no evidence of an increased risk of liver injury during treatment. They concluded:


title: Orlistat

text: Despite a higher incidence of breast cancer amongst those taking orlistat in early, pooled clinical trial data—the analysis of which delayed FDA review of orlistat—a two-year study published in 1999 found similar rates between orlistat and placebo (0.54% versus 0.51%), and evidence that tumors predated treatment in 3 of the 4 participants who had them. There is evidence from an "in vitro" study to suggest that the introduction of specific varied preparations containing orlistat, namely the concurrent administration of orlistat and the monoclonal antibody trastuzumab, can induce cell death in breast cancer cells and block their growth.


title: Orlistat

text: Fecal fat excretion promotes colon carcinogenesis. In 2006 the results of 30-day study were published indicating that orlistat at a dosage of 200 mg/kg chow administered to rats consuming a high-fat chow and receiving two 25 mg/kg doses of the potent carcinogen 1,2-dimethylhydrazine produced significantly higher numbers of aberrant crypt foci (ACF) colon lesions than did the carcinogen plus high-fat chow without orlistat. ACF lesions are believed to be one of the earliest precursors of colon cancer.


title: Orlistat

text: Absorption of fat-soluble vitamins and other fat-soluble nutrients is inhibited by the use of orlistat.


title: Orlistat

text: Orlistat may reduce plasma levels of ciclosporin (also known as "cyclosporin" or "cyclosporine", trade names Sandimmune, Gengraf, Neoral, etc.), an immunosuppressive drug frequently used to prevent transplant rejection; the two drugs should therefore not be administered concomitantly. Orlistat can also impair absorption of the antiarrhythmic amiodarone. The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has suggested the possibility that orlistat could reduce the absorption of antiretroviral HIV medications.


title: Orlistat

text: Orlistat works by inhibiting gastric and pancreatic lipases, the enzymes that break down triglycerides in the intestine. When lipase activity is blocked, triglycerides from the diet are not hydrolyzed into absorbable free fatty acids, and instead are excreted unchanged. Only trace amounts of orlistat are absorbed systemically; the primary effect is local lipase inhibition within the GI tract after an oral dose. The primary route of elimination is through the feces.


title: Orlistat

text: Orlistat was also found to inhibit the thioesterase domain of fatty acid synthase (FAS), an enzyme involved in the proliferation of cancer cells but not normal cells. However, potential side effects of orlistat, such as inhibition of other cellular off-targets or poor bioavailability, might hamper its application as an effective antitumor agent. One profiling study undertook a chemical proteomics approach to look for new cellular targets of orlistat, including its off-targets. Orlistat also shows potential activity against the "Trypanosoma brucei" parasite.


title: Orlistat

text: In Australia and New Zealand, orlistat is available as a "Pharmacist Only Medicine. In 2007, the Committee decided to keep orlistat as a Schedule 3 drug, but withdrew its authorization of direct-to-consumer Xenical advertising, stating this "increased pressure on pharmacists to provide orlistat to consumers...this in turn had the potential to result in inappropriate patterns of use".


title: Orlistat

text: On 23 January 2006, a U.S. Food and Drug Administration advisory panel voted 11 to 3 to recommend the approval of an OTC formulation of orlistat, to be sold under the brand name Alli by GlaxoSmithKline. Approval was granted on 7 February 2007, and Alli became the first weight loss drug officially sanctioned by the U.S. government for over-the-counter use.


title: Orlistat

text: Alli became available in the U.S. in June 2007. It is sold as 60 mg capsules—half the dosage of prescription orlistat.


title: Orlistat

text: On 21 January 2009, the European Medicines Agency granted approval for the sale of orlistat without a prescription.


title: Orlistat

text: At least since September 2017, tablets with 60 mg orlistat can be freely sold in Swiss drugstores. Formulations with 120 mg per tablet require a prescription, but can be sold without one in pharmacies under an exemption rule, which is based on a list of easily diagnosable diseases.


title: Orlistat

text: U.S. patent protection for Xenical, originally to end on 18 June 2004, was extended by five years (until 2009) by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The extension was granted on 20 July 2002, and expired on 18 June 2009.


title: Orlistat

text: Generic orlistat is available in Iran under the brand Venustat manufactured by Aburaihan Pharmaceutical co., in India, under the brands Orlean (Eris), Vyfat, Olistat, Obelit, Orlica and Reeshape. In Russia, orlistat is available under the brand names Xenical (Hoffmann–La Roche), Orsoten/Orsoten Slim (KRKA d. d.) and Xenalten (OBL-Pharm). In Austria, orlistat is available under the brand name Slimox. In Malaysia, orlistat is available under the brand name Cuvarlix and is marketed by Pharmaniaga. In the Philippines orlistat is available under the brand name RedoXfat Plus manufactured by ATC Healthcare


title: Orlistat

text: At times, such as in spring 2012, orlistat has come into short supply, with consequent price increases because of nonavailability of one of the drug's components.


title: Orlistat

text: In January 2010, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued an alert stating that some counterfeit versions of Alli sold over the Internet contain no orlistat, and instead contain the weight-loss drug sibutramine. The concentration of sibutramine in these counterfeit products is at least twice the amount recommended for weight loss.


title: Saitama Prefecture

text: Saitama is the capital and largest city of Saitama Prefecture, with other major cities including Kawaguchi, Kawagoe, and Tokorozawa. Saitama Prefecture is part of the Greater Tokyo Area, the most populous metropolitan area in the world, and many of its cities are described as bedroom communities and suburbs of Tokyo with many residents commuting into the city each day.


title: Saitama Prefecture

text: According to "Sendai Kuji Hongi" ("Kujiki"), Chichibu was one of 137 provinces during the reign of Emperor Sujin. Chichibu Province was in western Saitama.


title: Saitama Prefecture

text: The area that would become Saitama Prefecture in the 19th century is part of Musashi Province in the Ritsuryō (or ryō-system; ritsu stands for the penal code, ryō for the administrative code) Imperial administration of antiquity (see Provinces of Japan and the 5 (go) capital area provinces (ki)/7 (shichi) circuits (dō) system) which was nominally revived in the Meiji restoration but has lost much of its administrative function since the Middle Ages. Saitama District "(Saitama-gun)" was one of Musashi's 21 ritsuryō districts.


title: Saitama Prefecture

text: In the fifth year of the Keiun era (708), deposits of copper were reported to have been found in the Chichibu District of what is now Saitama Prefecture.


title: Saitama Prefecture

text: The Saitama area was historically known as a fertile agricultural region which produced much of the food for the Kantō region. During the Edo period, many "fudai daimyōs" ruled small domains within the Saitama area.


title: Saitama Prefecture

text: At the end of the early modern Edo period, large parts of present-day Saitama were part of the shogunate domain ("baku-ryō") or the often subsumed holdings of smaller vassals "(hatamoto-ryō)" around Edo, major areas were part of the fiefdoms "(-han)" Kawagoe (ruled by Matsui/Matsudaira, "fudai"), Oshi (Okudaira-Matsudaira, "fudai") and Iwatsuki (Ōoka, "fudai"); few territories were held by domains seated in other provinces.


title: Saitama Prefecture

text: In the Meiji Restoration, after being briefly united with other rural shogunate territories in Musashi under Musashi governors "(Musashi chikenji)", many former shogunate/hatamoto territories in Northwestern Musashi became Ōmiya Prefecture (大宮県, "Ōmiya-ken"), soon renamed to Urawa (浦和県, "-ken") in 1868/69, with some territories held by other short-lived prefectures (/later mainly Gunma and /later mainly Shizuoka, Kanagawa and Tokyo). In the replacement of "-han" with "-ken", the associated territorial consolidation (removal of feudal era ex-/enclaves) and first wave of prefectural mergers in 1871/72, Oshi and Iwatsuki prefectures were merged into Urawa; after consolidation, it consisted of the entire Saitama District and Northern parts of Adachi and Katsushika (But at that time, "major and minor districts", 大区, "daiku" and 小区, "shōku", served as administrative subdivisions) and was renamed to Saitama. The government of the prefecture was to be set up in Iwatsuki Town, Saitama District in November 1871 by the Dajōkan ordinance to set up the prefecture, but ultimately remained in Urawa's previous prefectural government seat in Urawa Town in Adachi District.


title: Saitama Prefecture

text: Kawagoe Prefecture was consolidated with other territories into (入間県, "Iruma-ken"; government seat unchanged from Kawagoe domain/prefecture: Kawagoe Town, Iruma District) which consisted of 13 districts of Musashi in the Western part of present-day Saitama. In 1873, Iruma was merged with Gunma (capital: Takasaki Town, Gunma District) to become Kumagaya (capital: Kumagaya Town, Ōsato District). But Kumagaya was split up again in 1876: The area of Kōzuke province came back as a second Gunma prefecture, and the territories in Musashi province/former Iruma prefecture were merged into Saitama. Except for the transfer of a few municipalities to Tokyo in the 1890s/1900s (see below) and several smaller, 20th century changes through cross-prefectural municipal mergers or transfers of neighbourhoods, Saitama had reached its present extent.


title: Saitama Prefecture

text: In the modern reactivation of districts as administrative unit in 1878/79, Saitama was subdivided into originally 18 districts based on the ancient divisions of Musashi, but with only nine (joint) district government offices, and the number of districts was formally merged down to nine in 1896/97: North Adachi, Iruma, Hiki, Chichibu, Kodama, Ōsato, North Saitama, South Saitama, and North Katsushika. Niikura (also known as Niiza, Shiki or Shiragi), one of the original 1878/79 modern districts, was first merged into North Adachi in 1896, but a substantial part of its former territory was subsequently transferred to the North Tama and North Toshima districts of Tokyo. In the creation of modern cities, towns and villages in 1889, these districts were subdivided into originally 40 towns and 368 villages. The first city in Saitama was only established in 1922 when Kawagoe Town from Iruma District became Kawagoe City. The prefectural capital, Urawa in North Adachi, remained a town until 1934. After the Great Shōwa mergers of the 1950s, the number of municipalities in Saitama had shrunk to 95, including 23 cities by then. The Great Heisei mergers of the 2000s pushed the number below 70.


title: Saitama Prefecture

text: After World War II, as Tokyo expanded rapidly and modern transportation allowed longer commutes, the lack of available land in Tokyo led to the rapid development of Saitama Prefecture, where the population has nearly tripled since 1960. Most of the cities in the prefecture are closely connected to downtown Tokyo by metropolitan rail, and operate largely as residential and commercial suburbs of Tokyo.


title: Saitama Prefecture

text: In 2001, Urawa City was merged with Ōmiya City and Yono City to create Saitama City ("Saitama-shi"; but unlike the district or the prefecture written with Kana) as the new enlarged capital. It became the prefecture's first (and so far only) designated major city in 2003.


title: Saitama Prefecture

text: Saitama Prefecture is bordered by Tokyo, Chiba, Ibaraki, Tochigi, Gunma, Nagano, and Yamanashi Prefectures. It is located central-west of the Kanto region, measuring 103 km from east to west and 52 km from north to south. At 3,797.75 km, it ranks as the ninth-smallest prefecture. The eastern border with Chiba Prefecture is defined by the Edo River. The northern and north-western border lines with Gunma Prefecture are marked by the Tone River and the Kanagawa River and the drainage divides of the Arakawa River and Kanagawa River. The southwestern border is defined by the drainage divides of the Arakawa River, Tama River, and Fuefuki River. The eastern section of the southern border line, however, does not overlap with any geological feature.


title: Saitama Prefecture

text: The topography of Saitama Prefecture is largely divided by the Hachiōji Tectonic Line, which runs through Kodama, Ogawa, and Hannō, into the western mountain area and the eastern lowland area. The altitude, highest on the western side, gradually lowers eastward from mountain ranges to hills to plateaus to lowlands. The eastern lowlands and plateaus occupy 67.3% of the area.


title: Saitama Prefecture

text: The eastern side, part of the Kantō Plain, can be further divided into nine separate expanses of hills and ten plateaus. The former occupy small areas neighboring the Kantō Mount Range, including the Hiki Hills and Sayama Hills. The latter are mainly surrounded by alluvial flood plains. In the southeastern portion of the prefecture, the Ōmiya Plateau stands in a southeastward direction, sandwiched by the Furutone River to the east and the Arakawa River to the west.


title: Saitama Prefecture

text: The western side of the prefecture belongs to the Kantō Mountain Range with Chichibu Basin located in its center. The area to the west of the basin features high peaks such as Mount Sanpō (2,483 m; 三宝山, "Sanpō-yama" according to the GSI, but often read "Sanpō-zan") on the Western border with Nagano, Saitama's highest mountain, and Mount Kōbushi (2,475 m), in which the Arakawa River has its source. Most of the land is contained in Chichibu Tama Kai National Park. The area to east of the basin consists of relatively low mountains.


title: Saitama Prefecture

text: Radial transportation to and from Tokyo dominates transportation in the prefecture. Circular routes were constructed as bypasses to avoid congestion in central Tokyo.


title: Saitama Prefecture

text: The Jōban, Kan-etsu, Shuto, Tōhoku, and Tokyo-Gaikan expressways form parts of the nationwide expressway network. National highway Routes 4, 16, and 17 are important routes in Kantō region.


title: Saitama Prefecture

text: Ōmiya Station in Saitama City forms East Japan Railway Company's northern hub station in the Greater Tokyo Area, offering transfers to and from Shinkansen high-speed lines. The Musashino serves as a freight bypass line as well as a passenger line.


title: Saitama Prefecture

text: Haneda Airport and Narita International Airport are the closest major civil airports. Commuter helicopter flights from Kawajima to Narita Airport are offered.


title: Saitama Prefecture

text: Rivers and canals, including those developed in the Edo period (17th – 19th centuries) in the east of the prefecture, are largely disused following the introduction of motorised land transport. Traces of water transport are found on the Tone River, which forms the border between Saitama and Gunma Prefecture, and on the Arakawa River, which includes a tourist attraction in Nagatoro.


title: Saitama Prefecture

text: Like all prefectural administrations, Saitama's is headed by a governor "([ken-]chiji)" who is directly elected to four-year terms since 1947. The current incumbent is Motohiro Ōno, a former DPFP member of the Diet who was elected in August 2019 with centre-left support (CDP, DPFP, SDP) and 47.9% of the vote against centre-right supported (LDP, Kōmeitō) former baseball player Kenta Aoshima (44.9%) and three other candidates.


title: Saitama Prefecture

text: Also as in all prefectures, prefectural by-laws, the budget and the approval of important prefectural administrative appointments such as the vice-governors or members of the public safety commission, are the prerogative of the assembly which is elected directly to four-year terms on an independent electoral cycle. That may or may not be synchronized with the gubernatorial term; currently, it is not, as it is still part of the unified local election cycle (Saitama gubernatorial elections already left the unified cycle in 1949). In the last round in April 2019, the LDP maintained its outright majority with 48 of the 93 seats in the assembly. As in most prefectures, the Saitama assembly was established legally in 1878 and first convened 1879.


title: Saitama Prefecture

text: In the National Diet, Saitama's directly elected delegation consists of 15 members of the House of Representatives and currently seven (four per class, but only raised from three in 2019, so it will only grow to eight after the 2022 election) in the House of Councillors. The latest prefecture-wide election was the House of Councillors by-election in October 2019 to fill the seat vacated by Motohiro Ōno; it was won by the previous governor Kiyoshi Ueda who has a centre-left background (DPJ member of the House of Representatives for Saitama's 4th district before his term as governor), but without full-scale party backing and without any other major party-backed candidate in the race.


title: Saitama Prefecture

text: Saitama Prefecture has a number of sister city relationships with states and a province as listed below (in chronological order).


title: Saitama Prefecture

text: Most of the popular tourist sites in Saitama are located in the northwestern part of the prefecture, which is known as the Chichibu Region. This region mostly consists of a hilly and moderately mountainous area, and is situated in a rich natural environment. The region is very popular among residents of Saitama and neighboring prefectures for short trips, as it is easily accessible via the railroad network.


title: Saitama Prefecture

text: is the prefectural mascot, a Eurasian collared dove, which is also the prefectural bird. Kobaton was made originally as the mascot of the fifty-ninth annual national athletic meeting held in the prefecture in 2004, and was inaugurated as mascot of the prefecture in 2005 with an inauguration ceremony and a letter of appointment from the governor. A wheelchair-using version of Kobaton also exists.


title: Hemant Soren

text: Hemant Soren (born 10 August 1975) is an Indian politician from Jharkhand, who is currently the Chief Minister of Jharkhand. Previously, he had also served as the Chief Minister of Jharkhand from July 2013 to December 2014. He is also the president of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, a political party in Jharkhand. He represents Barhait constituency in the Jharkhand Legislative Assembly.


title: Hemant Soren

text: Soren was born in Nemara in Ramgarh district, Bihar (now in Jharkhand) to Roopi and Shibu Soren, former Chief Minister of Jharkhand. Hemant has two brothers and a sister. He is the second child of all the siblings, first was Durga Soren, then himself followed by Basant Soren and Anjali Soren. His educational qualification is Intermediate from Patna High School, Patna, Bihar. As per affidavit filed before Election Commission, Hemant enrolled in BIT Mesra, Ranchi in Mechanical Engineering, but dropped out.


title: Hemant Soren

text: He was a member of Rajya Sabha from 24 June 2009 to 4 January 2010. He started his political career as Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) on 23 December 2009. Later on, he became Jharkhand deputy CM on 11 September 2010 till 8 January 2013.


title: Hemant Soren

text: He was sworn in as the Chief Minister of Jharkhand on 15 July 2013 with support from Congress and RJD after President's rule was removed from the state. He was again elected as the Chief Minister of Jharkhand in December 2019, and sworn in on 29 December.


title: Hemant Soren

text: In 2016, the BJP government in Jharkhand tried amending the Chhota Nagpur Tenancy Act and the Santhal Pargana Tenancy Act which would allow owners and tenants of Adivasi land to use it for non-agricultural purposes and the other would allow transfer of Adivasi land for building roads, canals, educational institutions, hospitals, and other "government purposes". This led to huge protests in the state and Hemant had strongly protested against these amendments.


title: Hemant Soren

text: CM Raghubar Das had invited Hemant to the Global Investors Summit in 2017, but Hemant called the summit a "maha chintan shivir of land grabbers" and claimed that it is being organised to loot the land of Adivasis, Moolvasis and the farmers of the state.