Author: Thomas Fleming
Poetry: Robinson Jeffers
It is not bad. Let them play.
Let the guns bark and the bombing-plane
Speak his prodigious blasphemies.
The First Stasimon and Second Episode
The chorus is, as we say in psychobabble slang, into denial and don’t want to talk about Ajax’s impending suicide. Instead, after complaints about life in the field outside Troy, their thoughts carry them back to their home on the island of Salamis.
What Are the Classics and Why Should We Read Them”
We live in a culture gone mad on theory: theories of sex and family, theories of government, and, inevitably, theories of education. A debate has raged for centuries over “the future of education.” Early American liberals like Noah Webster insisted that a democratic society needed a suitable educational system, divorced from the classical tradition that encouraged aristocracy and elitism.
Down With Polling!
“Pollsters always lie, as we know, but apart from that, polling should be a major felony because it is based on the degrading fallacy that it is important to know what people want and that political–therefore social and moral–questions can be treated as a popularity contest.”
Ajax 430-595 End of First Episode
In this passage, dialogue between Ajax and Tecmessa, Ajax and the Chorus, Ajax and Eurysaces, the embittered hero sticks to his decision to kill himself, despite the appeals of his “wife”—she may as well be—son, and followers, all of whom depend on him. It is a bit like the Book of Job, except these are Greeks, for whom friendship—which includes kinship—is a primary moral quality.
Oobla Dee Oobla Da, Life Goes On Even Without Trump
It’s time to dry our eyes, take a deep breath, and bear our burdens cheerfully.
Ajax: The Parodos and First Episode
Athena’s parting words are to remind Odysseus and the audience that “The Gods love the sophrones and hate the kakoi. These are two key words for Greek morality and are rather more opposed than the English words “prudent” and “bad.” The man who is sophron, is he whose thinking abilities (the phrenes) are sound, who can judge the future by the past, who keeps his strong feelings under control. Sophrosyne, the great Aristotelian virtue, is a distillation of the Greek folk wisdom exemplified in the Delphic proverbs, “Nothing in excess,” “Measure is best,” and “know thyself,” which is to say, “always...
Anterus and Proclus, Part II
This line of thinking was so tediously familiar to me that I had given up following the news through any medium, and, as I fell into walking down these mental pathways, my own musings began to bore me so much I could not control my yawning. I had obviously awakened too early. I closed my eyes, and, as I drifted off, I saw myself or someone who looked an awful lot like Anterus Smith, dressed in the simple white tunic philosophers in the schools affected. He was speaking in Greek with an older and more distinguished man, who was having...
Anterus Smith Interviews the Philosopher Proclus
I knew this early on and watched, as every decade went by, people—not just Americans—growing duller and dumber, ruder and more indifferent to all the little customs and courtesies that had separated us from savages.
