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.
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.
A haunting image was making the newspaper round the other week, which I am certain the gentle reader, if only out of a corner of his eye, has noted, perhaps even musing to himself that one of these days this photograph would get a mention in Wednesday’s Child.
“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.”
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.
It’s time to dry our eyes, take a deep breath, and bear our burdens cheerfully.
It is reported that Donald Trump, while his supporters were having the “million man march” in Washington, rode in his armoured car to play golf. What would a man and a real leader have done? He would have gone out among the people who were making an effort and putting something on the line for him. And he would have made his sissy son-in-law go with him and meet some real Americans. And he would have made sure, with military police or whatever could be used, that his supporters were not beaten up by the thugs of antifa and BLM.
It’s still unclear who will be declaimed Caesar. In addition to the recounts and lawsuits, behind the scenes deals are being made and people bribed and blackmailed. The stakes are so high – ruler of what’s still ridiculously called the “free” world – there’s no way immense crookedness is not occurring.
The other day I stumbled on a Reuters news report from some time back, which cited police sources in Rostov-on-Don, a city in the south of Russia with a population of one million. According to the case docket, a fight broke out between two men who were standing in line in a grocery store, whereupon one of them drew a gun and shot the other.
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...
