Columnists and pundits across the political spectrum are drawing distinct parallels between Ancient Greece and the devastating war taking place in the Middle East.
Even X– formerly known as Twitter– CEO Elon Musk threw his hat into the proverbial coliseum and appeared to suggest that Israel’s heavy-handed response to the Hamas attacks were misguided.
Musk shared a story from Ancient Sparta on his X profile about the creation of the Spartan empire. Musk’s post:
Regarding Lycurgus, founder of Sparta.
The pivotal moment in the creation of Sparta came when Lycurgus proposed radical laws that would transform the state into some of the greatest warriors in history.
A member of the assembly was so offended that he struck Lycurgus in the eye. Lycurgus could easily have killed him and everyone knew it.
Instead, he stood there with his eye destroyed and invited that man to his house for dinner, ultimately convincing the man to become one of his greatest supporters.
Once the laws were in place, Lycurgus left for the temple, saying the laws could not change until he returned. Then Lycurgus starved himself to death.
BAMF.
The lesson here is that revenge is for the weak.
Kenan Malik, an Observer columnist drew parallels from a well-known Ancient Greek tragedy written thousands of years ago by Aeschylus.
Malik writes in an opinion piece for the Guardian, “Watching the tragedy unfold in Israel and Palestine has sometimes felt like reading the Oresteia backwards. A trilogy of plays by Aeschylus, written in the fifth century BC, the Oresteia tells of the transformation of ancient Greece from a society rooted in blood and revenge into one shaped by justice.”
Malik weaves a convincing connection between what was happening in the Middle East today with Ancient Greece during the transformation to democracy and the process that humans must go through to civilize themselves.
“The irony today is that the relationship between Israel and the Palestinians seems to be moving in the opposite direction, into a world defined more by the Furies than by Athena. A world in which the erosion of political solutions to the conflict has led to the pursuit of vengeance dominating the search for justice,” Malik writes.
Malik, like Musk, also talks about revenge in his telling piece. “Desire for revenge is a feature not simply of Hamas policy. It is woven into Israeli perspectives, too.”
