Every Good Morning

The Greeks’ gods were never meant as representations of goodness and were uniformly pretty awful moral avatars – petty, often pitiless, given to jealousies. Zeus came into a universe already created, so not all powerful either. The Greeks never had a Devil, only monsters – Medusa, Cerberus, the Minotaur. The Christian conception of the moral universe and of God is fundamentally different. First, it is monotheistic. Mary and the Saints […]

For the Greeks of the great age of Athens (5th and 4th centuries BCE), one traveled the country from house to house, not from inn to inn. Hospitality to strangers (xenia) was an expectation. This at a time when homes were the only sanctuary from the lawlessness of the open road. A host was expected to provide food, drink, and a safe haven, even to strangers – actually, especially to […]

Dictators have no time for Tragedy. In their blinkered, paranoid certitude, why would they want to watch a play about the fall of someone mighty. Tragedy is tied to Athenian democracy. As a recent professor of mine said, “It was a democratic form for a democratic audience,” an audience so often restive, even riotous, that “rod holders,” theater police were required to keep order. It is helpful to remember that […]