Perhaps we need to become a little atavistic now and turn Australia, if not the whole world into a 5th Century BCE Athens, into a place where our soul goes to a theatre to be cured of all its traumas, of all its infirmities.

Athens of that era did that once a year. She went to the theatre to heal herself. Religiously, on the week of the festival of its youngest and most important god, Dionysius, the god of, among many other things, fertility.

Once the two Persian attacks were done, once the last barbarian soldier left Plataea and Mycale, once the last Persian ships were driven out of the waters of Salamis, once Greece had rid herself of all attacks from the East, a burgeoning epidemic of arrogance, of hubris, overtook Athens.

COVID-19 wrecks the flesh but hubris wrecks the soul.

The Athenians had established the Delian League, an alliance which incorporated some 300-odd cities, all paying tributes of either money or men or ships as a means of boosting Greece’s military and to build an adequate protection against possible further revenge-attacks from Persia.

That League became, in fifth century terms, quite considerable in size. With Athens its unquestionable ruler, the once-small Attican city became the engine of a powerful empire – initially benign, but soon an oppressive, colonial power much like the one they had just repelled. It happens often, doesn’t it: he who defeats the oppressor becomes the oppressor himself. Power corrupts. Power corrupts the powerful.

Initially too, the treasury was placed on the uninhabited island of Delos, Apollo’s sanctuary island, but it took little time before it was moved to the temple of the goddess Athena, the Parthenon, in Athens’ Acropolis and not long after that, the city began to raid it, spending the money on glittering and begemming herself and on other self-serving interests. The allied parties of the Delian League, who were dutifully paying their taxes, saw this blatant plunder of their wealth and it made them angry and unruly.

In response, Athens became increasingly more brutal, more arrogant and more corrupt, increasingly more afflicted by its burgeoning hubris, in other words, quite sick. Athens, it was obvious to one and all, had to be urgently cleansed of that sickness – purged of those symptoms that brought her to that state. This is where theater came in. (Classic Wisdom, The Healing of Athens).

The first play we have in which this epidemic is identified is Aeschylus’ Persians, a tragedy which he wrote in 471 BCE. In this play, Aeschylus shows the horrendous consequences of this disease. He staged it as a warning to the Greeks, who, by then showed the same temperament and proclivity for war-mongering and conquest as did the Persians. Arrogance, to paraphrase in shameful oversimplification, two of the greatest philosophers of all time, Aristotle who said “man is a political being“ and his teacher, Plato, who had put his view in his Republic and elsewhere, “arrogance overwhelms all human values, and replaces them with forces destructive to the soul; and, after all, is not the soul of the man the soul of his city?”

Athens became strong militarily but feeble and infirm mentally, morally and spiritually. Her moral compass, as Thucydides remarked later in his History of The Peloponnesian War, was abandoned and replaced by the rules of savagery.

Sparta began to see the new belligerent Athens as a military threat, (see “The Thucydides Trap“) sweeping away her own allies and, in 431 BCE mounted a challenge: a proxy war on the island of Corcyra (today’s Corfu). This war broadened to encompass almost every Greek city and became known as the Peloponnesian War. It lasted, on and off, almost thirty years, ending in 404 BCE with the destruction of Athens and the establishment of a new anti-democratic government, ruled by Thirty Tyrants, puppets of Sparta.

In the interim, on the Dionysian stage, Athens’ illness was examined as meticulously as a surgeon examines bodies in the operating theatre, exposing the affected parts under painfully glaring lights. This work of diagnosis was done by the tragedians of whom we, alas, have only some of the works of three of many, Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides.

Some 15,000 Greeks would go there to observe the work of their doctors. The question about whether women were also observing, is all but concluded and the answer is in the affirmative.

The stage exhibited the sickly Athens as well as the cured Athens, the Athens of the Erinyes, the avenging furies, as well as the Athens of the Eumenides, the benevolent protectors of the city. They would see the Athens of the brutal men like Cleon and Cleophon, as well as that of the strong women who stood up to them: Iphigeneia, Antigone, Medea, Klytaemestra, Helen, Hecabe, Lysistrata, Praxagora.

So, when Pericles enacted a law declaring that henceforth only children whose parents are both citizens of Athens may be granted Athenian citizenship, Euripides showed how poisonous that law was for the people and for the country. He did so by making a slight change to an old myth. In his eponymous tragedy, he has Medea, effectively a refugee, kill her children instead of leaving them behind when she left for Athens, as the original myth had it. Her husband Jason is no more than an extra, a secondary character in that play. Medea’s words – the words Euripides had put into her mouth – showed which of the two sexes was the stronger, which was the more courageous, the more worthy of kleos (eternal fame) and which was the weaker, the coward.

To the Corinthian women Medea says,

“Then people also say that while we live quietly and without any danger at home, the men go off to war. Wrong! One birth alone is worse than three times in the battlefield behind a shield.”

In Euripides’ mind, the female wins the war on bravery and endurance of pain. In fact, the absence of women in Athens’ daily life is one of the reasons why the city’s spiritual health is so feeble. This point, this diagnosis, is made very blatantly by all the playwrights of 5th century BCE Athens.

Thus, it is no accident that women appear so often in both the tragedies and the comedies as far stronger than the men. This is why so many Greek plays feature such strong women uttering such powerful speeches. Iphigeneia’s speech (in Iphigeneia in Aulis) must have had the whole of Athens shedding tears for days.

In 416 BCE, the Athenians slaughtered all the men of Melos and enslaved all the women because the Melians (allies of Sparta) would not pay their taxes. Athens gave them no option at all: “pay or die.” Thucydides has the full account of the dialogue between the two sides, a dialogue that brings the political pragmatics of war to a full display. War pollutes the soul. Corrupts it. Empties it of virtue.

A year later, Euripides, enraged, produces his Trojan Women, where the victorious Greek men behave in exactly the same savage way as they were doing in his time. Yes, that stage enacted myths, but these myths were parables of real life, these myths were the modern microscopes that peered into the man’s body and soul.

After three days of Tragedies, where Athens’ afflictions were glaringly displayed and diagnosed, Athens was visited by the comedy writers, of whom, again unfortunately, we have the works of only one: a satirist, and perhaps the indubitable master in this field. Aristophanes knew the Athenians very well, as he also knew the stage. He knew the Athenian of the agora, the market place, as well as the member of the council and of the Ekklesia, the Parliament.

Aristophanes, then, was the one to prescribe the remedy for sickly Athens:

“Have a sex strike,” said, in as many words his Lysistrata, in his eponymous play, Lysistrata) and “Give all the legislative powers to the women,” or words to that effect, would be heard from Praxagora’s lips. (Women In Parliament) “Get rid of the jury men who sting Athens like wasps sting people!” (Wasps). “Send away the sausage sellers,” (Knights) and “learn how to use Clever Logic rather than Wise Logic, if you want to avoid the clutches of your creditors” and, “don’t listen to the cloud-inhabiting sophists, like Socrates!” (Clouds) are the messages that would be taken home from Aristophanes’ many satires.

The satirist has the most powerful tool in his hand, because satire is a flame thrower. Aristophanes aimed that pointy flame at the belly of Athens’ corrupt politicians. He cauterized the wounds, prescribed the cathartics, delivered the purgatives.

Dionysus, tyrant of Sicily, once asked Plato what his fellow Athenians were like. Plato’s response was to give Dionysus the books of Aristophanes’ plays.

Aristophanes not only knew the Athenians, he also knew what they were made of, he knew the full contents of their character, as Martin Luther King Jr put it.

Scholars also called the Athenian stage a school, “The school of Athens,” with the intimation that it was also the school of the world.

This appellation is also quite valid. After all, is not a teacher also a doctor and is not a doctor also a teacher? Don’t they both try to purge the man (and thus the city) of all his ills, his undisciplined pride, his ignorance, his injustice, his brutality and his corruption?

The practical details may differ, but both aim for the same thing: healing.

In both cases – school and clinic – Aristotle’s Catharsis takes place. It takes place not only at the end of every tragedy, purging all the painful emotions that the trilogy had brought to the surface, but also, and far more importantly, at the end of the entire festival, all the symptoms have been examined, displayed and all the necessary remedies prescribed.

Fifth century BCE Athens went to the theatre to be healed, and the theatre did its very best to provide that healing.

Unfortunately, Athens continued to be ill. Her arrogance was not removed, her war mongering and her brutality were not tempered and the inequality between the sexes continued. Women were still kept away from the more significant positions and slavery continued unabated. All of the plays -tragedies as well as comedies, in one way or another, point out that the women are punished for the wrongs committed by men. The young, Juliet-like Iphigeneia of Euripides’ Iphigeneia in Aulis is a victim of her father’s sin against Artemis and of his wanting to go to war through no fault of hers. Antigone, in Sophocles’ tragedy by the same name, suffers the death sentence because of her uncle Creon’s extreme, autocratic views. Helen, the most complex character of the mythological cosmos, suffers abduction and endless insults because of what Paris has done. Hecabe, Cassandra, Andromche, Medea, are just a few more examples of women suffering the consequences of men’s arrogance and disrespect, their need to enforce and exhibit their deluded view that they are powerful, more powerful than something, anything, someone, anyone, slave or woman.

The death of Aristophanes marked the end of a golden age of culture and thought and the beginning of Athens’ steep decline.

Then came the era of the Macedonians, of Phillip and of Alexander which was, in turn, followed by the era of the Romans. Homer of the 48 rhapsodies which decried war, was replaced by Virgil of the 12 which praised a Caesar, much like the soviet painters and writers praised the post Czar regimes.

Yet it was during that era – the fifth century BCE – that the Greeks had given to the world a new word to ponder over: paradox (at odds with the common view). For it was during her most turbulent era, the era of war and inequality, that she gave birth to the most magnificent, intelligent and effective remedies for society to heal itself.

Any student today – and I daresay for many eras to come – can walk in any direction he or she chooses, enter any theatre in any University in the world, and he or she will hear references made to the fifth-century Greek theatre, when the first healers made their appearance.

Time to be atavistic. Time to learn from History. Time to abandon weapons of every kind, especially those that bring the worst of the diseases of the soul, hubris, the most treacherous of diseases. Time to abandon the nuclear weapons, the weapons of mass destruction – of the soul.

I hold an indomitable dogma which, though at first blush it looks like it belongs to matters culinary, in fact it is a dogma, an undeniable teaching, that applies to one’s whole life, and it is this: no decent fried egg should present itself without a good-sized fried onion. Whether dressed as an omelette or as poached, or scrambled, or as sunny-side up or down, no epicurean worth his saffron, no gourmand worth his bearnaise, would have anything to do with such eggs, unaccompanied by their reasoning, by their alter eggo! (Cheff’s Play on words there). It’d be vulgar and an affront to the morality of reason. Treachery to Socrates.

Eggs are delicious on their own and, drunk – yes, drunk! – straight out of the shell, still warm and with the chook’s bum-fluff still attached, they are also beneficial to your throat and thus to your voice, if not to your general physical as well as mental health. (It’d be too uncouth of me to add that they also increase your sperm or egg production, so I won’t.) They are self-assurance, confirmation of the greatness of being alive, confidence in Nature and all her beasts and curiosities and they are a very pleasant greeting from rose-fingered Dawn, all in one little fragile container.

Certainly, about the throat and the voice, I am an unimpeachable witness. My grandfather, you see, was a village priest whose little house was built on the only little hill of our little village, just a few yards from his little church and every morning, when I was little – barely the size of his beard – he’d instruct me to go and “steal” a couple of eggs -without disturbing the blessed (by him) chooks. Then, just before he’d start his instructions to me on the Byzantine music, especially on the psalms I’d have to sing solo the following Sunday, we’d dig a couple of holes on the stolen eggs, one on their nose and one on their bum and suck out their contents.

Delicious yes but this daily practice gave us also powerful voices that were as clear as the water that gurgled in the little river at the feet of the little hill. My grandfather would often sing the vespers mass from his front door and all the farmers, working at their fields would stop to cross themselves and take a holy rest while their priest performed his duties. I would be right next to him, obeying his every command, though, quite early on I learned all the cues.

And to this day I make sparrows a mile away, cry when I sing a byzantine psalm to them. (Only respectful comments are accepted!)

Onions present whatever statement the eggs want to make with the reason for making that statement. They are the basis, the logic, the proof that the eggs use to fortify their view, whether sunny-side up or down.

No onions, no proof, no logic, no basis for saying what you’re saying, and your words are mere waffle that had come out, not of an honest chook’s bum but from a fox’s mouth wanting to kill all your chooks and steal all of your eggs. And we see this phenomenon almost every minute of the day, these days. Foxes talking, while standing on egg cartons, lying as the mountebanks used to lie, standing on soap boxes by the river bank, once upon a time.

“We need more tax cuts!” those charlatans, will yell!
or “We must do as the American Military Complex tells us because they are our buddies!”
or “We need to dump $20bil in the French égout and spend $200 bill more on building new “nukelar” submarines to protect our nightmarish paranoias.”
or “We need to give earth-killing mining licences to the rapacious filthy rich!”
or “China is our enemy!”
or “There are ‘weapons of mass destruction’ all over the planet and we must destroy them – by bombing the whole planet!”
or “We must incarcerate refugees, or non-white trash people!”
or “No marriage between gays! God said so!”
or “No abortions!”
or “No euthanasia!”
or “Rape in Parliament is acceptable!”
or “We need to privatise everything, now!”

Or – but I won’t go on, you get the picture by now, I’m sure!

So, next time you see one of these smug bastard politicians, talking like that, no matter how pretty, no matter how articulate, no matter how seductively they’re dressed, yell out to them, at the top of your egg-enhanced voice, “where are yer onions?”

You may even wish to carry a few eggs with you when next you have your family picnic by the river but hurling those precious little health-explosives at these lying, bum-fluff spitting politicians would be a culinary blasphemy, A treachery to logic, to reason, to Aristotle and to Plato, to Socrates and an attack on St John’s 1.1: “In the beginning was the onion!” (He meant “logos” of course)

Why, they’ll even dare tell you that they’re from your own loving party, the party you voted for all of your life, the party you’re rusted onto all your life! It was always Hawthorn and Labor with pies, tomato sauce and beer and that’s how it’ll be for all eternity. That’s how low they can get!

Eat those lovely eggs, always with a full, large, fried onion, or else drink them, raw. When you’re eating them on a plate, you’re looking down, thanking Earth. When you’re drinking them raw, you’re looking up, thanking the heavens.

I so very much miss the early morning rooster’s call to prayer!

Image from freecodecamp.org

He is called “The Father of History” by the appreciative and the “Father of Lies” by the unappreciative because of the way he collected his information about the events he writes in his Histories, a word which in his day, meant “Inquiries.”

To my mind Herodotus is far more than both those designations. He is a Philosopher and Philosophy, I hold, as Plato does, with high esteem. Plato wanted philosophers to rule the nations – but that’s another story. The reason that Mythology is far more reliable than History is because Mythology’s most valued content is Philosophy. History might be written by all sorts of vagabonds and the main content there is lies. Lies and agendas and prejudices and covetings.

“History,” James Joyce’s Daedalus exclaimed “is a nightmare from which I am trying to get out.” I, on the other hand, say, “Mythology is a sweet dream from which I never want to awake.”

Herodotus relates the war which Darius I waged against the Greeks on the West coast of today’s Turkey, those whom historians call The Ionian Greeks. Darius I, amazingly, lost that war because the Athenians and the Eretrians sent forces to help the Ionians. Amazingly because this was Darius I, the great king of the great Persia, the great Emperor of the greatest empire on the then known world, the then known cosmos, even. Darius I could summon, equip, train and feed the biggest army of them all.

But, all of that amounted to nothing because, thanks to the Athenians and the Eretrians, he got nowhere with his attempts to subjugate those Ionian Greeks and, after his last attempt at Miletus which failed disastrously,

this great Darius I became consummately annoyed. Detonatingly so, even!

He asked his generals around him who were those damned Athenians. When he found out he got even more annoyed and shouted to his slaves, “fetch me my bow and arrow NOW!”

When these were brought and put into his hands he shot an arrow upwards, towards the heavens and anger still spurting fumes out of his nostrils, shouted at Zeus words to the effect, “grant me oh mighty Zeus the vengeance I deserve against those pesky Athenians!”

Then, to make sure he never forgot those pesky Athenians, he ordered one of his slaves to remind him every day, before his first mouthful of dinner of the calamity he had just suffered by whispering into his imperial ear, thrice:

“Lord, remember the Athenians!

Lord, remember the Athenians!

Lord, remember the Athenians!”

The rest, as they say, is History, one which Herodotus detailed in his “Histories”, the first ever book of History, a word which in its day, as I said meant “inquiries” and not “true and incontestable events” or some such fantasy.

I always say, I have more faith in mythology than I do in History.

History, as our lovely Norman Swan said, suffers deeply from -though he wasn’t talking about History, per se- “programmatic inefficiency.”

You gotta love our Norman Swan, one of our very few truly intelligent intellectuals.

Anyhow, the Great Darius The First gathered a huge force and, in 490 BC, headed towards Athens.

Alas, for the Great God-King, the bloody debacle of Miletus repeated itself in Marathon and elsewhere in Southern Greece and the great King, Emperor and self proclaimed god, Darius The First found himself tearing his hair out, lacerating his cheeks and shredding his golden robes while cursing the Athenians most profanely. History (or Zeus, or Fate or some other powerful entity) was brutal to that boy and to his boy, Xerxes also, who ten years later, tried to avenge his father by following his trail all the way to Greece. It ended up as a very dismal double demolition derby for the poor Persians. Huge, gory and shameful losses for them.

Aeschylus reminded the Greeks of the event, less than ten years later and warned them most direly about getting too hubristic about their victories against the Persians. In 472, Aeschylus wrote his splendid tragedy, The Persians.[1] “Darius,” he says in many more words, “was arrogant. He thought too much of himself and that is something that the gods hate with a great sizzling fervour.”

It’s a lesson for all humanity, the one about the whispering slave, wherever and whenever humans happen to be, especially those of us whose brain is beginning to lose its youthful prowess. We, of this feeble state of mind, must get someone or something to whisper in our ear, just before the first spoonful or forkful of dinner, to remind us who we are and what is the purpose of our existence or of tying our shoe laces, especially when the shoes have no laces.

In political terms, we should make it the job of the Presidents of both houses of our Parliament to begin each session, not with a useless, hypocritical and pregnant-with-bigotry and smugness act of uttering a prayer to god but with a loud and meaningfully uttered exhortation, uttered thrice, to everyone in the chamber, to all the law makers there:

“Remember, you bastards what you are here for!

Remember, you bastards what you are here for!

Remember, you bastards what you are here for!”

It just might help to get the beggars focused. They are there to serve everyone in the country and to serve everyone justly and not with all sorts of prejudices and personal covetings, like gold, or oil, or lithium, or opium, or pfizer vaccines. NSW is Victoria and Victoria is Western Australia and Tasmania and South Australia and Northern Territory and ACT and whatever other State and Territory slipped my mind. They, the politicians are there to distribute the wealth and the vaccines of the nation equitably, not to obey the media or mining moguls.

And it would be a very useful tool for all of us, that device which would whisper in our ear what and who we are and why we are walking towards the kitchen but have now stopped dead midway there.

Was I going to the kitchen or the bathroom, I often ask myself. Someone please tell me!

We, humans forget just too easily all of that simple and obvious stuff. We are not born to live for ever and nor are we born to conquer or to be nasty to anyone. There’s a golden rule: “Do unto others as you would like them to do unto you.” Bertrand Russell thought that it was quite a silly rule. “Don’t do that,” he told someone one rainy day, “those others just might not like what you like!”

And that, in essence is the key to humanity’s endless turbulence and disquiet. We covet too much. We think too much of ourselves. We are too greedy and too gluttonous. We never have enough of our own stuff so we take on the Darius system. We march with huge armies towards those who have it.

Darius I and his son Xerxes, ten years later! How compellingly reminiscent this is to the Bush I and Bush II expeditions (the second Bush called it “Crusade” -against the “Coalition of Evil,” against Iraq!

In his “Inquiries,” Herodotus has pointed out to us two vital lessons. The first was the one above, with the slave whispering the reminder in Darius’ ear. The second is the story of the meeting between Croesus, the emperor of Anatolia (roughly modern day Turkey) and Solon, one of the seven sages of Greece.

The Darius I-Xerxes story teaches us to understand the limits of memory (and physical power also, of course) and the Croesus-Solon story tells us to understand the limits of our sway over our fate and our useby date.

It would take too much time and space to tell the full story of the meeting of the king and the sage, so I encourage you to read it in Herodotus’ own words. It’s a delicious story, delicious enough to make you smack your mental lips.

Croesus was what we call today, filthy rich. His huge palaces in Sardis were clogged with gold and silver and gems and all sorts of extremely valuable things. When Solon came wondering by in his world tour after he had fixed (most Athenians said destroyed) the laws of Athens, Croesus invited him in and, in time asked him who the great sage thought was the happiest man on earth, anticipating that Solon would name him as the rightful owner of the accolade.

Cutting a long and scrumptious story short and morsel-like, Solon gave the king the relative maths: “Listen, Lord Croesus,” Solon said humbly, “we live around seventy years and, forgetting the intercalary months, we have some 25,200 days… add another 35 months, which make up 1,050 days, altogether 26,250 days, none of which will produce events the same as any of the others. So I can’t say who is happy and who is not until the very end of their life. Until they’re dead, in fact.”

Croesus, not being a sage -far from it in fact- was disgusted and angrily sent the Athenian away.

Not long after that, Solon’s observation began to come to fruition. Croesus’ favourite (of two) sons was killed in a hunting accident and not much later, Cyrus, the founder of the first Persian Empire brought his army to Sardis, waged a war against Croesus, won and had Croesus mounted on a pyre. Just as the flames began to lick Croesus’ feet, he remembered the Athenian and yelled, “Oh Solon, Solon, Solon!”

Cyrus wandered which was this god that Croesus was calling out to and asked to have Croesus taken down and brought to him.

When the two were next to each other, Croesus explained the story behind his cry. Cyrus became thoughtful and let Croesus live.

Two lessons today, both from Herodotus:

1) We need someone to whisper in your ear what we need to do, so that we won’t forget or get distracted, and

2) you never know where Fate’s endless pivoting will land you even a minute hence.

Indeed, Herodotus was a philosopher, a sage, a wise gatherer of wondrous stories.

Our heads and bookshelves and the heads and the bookshelves of those who dictate the laws of a nation, or a group of humans should be afforded his book.

[1] My translation of the play is here and on Amazon.com.

I know, this will be somewhat controversial, this view of mine about Homer, I mean but, oh well, let the controversy explode and let’s see where the bits and pieces fall!

Not Homer Simpson but Homer the blind bard, I mean. That Homer who sang some 300,000 words which he accompanied with a lyre, about a war and a hero’s tortuous and torturous, adventure-packed journey home. That was Odysseus.

That war was called the Trojan War even though it had taken place in Ilium and even though it hadn’t taken place at all. Such are the perplexities of mythology, especially the Greek kind. Rest easy, though, after those 48 songs (or rhapsodies as the Greeks called them) there were no more myths, no more heroes and all wars were real, brutal and deadly, as brutal and deadly as Homer the blind bard described them. There were also no more heroes, other than those on the footy fields of Australia and the canines who drag their masters out of sink holes.

Nor was there a Homer, supposedly born around the Western shores of modern-day Turkey around the 8th century BCE. No Homer, no war, no heroes, just scrumptious stories of bronze spears driven through the eyes of men, swords thrust mightily through throats of loud war-cry, of spines being torn away from men’s backs, bronze helmeted heads lopped off bodies, of bodies tied to the back of chariots and dragged around the walls of Troy at the peak speed of stallions, and so on, and so on and so on. A pleasant sojourn around a battlefield heaped with blood and gore!

Oh, look, there’s Athena whizzing Paris away from Agamemnon‘s blood-soaked sword! She flies him to his bedroom where he can polish his spears. His new wife, well, by now a ten-year long marriage, Helen screams at his cowardice which only makes him horny.

And oh, look! There’s Ajax falling on his sword, ashamed by grey-eyed Athena who loved Odysseus!

And, who will it be, who will dare fight the Trojan warrior, Hektor? Will it be Diomedes, Achilles or Ajax?

And so on, and so on, and so on!

But the Iliad is not about any of this. Nor is the Odyssey about a punishing adventure.

And yes, it’s true, Homer did not exist!

And how do I know that? That Homer did not exist, I mean?

Because his name has been concocted to fit just too conveniently with the two epics. The name Homer, in Greek, (Ὅμηρος,) means “hostage” and being a hostage is the very essence of these two great works. Everyone in these two huge operas is dealing with the fact that they are a hostage. The war is not between the Trojans and the Greeks -in any case, around that place and around Homer’s time, they were all Greeks and Herodotus couldn’t see what all the fuss about the abduction of a mere woman was. Such a thing happened all the time by sailors from all around the world. They’d dock their ship at some port or other, girls would be enticed to go up and check out its cargo and before you know it, the ship would be sailing away with them on board! Nothing unusual, certainly nothing to bring on a war over.

But, Homer is trying to say that this war was between Man and his Fate, Man and his inescapable condition, which is to be a hostage. Nietzsche’s “homo!”

Homer is singing in no uncertain notes the true nature of Man, his inability to escape his condition as a hostage. His weakness, his insignificance, his place in the Cosmos as a hostage to it: to the gods, to fate, to the stars, to kings and queens, to beauty and to ugliness, to terror and to horror, to the telly and the dirty book, to things beyond his reach or strength or ken.

“We are all in lock-down,” he sings. “In an eternal lock-down and the exit is most firmly deadlocked!” In another book, by another wise man, he’d put it in different words, “were you a camel (the thickest type of rope) you wouldn’t be able to get through the exit’s eye.”

The Trojans have been hostages to the Greeks for ten years before all the men were slaughtered and all the women – bar one- were taken to Greece as slaves. The one who was freed from enslavement was Polyxena. She was spared the enslavement but instead, she was sacrificed on Achilles’ tomb by his son, Neoptolemos, a man judged by all to be, like Achilles, a man of virtue. By all the Greeks, I mean.

The Iliad begins, in res (in the middle of things) on the tenth year of the war when Chryseas, the father of a young priestess, Chryseis, loads his cart with valuable things, goes to the Greek camp and asks to have his daughter, Chryseis returned to him for all the wealth on his cart. She was held as war-prize by the leader of the Greek army, Agamemnon who, in spite of all his men calling him to return the young woman to her father, he doesn’t. The beautiful Chryseis is a hostage to Agamemnon, and he says he’ll take her home to be his and his wife’s slave.

The distraught father leaves the camp and when he gets back to Apollo‘s temple, prays to the god and he, in answer, punishes the Greeks most severely.

Muse, sing about Achilles’ rage! Peleus’ son and his bellowing rage

which sent immeasurable misery upon the Achaeans, their glorious souls to Hades and their bodies to the teeth of dogs and the talons of birds of prey.

Sing the song from that moment when anger split apart the two men,

King Agamemnon and brilliant Achilles.

The two leaders one, of men, the other of the battlefield, are now hostages to their pride and thus, their soldiers become hostages to them also. So are all the armies that had gathered around the walls of Troy, trying to free another hostage, Helen, ex-queen of Sparta, a hostage now of her lover, Paris and of her beauty, identical to that of the goddess Aphrodite. She was handed over to Paris in a deal between the goddess and the Prince. She was a hostage but then so were all the women at the time. Bereft of any freedom to choose or do anything.

Homer does a divinely inspired job (after all he calls for the help of the muse) in describing Helen’s torment as a hostage and why the Trojan elders understand her predicament and the predicament of all the Trojans and Greeks alike, in effect, their hostage.

So I’ll jump to what the author of these two massive books, The Iliad and The Odyssey is describing for his audience. He is describing the travails of being a hostage. Man’s existential condition. We are all locked up – or “locked-down”- to use the modern vernacular; the Trojans, not for a few weeks, as we are in modern-day Australia but for ten years! No wonder whoever gave him his name he thought of the most appropriate one for him: Homer. Hostage.

We are hostage to the strength and weakness of our bodies, of our minds and of our hearts. We are hostage to the will and whim of others, more powerful than us and we are hostage to this moment and this place.

The worst question one can ask about any work of art, be it sculpture or Music, or Literature or origami is “what is it about?” It’s an insulting question because it reduces all that immeasurable inspiration it took to create that work into a single, deplorably miserable sentence. “Oh, it’s about war!” or “Oh, it’s about peace?” or “it’s about the abduction of a queen,” or, “oh, it’s about love!” etc, etc, etc.

But the core message, the greatest picture we get when we read these works, is the one that merges when we plunges deep into own soul, much like when Odysseus was guided down to Hades before he left the shores of Calypso’s island and headed for home. It’s a picture that psychologists try to see but never can because, as Homer describes it, it is a huge picture, ever evolving, yet ever a hostage.

It is the picture of Man as a Hostage, Pontius Pilate‘s man, when he uttered the words “ecce homo.” And it is a picture that emerges out of the fog of chaotic clamour and groans of pain. The poet’s sermon says that man is a hostage right from his first breath.

Astyanax, Hektor and Andromache‘s baby boy was thrown over the sky scraping walls of Troy to his death, by – another irony! – Neoptolemos, the “virtuous” son of “virtuous” Achilles who had also cut Polyxena’s throat upon his father’s tomb. Some virtuous man! That’s what baby Astyanax was hostage to; a male, the son of the most prominent man in Troy, Prince Hektor and of the turn of the battle between two peoples about whom he knew nothing.

Being a hostage brooks no logic.

The Odyssey, too, begins with Odysseus, his name means “someone hostage to acute mental pain,” begins with this man being hostage to the Queen/goddess Calypso and to Poseidon‘s anger because – well, for many reasons but primarily because Odysseus had blinded Poseidon’s beloved son, the cyclops, Polyphemus.

Back in Ithaka, Odysseus’ wife, Penelope was hostage to 108 suitors waiting for her to pick her husband from one of them and they, the suitors themselves, were hostages to her will. They became hostages (and target practice) to Odysseus when he had returned after ten more years on the sea, twenty years altogether from the day he left for Troy (23 actually, because the fleet was held in Aulis, hostage to Artemis who would not allow favourable winds to fill the sails of the 1000 ships). There, the young girl Iphigenia was also held hostage and had her throat slit because of her father’s indiscretions.

Homer gave us the greatest insight about us: we are all hostage to this planet, to this time, to this place in the Cosmos. Both, place and the cosmos are magnificent. Yes, we are in lock-down but, luckily – some religiously minded will say, purposely – we are locked-down in a great resort. The best that Nature can offer. So let’s not destroy it, let’s not fill it up with destructive rubbish of our flaws, hubris, greed, gluttony, crime. Let’s just enjoy it. It’s a holiday.

Homer sang for us the quintessential lesson about our life as humans: We are all hostages and then we die. We must live knowing that.

Plato called him “the teacher of Greece” and a number of scholars said that he was not merely a footnote in the pages of History but History itself.

“But, come now! Let us you and I enter the bliss of love for never was my soul captured so mightily by desire…

You make me so horny when you’re angry!” Iliad Book 3.438) (The last line is my paraphrase).

NOTE: All translations from ancient Greek are mine.

It is the first day of the new year and I feel that this is the proper time when one should turn his attention to Socrates and hear once more his exhortation, “know thyself” and read also over his observation that an unexamined life is not one that is worth living. That life, the life that is worth living, the noble life, is the one that has been thoroughly examined.

So I have chosen today, one day after last year, to be introspective.

The Byzantine Emperor Theophilos, golden apple in hand, is inspecting a long line of women, all petitioners for that golden apple. They are the most beautiful women in the Empire and they are now all lined up in one of the palace gardens in Constantinople, not too far from the monumental church Hagia Sophia where the most important Byzantines go to observe all the rituals of Christianity, the birth, the christening, the marriage the death and a whole host of blessings for a whole host of needs. Hagia Sophia had replaced Apollo’s temple at Delphi in importance and in popularity. In need, even.

His stepmother, Euphrosyne is walking beside him and it is her stern eye that will determine which woman will get the prize. A double prize, as it happens, the golden apple and the title of Empress. That woman, the woman who will get the apple, will effectively be her daughter-in-law. Lots at stake here so the eye must indeed be stern so that the choosing might not err.

Among the gorgeous women is one called Cassia, (also Kassia) Kassiani, in Greek. Cassia is the feminine form of the Roman name Cassius and Cassius-Gaius Cassius Longinus, the Roman was given a frown by the then Emperor of Rome, Julius Caesar, to wit (according to Shakespeare):

“Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look,
He thinks too much; such men are dangerous.”

This Roman Cassius, chose to play a major role in one of History’s highly significant events, that which occurred on the 15th of March, 44BC, the fatal Ides of March. His blade, along with that of young Brutus, had caused two of the 23 stab wounds found in Julius’ assassinated body, an assassination which he, Cassius, had organised.

The Emperor Theophilos had to make a choice, one that was much like Homer’s Paris had to make, a choice between three goddesses. Paris chose Aphrodite, the consequence of which was the ten-year long, Trojan War.

As Theophilos and Euphrosyne, walked along the line of potential brides, (dubbed “The Bride Show”) they asked the women all sorts of questions or make all sorts of comments to them to try and gauge their IQ, their philosophy on things and, quite possibly their prowess in the bedroom and possibly the kitchen. Virginity being the necessary prowess in the former, expertise in the latter.

When they came before Cassia the Emperor proffered this to her:

Through woman flow all things evil

To which Cassia, without losing a beat, responded with:

And through woman flow all things splendid

She was referring to the birth of Christ, the central figure of Christianity and the alleged saviour of the world.

Theophilos had only just turned 18 years of age and he immediately fell deeply in love with Cassia but the choice was not his to make. Cassia too was love-stricken by the young Emperor but the choice was also not hers. Their choice was ripped away from them.

Kassia/Cassia

The young man’s step mother, who, incidentally had organised the Bride Show, thought as did Julius Caesar about Cassius, the Roman: that this woman “thought too much” and that “such women are dangerous.” She scornfully tugged at Theophilos’ arm and dragged him away from Cassia, along the line of women, all now trembling with excitement, until they’ve got to a lass called Theodora. (Now, we must not mistake this Theodora with the other one, the infamous Theodora about whom some 300 years earlier, the historian Procopius, devoted many words in his “Secret History”, on allegations about her being a common whore and a very imaginative stripper.)

This is a whole new Theodora.

A choice was made that day and a few months later, the bells of Hagia Sophia announced the happy event. The choice of the bride was not made by Theophilos.

Ah, choice!

How much of it do we have? How much choice do we have when it comes to the most significant events in our life? The existential events. Events like the time and place of our birth and death. Our genes, our DNA, our blood type. Choice of parents, other relatives, brothers, sisters, aunts uncles, grand parents. What gender we are, how healthy a body or mind accompanies us on our travel through life. What sort of religious, political, social, economic environment we are born. No choice at all to be seen anywhere there. None at all.

All these events, crucial to our existence, are beyond our control, beyond our ability to choose between their variables.

Joseph Carli’s tiny story, “The last lingering kiss” is about a woman showing the need to make a choice. She makes it only to have it taken away from her again, only to turn her back into a creature of a closed convent from which she chose to escape for a few occasional moments.

Nope! Choice is verboten here!

Choice is a very expensive thing. People can be slaughtered for daring to make it. Many, under the Christian Emperor Theophilos, were indeed slaughtered because they dared make icons and idols of holy entities and venerate them. Priests and monks blessed them. Theophilos was, on the other hand, a fierce iconoclast, a smasher of icons. And the story of slaughter because of belief and choice is repeated around Henry VIII and the kings and queens who followed him. Bodies were hanged from bridges!

The Abrahamics will assert that god has created us all and when he did so he gave us the ability to choose, the gift of choice. We could do what we liked. So would the Abrahamics assert.

But he had made us without asking us, without giving us the ability to choose whether we wanted to be made in the first place and in the second place, to be made according to his image. In the third place… ah, never mind.

“Choice,” I ask him. “What choice is that? Where is this choice, exactly?”

I am baffled by the fact that astonishingly awesome minds like that of Mozart or Vivaldi or Beethoven, of Michelangelo, of Sappho of Ezra Pound of Euripides, of Pythagoras and Einstein, minds that gave us the best nutrients for the healthiest of humanity can coexist with the minds of war mongering politicians, too numerous to enumerate and uncompromising thieves and murderers, committers of atrocities beyond belief, also too numerous to enumerate; minds that deplete us of all those nutrients, destroy them all completely, starve humanity of them; I am baffled about the fact that on a daily basis I see both of these extremely opposite types of mind at work, often the one totally ignorant of the other.

Astonishing, wondrous minds that nurture and nourish the human soul on one hand and minds that destroy body and soul on the other. One lot elevates us, makes us humane, empathetic, considerate, loving, happy, while the other builds mountains of blood and gore out of our bodies, clogs our soul with hatred, bitterness, phlegm and everything savage and turns everything we’ve built into rubble.

I disagree with the Abrahamics: we, humans, have no choice, not a single choice on anything of any significance. No god has made us, no god would be so cruel as to make us bereft of choice!

Politics is a cruel lie. A nasty joke where, in a system called Democracy we, the hoi polloi are told that we have a choice. That who governs us is our own choice. We vote whom we choose. No lie is more phosphorescently blatant!

None!

The last day of the last year was one that is still reverberating with the bliss of a wonderful family gathering complete with the sparkling laughter of three tiny tots, grandchildren whose little arms, when wrapped around your neck bring a cascade tears of joy to your eyes. It was a day where we all gorged with mirth and merriment, with boisterous love and with morsels that rivalled the nectar and ambrosia on the tables of Mt Olympus. We are the lucky ones. The very lucky ones. Not that we had a choice in that.

That nanosecond after the clock strikes midnight changes a whole lot of things: a new minute, a new hour, a new day, week, month, year, century millennium…

Empedocles was right: Everything is in a state of flux and the only thing that is stable is this very fact: all things are in a state of flux!

Within that nanosecond we have moved from the past to the present and must ready ourselves to move into the future, all within the next nanosecond.

I feel the vertigo of the slide into oblivion!

And I can not choose to alter any of that.

We, the lucky ones, welcome 2019!

Cassia’s story, by the way, is simply gorgeously romantic. It is a story I very much urge you to read. Not too unlike Joseph Carli’s nun, though much more intense. The sentiments are there and so is the unfortunate end.

In the vast and wonderfully rich vaults of the ABC’s archives there would be, I’m quite certain, a little news item shown on the telly just a few years back. It’s gorgeously thought provoking and it’s about a kiss.

The camera is in the classroom of a High School, going from student to student as they are anxiously peering into the glowing screens of their computers. Their teacher is there also, and she is just as excited as they are. All are waiting for their VCE results. Excitement all around. Bubbles and squeaks are heard and we, on our sofas at home empathise fully and feel bubbly and squeaky along with them. I, a retired teacher (is there such a thing?) also feel that bubble and squeak and know what it’s all about. I recognise the atmosphere of that classroom well. It is exhilarating and bursting with anticipation an atmosphere I’ve felt many, many times.

Suddenly, a young boy sees his results on the screen and screams with unfettered joy. Behind him stands his teacher. Quite spontaneously, she turns to him and gives him a kiss on the cheek, commonly referred to as a “peck.” She pecked no other cheek in that classroom, at least not while the cameras were rolling. It was absolutely nothing more than a motherly, a friendly, a very natural reaction from a proud teacher to her student, for whom she would have given her best that year to make sure he had reached his best potential in the subject she taught and he did, paying her back for her efforts. I know exactly how she must have felt when she saw the boy’s results. I would have felt exactly the same way. The young man received the kiss – yes, the peck – as if it was indeed, his own mum or his best friend who had delivered it on his cheek.

Not a single murmur or post in the social media was made about it being an inappropriate act, or an immoral one or one that was shamefully unprofessional or anything of this nature. The public, quite rightly recognised the deed for what it was and accepted it. No public outrage the likes of which we have been seeing the last few months. No observations about “power differential” or “workplace ethics,” or anything of the sort.

It was a kiss of excitement, an excitement that was well earned after a year’s hard work. A very much, valid excitement. I saw nothing, absolutely nothing untoward about that kiss.

I am a father as well as a teacher and know what it is to raise children, to love them to death and to be with them when they succeed in whatever it is they want to succeed and with them when they struggle with loss. The emotion is very near uncontrollably heart bursting, and nor should it be anything else. Win or lose, it is a team effort, and it is as intense as that during a footy game when the players rush to hug each other whenever one of them scores a goal or deprives the opponent of kicking one.

A teacher is not too unlike a parent when it comes to the love and the care involved. Not too unlike at all.

Nothing unnatural. Nothing to make one jab the air with a condemnatory finger. Nothing to scorn. Nothing to get angry about.

But had that teacher been me, a man, who had felt those very same feelings with his students -the joyful excitement when they won, the sad and sympathetic heart when they had to struggle against harsh realities – had that teacher been me, kissing that boy or – Zeus fore-fend, a girl ! – the story, I dare suggest with quite some certainly, would have had a different ending.

But why?

The federal Court judge, Justice Michael Wigney gives us a strong clue:

“I wouldn’t say ‘yummy’ or ‘scrumptious’ to anybody in my workplace but I’m a boring lawyer, and Mr Rush is an actor in a theatrical workplace where people use florid language,” he said and continued with “Obviously some people see tremendous significance but I have to say depending on the context I am grappling with it.”

Ah, the context!

This article, let me say with the greatest haste I can muster, is not about Mr Rush and what he is facing at the moment. It is not about his alleged actions and nor do I have the slightest wish to enter into any courtroom currently in process. This article is about something else. It’s about examining deeds, not people.

Examining people needs a very careful, a very thorough look at them, a look not unlike one presenting itself to a surgeon before an operation, nor unlike one presenting itself to a judge in a court of justice; and I’m neither a surgeon in surgery nor a judge in a court of justice.

But I am a retired teacher (is there such a thing?) and I have learnt of the crucial need to be thorough and of the need to judge the deed and not the person.

The judgement of people requires entering into hearts and brains and these are the best fortressed organs in our bodies. Fortressed better than the “topless towers of Ilium,” that protected Troy, walls that took ten years for the Greeks to bring down (as Christopher Marlowe put it).

And so, I agree with the judge: The context of the deed is highly, if not vitally important; the whodoneit is not.

When Euripides was writing his Medea in 431 BC, he was not describing the mind of a murderer, he was sending a message to the politicians of the day, politicians, like the great demagogue Pericles who had not long before implemented a law that said that only the children whose parents are both Athenian may be considered to be full Athenian citizens.

All other children are “barbarians” (effectively foreigners) even if they were born in Athens. Medea was born in the distant land of Colchis and was therefore a barbarian even though she was married to Jason, a local. (The play is set in Corinth).

The ancient Greek stage (5th c.BC) was a classroom, or even a pulpit. More of a pulpit for Aeschylus and Sophocles but more of a classroom for Euripides and Euripides was using the myth of Medea, merely as a platform to teach about the consequences of Pericles’ law. Mothers would be expelled and in doing so they’d kill their children to save them from the horrors of living in a land of xenophobes.

Euripides was talking about the importance of the context of a deed. Its birth, its reason, its cause. This is probably one of the reasons why the play came last in that year’s competitions.

The context is just as connected and as important to the deed as are the heart and the mind to a living body. To examine it, to judge it, to understand it one needs to look at its context, at its heart. This is not to say that the context will automatically excuse the deed but it is important for us to include it so as to have a full understanding of that deed. Understanding the deed is understanding the human and, as humans, that is our primary assignment, an assignment that written at the forecourt of the temple of Apollo at Delphi over two-and-a-half millennia ago and turned into a common aphorism by a whole lot of philosophers, including Plato and Socrates.

There is no deed that is naked of context. Not an excuse but a context.

Whether one says ‘yummy’ or ‘scrumptious’ or gives a peck on someone’s cheek depends on the context.

And I come to wonder what would happen in the smoggy atmosphere of the “social media” if the ABC showed that item again – just to agitate our morals up a bit, see what comes to the surface.

Is a kiss just a kiss, a sigh just a sigh, a peck just a peck?

My Grandchildren!

I wish you all the merriest of Xmases, the happiest of 2019 (Good Loooord, is that the time?) and the jolliest of them all for the many years that shall follow.

They came to him. The Theban citizens, in pain and in prayer. They came to king Oedipus and cried for his help.

“…But, you, too, Oedipus, with your own eyes, you too can see how the whole of Thebes is in the grips of a battering sea storm of troubles and you too can see how she cannot raise her head from its murderous waves! You too, can see that our trees let drop their best flowers to the ground just before they become fruit and you can see too that our herds drop dead as they graze and that our women have all become barren.
A despicable pestilence, my lord, has taken our Thebes tightly within its murderous grip, my lord!” Oedipus Rex 30ff.

When Freud read Sophocles’ “Oedipus Rex” he thought that his “eureka moment” had arrived. Such pestilence he thought is natural and it comes from an innate instinctive desire, a “complex,” that has sons wanting to sleep with their mothers. I won’t go on about the conflict he had with Jung about the latter’s Elektra Complex here only to say that both were wrong to think that this was what Sophocles was on about.

Sophocles was not talking about filial sex, though this was the platform, the myth, he based his warning upon but about something far more sinister, far more dangerous and far more common than that: power.

If there is an innate disease, an instinctive desire, a “complex” of some sort or other, that keeps us in fear and despair it is that of our wish to gain power and -and here’s the “complex” bit- to hold on to it. We need to show that we are strong, strong enough not to be hurt by others, to be stronger than others, to be able to destroy our enemies. And then to be able to keep and maintain that power for our own use. Power and the fear of losing it. Power and the energy needed to keep it. From whom? From our enemies, of course.

And who are our enemies?

They are those closest to us. Our sons, our daughters, our brothers and our sisters.

The first ever god, Uranos was castrated by his son, Cronos and Cronos, in turn, was thrown into the Tartarus -the eternal jail for gods and other immortal entities, like Sisyphus and Tantalus and Atlas who had committed heinous crimes- by his own son, Zeus, who is still the ruler of the Universe to this day. Look up towards the peaks of Olympus and you will see him there, thunderbolts in hand and at the ready!

Sophocles was giving his fellow Athenians a lesson that is very similar to the one that the biblical Timothy was giving us about money: “The love of money is the root of all evil.” (1.6:10).

Substitute the word “money” with the word “power” and you’ve got the similarities.

The next two plays in the story emphasise that lesson: His “Antigone” and Aeschylus’ “Seven against Thebes” describe just how evil, how destructive the love for power is.

But back to King Oedipus of Thebes.

“Oedipus Rex” watercolour by Pamela Stadus

When the people of Thebes gathered around his palace and asked him to try and find out what the cause of this destruction was, he swore to do so and launched an investigation so thorough that Sherlock Holmes and Miss Marple working together couldn’t match. This was a most meticulous, forensic search that lifted every carpet and opened every secret compartment of every chest of drawers, had every cobweb perturbed, every skeleton brought out of the cupboard, every wound put under the microscope, every foot and its heel, every foot print and finger print scrutinised assiduously and every piece of DNA parsed thoroughly.

King Oedipus began this investigation by asking the local vicar of the gods, the prophet Teiresias and from there he went on to question servants and shepherds and other citizens, his brother-in-law, Creon, until he discovered that he was the culprit. He had killed his father. He had sat upon his father’s throne and he had taken over his father’s power.

Then he married his mother and with her had four children. But that bit wasn’t the main offence. The offence was that he robbed his father of his power.

All this, of course happened in total ignorance of the relationships involved and by those involved in the crime.

The Palace, under King Oedipus had opened its gates and a thorough examination of all pertinent facts was conducted. Eventually the problem was solved and resolved. The crime was revealed and understood, its perpetrator arrested and punished severely – by the investigator himself, King Oedipus.

In the process, a most powerful lesson was learnt, a lesson about power itself: “Those who feast in power and are gluttonous of it, will indubitably taste the famine that is delivered by the powerless.”

The same entreaties were directed to our king, Scott Morrison.

Oh, we call them “Prime Ministers” these days but they are, in effect, as powerful and as fearful of losing their power as were the kings of Thebes and elsewhere back then.

They came to him, to Scott Morrison, as suppliants in pain and concern and prayed that he let the children and the adults who are in desperate need of medical care as declared to be so by two medical practitioners, children and adults who are imprisoned in the Guantanamo-like tents of our making, in Nauru and Manus to come to Australia.

Deaths had taken place there because of our bloody-minded nastiness. Deaths, injuries, both inflicted by others as well as by their own hand but most commonly and savagely because of the conditions of the prisons and their inability, the inability of those poor inmates to see an end to it. Their inability to understand what it is that they have done which has caused this country to treat them with such abhorrent hatred as if they were not seeking help and safety but as if they were some satanic abomination. This is what they just can’t understand and this what they want investigated, and this is what any fair-minded human being also wants investigated with the same thoroughness and methodical effort engaged by Sophocles’ Oedipus. Oedipus the King!

Morrison, like Freud and Jung did not learn from Sophocles’ exhortations and warnings about power, which is that you throw wide open your palace gates, you let in the people in and you ask them questions. You investigate all crimes committed with all the punctiliousness you can master. And you go on investigating until you find a solution and work on a resolution.

You do not punish until you find a crime and a culprit.

Oedipus the King showed his love for his people by relinquishing his throne and all the power that came with it and by working at finding out what ailed them, what ailed his city, his Thebes.

Morrison, the Prime Minister, instead, shut down his beloved palace, his seat of power, the thing he loves more than his people.

No, he wouldn’t allow any questions, he would brook no investigation, seek no solution and definitely proffer no resolution. He would tolerate no human emotion, accept no human rights inquiries, seek out no answers.

The inmates, those poor children and their parents, those people who stretched out their hand to us, asking us to stretch ours to meet it, are still there. In Manus and Nauru, still suffering, still wandering what on earth might this country be like? What savage hearts live here?

I cringe and at times I scream, when I hear the mantras, “Australia is a compassionate country,” or “Australia is a tolerant country,” or even “Australia is a generous country!”

To whom, exactly is Australia all these things? And how much of it?

We should now be re-addressing JFK’s exhortation, “ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”

Or as Aristophanes had put into Euripides’ mouth in his satire, “The Frogs,”

“I hate a citizen who is slow to help his city, quick to cause her harm, who’s got his eyes wide open to anything that helps himself but completely shut when it comes to helping the city.” Frogs, 1430

Ask that question and show that anger of those occupying the throne room, or the oval office, or the office of a Prime Minister.

Ask that of anyone who holds even a smidgen of power.