Another Dante moment

It's been a while since El Cabrero has discussed his old pal Dante Alighieri, but I've been thinking about a passage from his Inferno recently in the context of current political controversies.

In Canto III, at the outskirts of hell, Dante and his guide Virgil pass a large number of condemned souls driven eternally in circles and tormented by gadflies and hornets. They had it so bad that "They are envious of every other fate," which in Dante's version of hell is really saying something.

These unfortunate creatures are those who didn't take a stand for either good or evil during their days on earth and are equally unwanted in either heaven or hell.

What is interesting to me about this is that Dante also includes in this group those people who considered themselves too pure to get down and dirty in the real human world. He singles out Celestine, who was elected pope in 1294 but abdicated, leaving the spot to be taken by someone he considered to be much worse:

I looked, and I beheld the shade of him
Who made through cowardice the great refusal.

The Catholic Church didn't see things that way--Celestine was later canonized--but I see Dante's point. Holding out for perfection in an inherently flawed world can amount to choosing uselessness and allowing even worse things to prevail.


CAIRNS 'R US. This item from yesterday's Gazette is about cairns or rock structures found on a nearby farm and believed to be the work of American Indians. (We have some at Goat Rope Farm but they're not as big and could just be more recent rock piles.) When asked to estimate their age, Roger Wise, an archaeologist friend of mine gave a great reply. As the article reported,

"It's probably somewhere between 1750 A.D. and 10,000 B.C.," he said with a grin.

And you know what--I'll bet he's right!

INEQUALITY AND HEALTH. The social determinants of health, as in things like status and inequality, have been a frequent theme here lately. Here's an op-ed by a friend of mine on an issue we're working on in WV.

THEATER OF WAR. Greek tragedy has also been a favorite theme here. Now, the Department of Defense is taking a look at what some of the plays of Sophocles (Philoctetes and Ajax) can say about the problems of combat veterans.

(Has anyone noticed that it's been a long time since my last ancient Greek jag? I'm feeling another one coming on.)

GAME THEORY. This item looks at auctions and the psychology of commitment.

DEFICITS AND DEFICITS. In a post from his blog, Paul Krugman observes the following about politicians:

many, if not most, are perfectly happy to incur huge unfunded liabilities for the wars they want to fight, and/or to eliminate inheritance taxes for the heirs of multimillionaires. It’s only deficits incurred to help working Americans that get them all moralistic.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Suffering into truth

"Zeus has led us on to know,
the Helmsmen lays it down as law
that we must suffer, suffer into truth."--Aeschylus, Agamemnon

Lately the theme at Goat Rope has been Greek tragedy, with a particular focus on the work of Aeschylus, the earliest and for my money the greatest tragic poet. For the last two weeks, the focus has been on the Oresteia, the only surviving tragic trilogy.

Its theme is huge and one that I find myself returning to again and again. It's nothing less than the emergence of democracy and social justice after and in spite of generations of violence and excess. The take home message seems to me to be that no matter how awful the past has been, we can do better.

Aeschylus has a very dynamic view of the universe and of human life. For all the terrible things that have happened in the past and continue to happen, we do have the possibility of moving to a higher level of social life. History is not destiny. In his plays, even the gods are capable of evolving and learning and moving to a higher plane.

For Aeschylus--poet, democrat, and veteran of the Persian wars--we can learn from past mistakes and break they cycle of violence and tyranny. It won't be easy, but we can, as he said, suffer into truth.

SPEAKING OF MOVING TO A HIGHER LEVEL, here's a good one about the possibilities of health care reform.

URGENT BIRDLIKE DINOSAUR UPDATE here.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY West Virginia. El Cabrero's beloved state turns 146 today. Here's a state history quiz from the Daily Mail.

MY BAD. Email subscribers to this blog may have gotten an accidental early edition. Sorry about that.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Worship the Mean

"The Remorse of Orestes" by William Adolphe Bougereau, by way of wikipedia.

Welcome to Goat Rope's series on Greek tragedy. You'll also find links and comments about current events if you scroll down. Right now we're finishing up Aeschylus with the last play of the only surviving trilogy, The Eumenides.

"Neither anarchy nor tyranny, my people.
Worship the Mean, I urge you..."--spoken by Athena

This play brings to a close the terrible saga of the house of Atreus, which has been plagued with violence, excess and outrage for five generations. For more on the back story or the preceding plays, please click on earlier posts.

Brief recap: in The Agamemnon, first play in the series, the title character who led the Greeks to Troy returns home and is murdered by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus. For Clytemnestra, this was in revenge for his sacrificing of their daughter Iphigenia ten years earlier at the command of Artemis to gain fair winds for Troy. For Aegisthus, it's about avenging an outrage Agamemnon's father perpetrated on his side of the family.

In the second play, The Libation Bearers, Agamemnon's son Orestes returns from exile and kills Aegisthus and his mother to avenge his father at the command of Apollo and then is struck mad and haunted by the avenging Furies, dark underworld goddesses who punish those who kill blood relations.

In The Eumenides, Orestes seeks sanctuary at the shrine of Apollo at Delphi, who puts the Furies to sleep. He is told to go to the city of Athena and seek mercy at her shrine. Once there, the goddess determines to end the cycle once and for all by appointing a jury of 12 citizens of the city to hear the case and judge between Orestes and the Furies. When the jury reaches a tie, she casts the deciding vote and acquits Orestes, who is free to return to Argos.

The Furies are outraged and threaten to strike Athens with plague but are placated by being given a special place of honor in the city. Their name is changed to "the kindly ones," which is the English translation of the title.

The great theme is the triumph of democracy and the rule of law over generations of bloodshed and violence. The trilogy has been called The Divine Comedy of ancient Greece. Like Dante's classic, it is a journey through hell and purgatory not to an unworldly paradise but rather to a state of human justice.

As Robert Fagles and W.B. Stanford put it, "The Oresteia is our rite of passage from savagery to civilization."

GAME ON for health care reform.

SPEAKING OF WHICH, hundreds of state legislators have sent a message to Congress in support of a public option in any reform package.

ANOTHER GOOD FIGHT in the pipeline is the TRADE Act, which will be introduced in Congress any day now. It would revamp our approach to trade deals and make sure they include more protections for workers, the environment and consumers.

CLIMATE CHANGE, right here right now.

NUTS! are what this newly discovered dinosaur ate.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

No arrow from a bow

The murder of Aegisthus by Orestes. Image courtesy of wikipedia.

Greek tragedies are about as far removed as you can get from the standard modern fare of action movies, where good guys fight bad guys and usually win. In tragedies, the good guys are often flawed and the bad ones often have their reasons.

In tragedies, people are sometimes just overwhelmed and destroyed by circumstances or are caught up in a chain of events they don't understand or control. Sometimes, the harder protagonists try to avoid some awful outcome the more surely they bring it about.

And sometimes they are forced to do things they don't want to do or are caught up in situations where they are confronted with competing ethical and religious claims that can't possibly be reconciled.

That kind of dilemma characterizes the plays Goat Rope is looking at these days, the Orestes trilogy of Aeschylus. Agamemnon in the play of the same name has a sacred duty to lead an army to Troy to punish the sacrilege of Paris in violating xenia or hospitality by abducting Helen of Troy. All the leaders of Greece had sworn a holy oath to uphold the marriage and punish anyone who defiled it. If he doesn't fulfill this sacred duty, he and everyone else will suffer terribly.

But the goddess Artemis, protectress of defenseless things, foresees the slaughter of the innocent when Troy is destroyed. She withholds winds unless and until Agamemnon sacrifices his daughter Iphigenia. As Martha Nussbaum summarizes, "If Agamemnon does not fulfill Artemis's condition, everyone, including Iphigenia, will die." No easy way out. He does and seals his fate.

In the second part of the trilogy, The Libation Bearers, his son Orestes is under an oracle by the god Apollo that requires him to slay his mother and her lover Aegisthus in revenge for their murder of Agamemnon. If he refused, "no arrow from a bow could touch such peaks of agony" that he would undergo. No easy way out.

While most of us in a normal week are not required by deities to sacrifice or murder family members, that kind of tragic conflict between competing valid but irreconcilable claims--usually on a less gory scale--is all too common in public and private life.

Most of us don't like to think about that kind of thing or imagine that there's always some easy escape. The ancient Athenians had the courage to make it the cornerstone of their greatest public works of art.

WHO'DA THUNK IT? Urban farming might become a career path.

ON A SIMILAR NOTE, cooperation is growing between the labor and environmental movements.

WHAT HE SAID. Here's Dean Baker on health care reform and the return of Harry and Louise.

A NOVEL WAY TO COPE WITH THE RECESSION: professional wrestling!

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

No easy way out

Iphigenia by Anselm Feuerbach (1862), by way of wikipedia.

One of the things that makes Greek tragedy so compelling is its stark realism. For all the gods, heroes and mythological elements upon which it draws, its basic themes of inherent and unavoidable conflicts are all too common.

In the words of Martha Nussbaum, writing in The Fragility of Goodness,

Greek tragedy shows good people being ruined because of things that just happen to them, things that they do not control. This is certainly sad; but it is an ordinary fact of human life, and no one would deny that it happens...Tragedy also shows something more deeply disturbing: it shows good people doing bad things, things otherwise repugnant to their ethical character and commitments, because of circumstances whose origin does not lie with them.

Even more disturbing, however is the fact that tragedies

also show us, and dwell upon, another more intractable sort of case--one which has come to be called, as a result, the situation of 'tragic conflict'. In such cases we see a wrong action committed without any direct physical compulsion and in full knowledge of its nature, by a person whose ethical character or commitments would otherwise dispose him to reject the act. The constraint comes from the presence of circumstances that prevent the adequate fulfillment of two valid ethical claims. Tragedy tends, on the whole, to take such situations very seriously.

In popular parlance, it looks at situations in which you're "damned if you do and damned if you don't." If you've never been in one, may your luck hold out.

WHAT ABOUT THE ALREADY POOR? Here's an opinion piece by Barbara Ehrenreich about a group left out of much recent media coverage of the recession.

MORE FALLOUT. Here's the Boston Globe on the recent US Supreme Court decision on a judicial travesty in El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia.

INTERESTING IDEA. High altitude wind machines could generate a lot of clean energy.

BEGINNINGS. Here's an interesting item on the origin of life.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A stroke of the wet sponge

Cassandra by Evelyn De Morgan, courtesy of wikipedia.

El Cabrero has any number of superstitions, none of which are rationally justifiable but all of which persist nonetheless. One of these has to do with lucky and unlucky names. There is a part of me that believes that it is bad luck to name someone after a person or character who had extraordinarily bad luck.

One name that I really like but would never name a child is Cassandra, who is a major character in Aeschylus' tragedy Agamemnon, which has been the theme this week. To recap, she was a daughter of King Priam of Troy. Apollo fell in love with her and promised the gift of prophecy in return for intimacy. When she refused consent at the last moment, she was cursed by the god to have a accurate vision of the future but one that no one would believe.

I hate it when that happens.

Anyhow, she returned with King Agamemnon after the fall of Troy as a trophy and a slave. She knew that death awaited both of them at the hands of Clytemnestra but was powerless to avert it.

She gets the last word this week. Her last works speak volumes about a key theme of tragedy and express what Martha Nussbaum called "the fragility of goodness." Here goes (from the translation of Robert Fagles):

Oh men, your destiny.
When all is well a shadow can overturn it.
When trouble comes a stroke of the wet sponge,
and the picture's blotted out. And that,
I think that breaks the heart.

THE FUTURE OF CAPITALISM, American style, is the subject of this article by Joseph Stiglitz.

HATE is alive and well. Here is Paul Krugman on the right wing media's role in stoking it

TOUGH TIMES FOR RECENT GRADUATES. The latest snapshot from the Economic Policy Institute shows how tough it is for many to find jobs. I guess "Plastics" isn't quite getting it these days.

GREEN JOBS are here. According to Wired Science, 770,000 Americans already have one.

NOT SO GREEN JOBS. The Obama administration reveal more of its approach to mountaintop removal mining yesterday.

SLEEP ON IT. Research suggests that deep sleep with REM (not the band, although they are pretty cool) enhances creative problem solving.

THIS IS WEIRD, but the economy of El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia actually grew by 2.5 percent in 2008, way outpacing the national economy.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

"A jangled symphony of ill"

Clytemnestra emerges after murdering Agamemnon in this 1882 painting by artist John Collier. Image courtesy of wikipedia.

Goat Rope's ongoing series on Greek tragedy continues, with the focus at the moment on Aeschylus' Agamemnon. If you like this kind of thing, please click on earlier posts. If you don't, you can scroll down for links and comments about current events.

"There arises from these halls in a single voice
A perpetual choir,
A jangled symphony of ill,
With ill its theme."-Spoken by Cassandra

This play is the first in the only surviving Greek tragic trilogy. Its great theme is the emergence of democracy and the rule of law after a long and horrendous series of crimes and outrages. This play, though, is all about crimes and outrages.

The Agamemnon begins with the complaints of a watchman whose duty it is to gaze from the roof of the palace at Argos for a signal fire that will announce the fall of Troy. The event is expected due to oracles that say this will happen in the tenth year of the war. At last, the flame is spotted.

Meanwhile, a chorus of the old men of Argos ponder past events about the war with a growing sense of foreboding. They recall King Agamemnon sacrificing his own daughter Iphigenia at the command of Artemis to gain fair winds for Troy and appease her wrath as well as the family's long violent history. Clytemnestra, Agamemnon's wife, emerges from the palace to announce the event, which is also confirmed by a messenger.

Agamemnon arrives with Cassandra, daughter of Priam of Troy. Cassandra was a prophetess cursed by the god Apollo for refusing his advances. Her punishment is that she will have true knowledge of the future but would not be believed. She was Agamemnon's prize and is now his slave.

Clytemnestra pretends to welcome him and urges him to walk on a fabulously expensive carpet of purple or scarlet. This may have been the original red carpet treatment. He initially refuses because to do so would be an act of hubris, but she harasses him until he does. Cassandra stays outside briefly, speaking incoherently to the chorus of past crimes and impending doom, then she goes within.

The chorus outside hears the dying screams of Agamemnon, who is trapped in a net and murdered by Clytemnestra. Cassandra soon suffers the same fate. When the doors of the place open, Clytemnestra emerges, triumphant in avenging the death of her daughter. She is joined by her illicit lover Aegisthus, whose brothers were killed and served to their unknowing father by Agamemnon's father Atreus. For him too this is an act of vengeance.

The chorus is horrified and makes noise of resistance, but troops loyal to the bloodstained couple disperse the crowd. A new tyranny rules over Argos. So ends the first part of the trilogy.

The violence of a foreign war spills over into violence at home. Golly, it's a good thing that doesn't happen any more...

SUPREME COURT. Here's a Washington Post editorial on the recent US Supreme Court decision about justice for sale in WV. And here is a NY Times article on its legal implications. This is a take from the McClatchy papers. And, while we're at it, this AP article interviews Massey CEO Don Blankenship about the decision.

MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE RANCH, Massey won a different round on the WV Supreme Court in a decision about a controversial coal processing facility near an elementary school. Here's a summary with multiple links from Ken Ward's Coal Tattoo.

NOT COOL. The American Medical Association has come out opposing a public health care option, preferring to allow "the market" to do the job. How's that coming?

RUST BELT BLUES. Here's a postcard from Detroit about work and hard times.

YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT, in which case we may be in trouble, according to a new film on the food industry.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Bastions of wealth

The Murder of Agamemnon, painting by Pierre-Narcisse Guérin. Image courtesy of wikipedia.

Bastions of wealth
are no defence for the man
who treads the grand altar of Justice
down and out of sight.--Spoken by the chorus in Aeschylus' Agamemnon.

Goat Rope’s ongoing series on Greek tragedy continues. You’ll also find links and comments about current events below. Right now we’re on Aeschylus Orestes trilogy. If you like this kind of thing, please click on earlier posts.

According to Paul Roche,

“The Oresteia is the story of an aristocratic house in the process of destroying itself under a hereditary curse, which is both a destiny and a free expression of love and hate. The blood feud can end only by total self-destruction, or by giving way to a divinely established justice which is itself evolving—evolving from primitive concepts of retribution into a higher order of compassion, enlightenment, and peace."

Agamemnon, leader of the Greek expedition to Troy, gives the title to the first part of the trilogy. He was a prominent character in Homer’s Iliad (where he always seemed like a jerk to me) and his ghost appears in the Odyssey.

In the Odyssey, an epic of homecoming, Agamemnon’s return contrasts with that of Odysseus. Like all the Greeks who committed outrages and excesses in their sack of Troy, they are destined to suffer. But while Odysseus lives and is reconciled with the virtuous Penelope after many sorrows and a long and dangerous journey, Agamemnon is murdered by his wife Clytemnestra in revenge for sacrificing their daughter Iphigenia for fair winds to Troy ten years earlier at the command of the goddess Artemis.

In Homer, Penelope is the archetypal good wife while Clytemnestra is the archetypal bad wife (although I always thought Agamemnon had it coming).

While Greek tragic writers almost always used mythic themes, they were free to adapt them to current circumstances. Aeschylus went way beyond Homer in his version of the story, even carving out a special place for his hometown of Athens in its resolution.

More tomorrow.

SPEAKING OF BASTIONS OF WEALTH BEING NO DEFENSE, here's a NY Times editorial about the recent US Supreme Court decision regarding hijinks on the WV Supreme Court.

A PLUG FOR PAINE. This item suggests that Thomas Paine is a founder worth another look today.

PLAIN ENGLISH. The language is projected to add its millionth word today. I recommend "glarnox." No definition yet, though some of our best people are working on it.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A history of violence

The punishment of Tantalus.

"I know this house's ancestry--
it's pedigree of sin."

Violence seems to run through families, generations, countries and even entire regions of the world, with outrage breeding outrage. Sadly, sometimes those who were its victims become its perpetrators.

Ending that seemingly endless cycle and establishing a higher social order is the theme of the Oresteia by Aeschylus. Although its message is profoundly political, the dramatic trilogy focuses on how violence played out in one family...and what a family it was.

Here's a short summary of the backstory of the drama:

1. Tantalus served up his son Pelops (literally) at a banquet for the gods. They were not amused and he was one of the few ancients to qualify for personalized eternal damnation by being "tantalized" with food and drink but forever unable to get it. The gods reconstructed Pelops physically but not morally.

2. Pelops sabotaged the chariot of his father-in-law to be, which led to his death. Then he double crossed and murdered they guy who helped him do it. The guy not surprisingly cursed the house with his last breath.

3. Pelops sons Atreus and Thyestes set a new standard for nastiness. First, they contested for power. Then Thyestes seduced the wife of Atreus. Then, after a family meeting for "reconciliation," Atreus kills Thyestes children and serves them for dinner to their unknowing father. One, Aegisthus, got away.

Nice guys, huh?

In the play proper, the merry dance goes on:

4. Agamemnon, son of Atreus, sacrifices his own daughter Iphigenia in order to get fair winds to sail for Troy at the beginning of that war.

5. On his return, Clytemnestra with the help of her lover Aegisthus (remember him?) kills Agamemnon.

6. Orestes, son of Clytemnestra and Agamemnon, kills his own mother at the order of Apollo.

Then it really gets messy.

While all that sounds like an incredible downer, the plays are actually optimistic about the possibility of people, with the help of divine wisdom, to rise above all that and break the endless cycle.

More to come.

GO, SUPREMES! The big news around here is the US Supreme Court's decision regarding Massey Energy and whether a state justice elected with money from CEO Don Blankenship should recuse himself form cases involving the company. The court said he should. Here's the NY Times on it. Here's the Washington Post. And here's the Charleston Gazette.

A "WARRIOR GENE?" Some scientists think they've found one that is associated with violence. Hmmm...maybe that explains the whole Atreus thing.

ON THAT NOTE, global spending on weapons is through the roof.

BULLY FOR YOU. The research is in, and some strategies seem to work in confronting bullying.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Out of the darkness

The theme at Goat Rope these days has been Greek tragedy but you'll find links and comments about current events below. Today we start on the Oresteia by Aeschylus, one of the greatest dramatic works ever written. Its great theme is the human journey from violence and barbarism to democracy and the rule of law. Too bad the journey isn't over yet

According to Robert Fagles and W.B. Stanford,

Aeschylus was forty five in 480 B.C. when the Persians sacked Athens and destroyed the shrines of the gods on the Acropolis. Soon afterwards he fought in the forces which defeated the Persians at Salamis and Plataea, as he had fought in the Greek victory at Marathon ten years before. The Greeks in general, and the Athenians in particular, because they had played the major part in the triumph of Hellas, saw these victories as a triumph of right over might, courage over fear, freedom over servitude, moderation over arrogance.

In the optimistic climate that prevailed after that great victory, it was hoped that a new era of harmony, rationality, and justice would prevail. Aeschylus' trilogy about the violence-ridden family of Atreus developed these themes.

More to come.

CEO PAY. The Obama administration is proposing that firms that have received two rounds of bailout money must submit changes in executive pay to government oversight.

GROSSED OUT. Some scientists suggest a link between the emotion of disgust and conservative political attitudes.

HEALTH CARE. Millions of Americans want a public option to be included in health care reform, but it's going to be a struggle to get one.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Enemy brothers

(Goat Rope's survey of Greek tragedy continues. You'll also find links and comments about current events below.)

When men die by a kinsman's hand,
When brother is murdered by brother,
And the dust of the earth drinks in
The crimson blood that blackens and dries,
Who then can provide cleansing?
Who can wash it away?

The theme of enemy brothers shows up pretty often in myth, sacred stories and folklore--and sometimes in real life. Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau, Romulus and Remus are a few that come to mind.

In Aeschylus' Seven Against Thebes, it's the two sons of Oedipus, Eteocles and Polyneices. The two were supposed to alternate in power in Thebes following the...uhhh...family problems of their old man, but Eteocles refused to yield to his brother. Polyneices then roused an army led by himself and six other heroes, hence the title.

Both were cursed by their father for maltreatment after his fall. Oedipus predicted that their inheritance would be divided by a stranger, which turned out to be iron.

There's not a great deal of action in this play. Eteocles, attended by a chorus of Theban women, receives news from and gives orders to a herald, dispatching forces to guard six gates of the city from the invading army. The last enemy at the gate is his brother. Though he is warned against shedding kindred blood, he insists on facing Polyneices himself and they kill each other.



Kinship problems ran in that family...

The ending of the play, which anticipates Sophocles' Antigone, may have been tampered with by later scribes. It is of course the later Oedipus plays of Sophocles that are best known, but cursed families such as his were a favorite tragic theme of Greek dramatists.

Aeschylus was particularly concerned with the cycle and spiral of violence through the generations and how this could be brought to an end. He took up the subject at length in his Orestes trilogy, a masterpiece for the ages. More on that next week.



GETTING IT RIGHT THIS TIME. Here's Paul Krugman with warnings on health care reform.

GREENING COWS. A change of diet may reduce methane production caused by windy cows.

ALTRUISM. This item speculates on what may have been its bloody roots.

DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS. Here's the link I messed up yesterday on a new report showing that West Virginians lead the nation in psychological distress.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

The first cowgirls

The Danaides, by John William Waterhouse by way of wikipedia.

"On trouble's wing you will not find two plumes alike.."

Goat Rope lately has been looking at Greek tragedies, with those of Aeschylus being the main items on the menu at present. If you scroll down, you'll also find links and comments about current events.

Most of the plays by Aeschylus and the other tragic dramatists that survived to the present are incomplete trilogies. One such is The Suppliants, the first and only survivor of a trilogy that relates the story of the daughters of Danaus, a descendant if Io.

If you recall, Io was a young woman of Argos who attracted the amorous attention of Zeus. Hera tried to head things off and punish her by turning her into a cow tormented by a gadfly. She wandered the known world and eventually wound up in Egypt, where she was restored to human form and gave birth to Zeus' child Epaphus.

The trilogy by Aeschylus takes place a couple of generations later when Danaus and his 50 daughters flee Egypt to avoid a forced marriage to the 50 sons of their uncle Aegyptus. They seek refuge in their ancestral city of Argos, where King Pelasgus and the citizens of the city grant it. They are pursued by the sons of Aegyptus, which is pretty much where the action ends.

What probably happened in the rest of the trilogy was that Pelasgus was killed in the ensuing fight and Danaus became tyrant (non-hereditary ruler, not necessarily a dictator) of Thebes and was forced to agree to the marriages. The daughters of Danaus agree to kill their husbands and all but one, Hypermnestra, do so. She was motivated by love and for this is punished by her father.

Danaus in turn is killed by Hypermnestra's husband Lynceus, who becomes ruler of Thebes. The women who killed their husbands are pardoned with the help of the love goddess Aphrodite.

The theme may have been the power of love to promote reconciliation. One fragment spoken by Aphrodite survives from the concluding play that shows love as a cosmic force on which all things depend:

"Longs the pure sky to blend with Earth, and Love
Doth Earth impel to yield to his embrace;
The rain shower, falling from the slumberous heaven,
Kisses the Earth; and Earth brings forth for mortals
Pasture for sheep-flocks and Demeter's grain.
The woods in spring their dewy nuptials hold;
And of all these I am in part the cause."

The play and the earlier myths that inspired it raise some interesting issues. One is the debt the Greeks felt they owed to Egypt. Another is the sacred relationship between guest and host and especially that between a suppliant--someone who begs for mercy and/or help--and the person to whom he or she appeals. Zeus was the patron of supplicants and it was considered dangerous to deny mercy when someone pleaded for it.

Blessed are the merciful, in other words. As the chorus puts it in the play,

"If you respect the suppliant,
The sacrifice you pay will be the best
That a man of pure life can offer
On the gracious altars of the gods"

ECONOMIC RIGHTS/HUMAN RIGHTS discussed here.

BUBBLE (HOUSING) BUBBLE, toil and trouble.

HEALTH CARE. The recession has caused many Americans to cut back on refilling prescriptions. Meanwhile, here's the latest on President Obama's approach to health care reform.

THIS JUST IN. Scientists can track penguin poop from space. While that is undoubtedly a worthy objective in itself, they are using it to locate penguin colonies. I'm waiting for the wolverines...

STRESSED OUT. Residents of El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia have the highest rate of psychological distress, according to a new federal report.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Ziggy and Xerxes

Themistocles, leader of the Greek naval forces at Salamis. Image courtesy of wikipedia.

"For pride will blossom; soon its ripening kernel is
Infatuation; and its bitter harvest, tears."

A common image of Greek tragedy is one that El Cabrero likes to think of as the Ziggy Stardust interpretation. I am referring to the David Bowie song in which the title character "took it all too far/but boy could he play guitar"--i.e., he was someone brought down by excess.

That doesn't work for all tragedies but it fits Aeschylus' The Persians pretty well. In it, the Persian ruler Xerxes plays Ziggy. Master of a huge land empire and incredible wealth, he wasn't content with what he had but planned a massive invasion of Greece.

For Aeschylus, Herodotus, and many others, Xerxes was the embodiment of hubris and excess, which was also impiety--the pagan equivalent of blasphemy--against the gods.

One example of this impiety as far as the Greeks were concerned was Xerxes' audacity in building a bridge of ships across the Hellespont, the narrow body of water between Asia Minor and Europe. This was seen as the attempt to shackle the sea itself. When a storm damaged this project, he was said to have ordered the sea to be flogged.

In biblical language, this is the pride that goeth before a fall. And the fall comes fast in the tragedy.

It begins with the anxiety of the Persian court and Xerxes' mother Atossa over the army's fate. It gets worse. A messenger arrives with news of the total defeat of the Persian navy at Salamis. It gets so bad that Atossa consults the shade of her dead husband and former emperor Darius, who is appalled by the excess and loss. (Note: not to be nitpicky, but the real Darius planned to do the same thing but died before he could do it.) By the end of the play, a chastened and humbled Xerxes slinks home.

The play can be interpreted as Athenian triumphalism but it seems to me that it was also a warned to a confident city-state and budding empire to avoid making the same kind of mistakes. Too bad it was a warning not taken.

ANOTHER ROUND. Economist Dean Baker is one of several calling for a second stimulus.

GOING UNDERGROUND. Here's an item about infiltrating hate groups.

ANIMAL REGRET. They may experience it too.

IN CASE YOU'RE RUNNING A LITTLE SHORT, here's a new hominid.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

"...man is mortal and must learn to curb his pride"

Persian Xerxes, by way of wikipedia.

"...Let no man
Scorning the fortune that he has, in greed for more
Pour out his wealth in utter waste. Zeus, throned on high,
Sternly chastises arrogant and boastful men."

Nearly all Greek tragedies are about mythological events. The one exception is The Persians by Aeschylus, which is the earliest surviving tragedy of the earliest tragic writer.

The play is set in the Persian royal city of Susa and it portrays the royal family and court when the news of their disastrous defeat by the Greek navy at Salamis arrives by messenger. Produced only eight years after the event by a veteran of that war, it is the earliest account we have of that decisive conflict.

Perhaps surprisingly, Aeschylus did not demonize his former foes. The Persian nobles are portrayed with respect and a degree of sympathy. As the French writer Albert Camus wrote in The Rebel, "The Greeks never made the human mind into an armed camp, and in this respect we are inferior to them."

The roots of the conflict were the efforts of Athenians to aid Greek colonies that had fallen under Persian rule. The Persian ruler Darius vowed to punish Athens and attempted a punitive expedition in 490 BC which resulted in the Greek victory at Marathon. Darius vowed a major invasion using all the resources of his empire but died before he could carry it out.

That task was left to Xerxes, who is portrayed by Greek sources such as Herodotus and Aeschylus as arrogant and full of hubris. The war began in earnest in August 480 when the Spartans inflicted heavy losses and died to the last man at the pass of Thermopylae. The naval battle at Salamis occurred a month later. Under the leadership of Themistocles, the Persian navy was basically destroyed as an effect force. A land army remained, only to be repelled the following year.

Tomorrow: the play itself.

SPEAKING OF MARATHON, here's an article about a different way of training for one.

THE RIGHT TO ORGANIZE. From the AFLCIO blog, here are links to two op-eds on the Employee Free Choice Act.

OH GOOD. Thanks to the "charity" of BB&T, more Ayn Rand propaganda came our way.

DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS. Here's the messed up link to the article about Charleston's sustainability fair.

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What if?

Greek hoplite versus Persian warrior. Image courtesy of wikipedia.

Have you ever racked your brain wondering what if? What if you or I had done something differently at a critical point in our lives?

For that matter, what if, say, Lincoln or Julius Caesar weren't assassinated? What if Alexander the Great lived another 40 years? What if Trotsky won out over Stalin in the early USSR? What if Hitler had died in a mortar attack during World War I? What if....

That kind of thinking can drive you crazy, but it does serve to point out that personal and world history has lots of places where things could have gone lots of different ways.

One such turning point in the ancient world was the war between Greece and the Persian empire. If anyone was taking bets then, the smart money would have been on the might of Persia rather than on Greece, which was not a nation but a number of independent city states that spent much of their time warring against each other.

Greek tragedy, the theme lately here at Goat Rope, came into its own in the aftermath of the Greek victory over the might of Persia. Aeschylus, the earliest tragedian whose works survive, was himself a veteran of that war. He fought at the battle of Marathon and possibly at Salamis and Plataea.

Although he wrote as many as 90 plays (of which only seven survive) and won many honors for this, his epitaph mentions none of this. Instead, it says:

Aeschylus, Euphorion's son, this tablet hides
Who passed away in Gela where the wheat fields grow:
His bravery the glorious shrine of Marathon can tell
Where the deep-maned Medes had learnt it well.

Interestingly, one of Aeschylus' surviving tragedies portrays this world historic conflict from the point of view of his enemies--and he does it well and respectfully. We seem to have lost that ability.

More on that tomorrow.

CLIMATE CHANGE. Here's something else for the coal industry to deny.

CENTER WHAT? This article argues that American attitudes are leaning in a progressive direction.

DEREGULATION. In this op-ed, Paul Krugman suggests that the roots of the current economic crisis can be traced to the explosion of debt from Reagan era deregulation.

SUSTAIN THIS. Four animals from Goat Rope Farm (eight counting humans) were represented at Charleston WV's Sustainabilty Fair.

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Arrogance and opportunity

The goddess Nemesis. Don't mess with this one.

It is a fact of life that sometimes the wealthy and powerful tend to overreach. So do the rest of us in different departments of life.

That is often but not always a theme of Greek tragedy. Some characters are undone by their excessive pride, outrageous actions, or desire for knowledge. One lesson that such dramas were intended to teach is to beware of this danger.

But there's another way of looking at this that may be relevant to people interested in social justice. When you're struggling against more powerful forces, often it's their very overreach that creates an opening for action.

I can't say it any better than a friend did in a conversation earlier this week in talking about a real situation folks are working on here. He said:

Arrogance creates the opportunity for social change.

And, for the underdogs of the world, that isn't so tragic after all.

WHEN LESS IS NOT MORE. Many working families that still have jobs are dealing with pay cuts.

CHICKEN LITTLE REVISITED. It looks like the sky is falling again. This time, it's about health care reform.

SPEAKING OF WHICH, here's Don Perdue, one of the best members of the WV House of Delegates, on the same topic.

A REAL STIMULUS. This snapshot by the Economic Policy Institute makes the case that increases in the minimum wage boost consumer spending.

IN PRAISE OF ANIMALS. You don't have to travel around the world to be amazed and entertained by them, according to this author. His enthusiasm for the subject indicates to El Cabrero that he doesn't have goats.

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Lessons unlearned

Artist's image of the theater of Dionysus.

The theme at Goat Rope lately is Greek tragedy. You'll also find links and comments about current events below.

As mentioned yesterday, democracy and tragedy grew together in ancient Athens and the latter was seen as vital to the former. I'd argue that this is still true today.

All kinds of themes and lessons run through Athenian drama, with implications for public (and private) life. One that comes to mind is the fragility of good things, to paraphrase classical scholar Martha Nussbaum. Good fortune and all that comes with it can be too easily lost.

Sometimes this happens through our own hubris and over-reaching. Sometimes we can be caught up in and brought down by a long chain of events we don't understand until too late. And then there are the times when the harder we try to avoid something, the more surely we bring it on ourselves. I hate it when that happens...

Tragedy tends to reinforce the words carved on the temple of Apollo at Delphi: Know Thyself and Nothing in Excess.

Unfortunately, the Athenians didn't heed the lessons of tragedy. Intoxicated by the wealth, prestige and power they had gained by defeating the Persian invasion, they went from being leaders of the Greek world to masters of an empire. This led to a disastrous and seemingly endless war with Sparta (search this blog for Peloponnesian War) which brought their glory days to an end.

It would be nice if we could do better.

FEELING PARANOID? Here's a guide to popular conspiracy theories.

REAL LIFE HORROR MOVIES here.

POLITICS ON THE BRAIN. Here's another look at this topic by Nicholas Kristof.

STATE BUDGET. It looks like the use of federal stimulus money may prevent major cuts to jobs, programs and services in El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia.

URGENT RECENTLY DISCOVERED WEIRD ANIMAL UPDATE here.

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The art of democracy

Leo von Klenze's 1846 painting of what classical Athens may have looked like. Image courtesy of wikipedia.

The polis or city state of ancient Athens can lay claim to being the world's first self-styled democratic state (although there were no doubt other ancient societies that had democratic and egalitarian features). It also gave us the word.

It definitely had some features that strike us as undemocratic, including slavery and the exclusion of women from public life (with a few notable exceptions). But to the extent that it was democratic, it was very democratic.

It is an interesting fact that democracy and tragedy grew together and that the latter was considered to be an important part of the former. As mentioned before, attendance at tragic performances was a duty of citizenship. Judging the relative merits of tragedies was also democratic, as the audience would vote for the winning author of three competing poets.

As Paul Woodruff wrote in First Democracy: The Challenge of An Ancient Idea,

The early defenders of First Democracy are mostly lost to us, except for one magnificent set of writers--the tragic poets. Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides were poets of the people, proud to be Athenian, writing for prizes in contests that were decided, in effect, by popular opinion. It should be no surprise that the poets who won the prizes were champions of democratic ideas....

In ancient Athens, the citizens shared a continuing education at religious festivals. They could all see plays in the theater of Dionysus; in the fourth century the city covered the cost of theater attendance (by means of the theoric fund). In plays by Sophocles or Euripides, Athenians saw dramatizations of political dilemmas...The experience of such theater must have made the audiences more thoughtful about politics than they would otherwise have been. It was as if the whole city were following the TV series The West Wing.

In contrast, the whole of America watches only the Super Bowl. The theater of Athens was about freedom and tyranny, law and religion, power and language, even gender and difference. The theater of America is about winning. Can we do better than that?

INTERVENTION. Here's a mini-debate on government intervention in the economy from Business Week.

WHY WE STARE AT THE ELEVATOR FLOOR. Here's an evolutionary perspective.

TOOL USING ANIMALS. That is to say, birds.

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Excellence and fragility

The classical scholar Martha Nussbaum opens her book The Fragility of Goodness with a quote from the ancient Greek poet Pindar, who made a career for himself writing odes for victors in the Olympic and other sacred games. He wrote:

...human excellence
grows like a vine tree
fed by the green dew,
raised up, among wise men and just,
to the liquid sky.
We have all kinds of needs for those we love--
most of all in hardships, but joy, too
strains to track down eyes that it can trust.

In other words, most of the good things or qualities we have are not inherently ours--even if they are things we've worked hard to achieve or attain. They depend on many other and external conditions, all of which are changeable and subject to loss and reversal.

Nussbaum expounds on Pindar thus:

The excellence of the good person, he writes, is like a young plant: something growing in the world, slender, fragile, in constant need of food from without. A vine tree must be of good stock if it is to grow well. And even if it has a good heritage, it needs fostering weather (gentle dew an drain, the absence of sudden frosts and harsh winds), as well as the care of concerned and intelligent keepers, for its continued health and full perfection. So, the poet suggests, do we. We need to be born with adequate capacities, to live in a fostering natural and social circumstances, to stay clear of abrupt catastrophe, to develop confirming associations we other human beings.

We are all, in other words, subject to fortune and reversal. One of the functions of Greek tragedy, the theme these days at Goat Rope, is to remind us that no one is immune and to warn us against assuming that fleeting good luck is something we own.

50 HERBERT HOOVERS. This NY Times editorial talks sense about the fiscal crisis many states are facing.

GOD ON THE BRAIN. Here's a link to a recent NPR series on science and spirituality.

RELIGION IN THE WAR ROOM. Here's an item about how briefings for for former president Bush were laced with biblical language.

WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING AT? Here's an item from Wired Science about why we stare.

TEXTING could be bad for teenagers'
health.

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"...freedom only after countless pains"

Heracles would eventually liberate Prometheus. Image courtesy of wikipedia.

Goat Rope these days is taking a tour of ancient Greek tragedy (but you'll find links and comments about current events below). This week the theme is Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus.

Why Greek tragedy? I'm convinced the tragic lens often is the one that applies best to current problems. In an earlier post about coal and Appalachia, I argued that we too often tend to view the world through a simplified action movie lens, with clear good guys who are all good and bad guys who are all bad (see former President Bush) and a happy ending. Would that it were so.

But back to the story at hand.

It is easy to see Prometheus as the archetypal rebel against tyranny and to view Zeus as an evil usurper. But Aeschylus was concerned with a deeper matter: how excess can be tempered and holy moderation can be achieved. He was all about avoiding excess and calling for moderation.

We only have the first play of his trilogy, but we know it ended with the release of Prometheus, who would aid Zeus with information that would allow him to remain in power.

Zeus, after violently overthrowing the old order, was excessive in his punishment and use of power. Prometheus, though he benefited humanity, was excessive in his pride and defiance, as some of his sympathetic visitors suggested.

Totalitarianism and the rule of force must give way to restraint and the rule of law. Prometheus and Zeus are symbols of forethought and reason on the one hand and power on the other--and these must be reconciled.

Too bad we can't see how Aeschylus got there. Too bad we haven't figured out how to get there ourselves.

Y'all have a good weekend and try not to get chained to any rocks.

SPEAKING OF BEING CHAINED TO ROCKS, this essay hopes we'll be liberated soon from the rock of market fundamentalism.

HEALTH CARE COSTS exceed wage gains in El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia (and elsewhere in the US too). Meanwhile, it looks like the health care industry, after making a show of supporting reforms, is trying to sabotage President Obama's health care plan. Their main target is a public option which many see as the key to moving towards universal coverage.

REASON # 42949 why we need the Employee Free Choice Act here.

NOT COOL. WV's proposed state budget includes cuts in legal services for domestic violence victims.

MONKEY BRAINS aren't all that different from ours.

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