Socrates, from the Meno

"...one thing I am ready to fight for as long as I can, in word and act—that is, that we shall be better, braver, and more active men if we believe it right to look for what we don’t know...”

"Ah, cousin, could we but survive this war..." From the Iliad, book 12, line 363-369

"Ah, cousin, could we but survive this war

to live forever deathless, without age,

I would not ever go again to battle,

nor would I send you there for honor's sake!

But now a thousand shapes of death surround us,

and no man can escape them, or be safe.

Let us attack--whether to give some fellow

glory or to win it from him."

This is from the Iliad--spoken by Sarpedon to Glaukos just before they attach the Akhaians on the shore front in an effort to burn their boats. I've come across many quotes that have seized me with the desire to record them, but this one is the one that actually made me do it.

Something about this line made the Iliad seem like much more than war. I had been reading and meditating on anger and battle. The book is amazingly good (Robert Fitzgerald translation), and I'm glad I'm finally getting around to reading it. The way Achilleus is unwilling to let go of his grudge, and the way that all the other characters do the same thing, in and out of battle, in other, lesser ways is deeply compelling somehow. But the wisdom he arrives at in his anger! 

"Now I think no riches can compare with being alive ... A man may come by cattle and sheep in raids; tripods he buys, and tawny-headed horses; but his life's breath cannot be hunted back or be recaptured once it pass his lips." -- spoken by Achilleus, book 9, line 489.

There's something in this book deeper than war, or anger. This is about the worth of life, and what you do with it once you know how vulnerable it is. Two pages after Glaukos hears the words of his cousin he is struck down:

Then Teukros shot 

Glaukos, powerful son of Hippolokhos, 

with an arrow as he rushed the wall--a bowshot

just where he saw his arm bared. Joy in battle

left the young fighter; off the wall he leapt,

not to be seen and taunted by Akhaians.

Glaukos' withdrawal made Sarpedon grieve

the instant he perceived it; still the battle

gave him joy.

We are pinioned by death at all edges of our lives, and dance between anger and other meanings, love and other drives. This book is a difficult and exultant, heady drink of language and story. I'd like to adapt A Visit of Emissaries into a one act play, if I get the chance this upcoming year. Maybe summer.