I have been silent here for almost two months. For most of that time the words just didn't come. I am troubled by the war in Ukraine. I will never understand how one group of people can be so cruel to another; how quickly violence escalates itself.
It reminds me of the fall of Troy described in Virgil's Aeneid. The honour and respect the Greeks and Trojans had for one another complete collapses on the final day of the war. Valor and respect among comrades in arms vanishes, consumed instead by a barrage of wonton violence.
Achilles' son Pyrrhus is not a hero. He is not honourable like his father. He is brutal and vicious, without any regard for life or station. He kills King Prium's son right in front of his eyes, then drags the old man through his own son's blood then cuts off his head on the sacred altar. The once proud king, known through out the world as fair and wise is left to rot as a sine nomine corpus (a corpse without a name).
It is impossible for me to read Book Two without seeing the horrors of Ukraine. The brutality of the fall of Troy, resonates too closely.
Why does this keep happening?
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