The Epic

[matsunosuperfan]

The Greek idea of tragedy was bizarre and hardly poetic. Not very intelligent either, which is why the best Greeks (Archimedes, Plato, Aristotle) were naturalists and the worst, like Sophocles, third rate script writers.
There is nothing heroic or tragic about Achilles, nor is the poem about his rage worth reading, except to see what inspired great conquerors like Alexander and Hitler.

Literature, unlike science or sculpture, was the opiate of the masses back then. And correspondingly lowbrow. It’s just that people have been brainwashed to agree that yes, Antigone doesn’t suck.

Give me the mammoth eating bards by the Neander river or the root foraging lyricists in Lake Mungo. Or a supremely intelligent AI. But not the Greeks.

Also why the great Saracen prophet Mahomet banned poetry

hah, for once we agree on one of these jawns. It took me maybe two weeks as a college freshman to grow irretrievably bored of old men quoting Thucydides as if that made them wise.