Friday, September 27, 2024

And now the latest from Euripides

 It’s exciting when archeologists find fragments of ancient manuscripts. It’s especially exciting when they find fragments from Euripides’ plays that include lines we didn’t know about.

Robert Cioffi, a Classics professor at Bard College, has an account of a new find. He quotes a passage from Polyidus, in which Polyidus chastises Minos, who thinks he can govern the world because he’s fabulously wealthy: 

 

So you’re rich. Don’t think you understand anything else.

Wealth makes you useless. It is poverty that produces wisdom.

 

Some of my friends say I’m overly fond of the ancient Greeks. But so much of what those old guys had to say seems fresh to me — almost like commentary on today’s news.

• Source: Robert Cioffi, “Euripides Unbound”; London Review of Books, Vol. 46, No. 18, 26 Sept. 2024.

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