Teucris
Accept, but do not condone, the dying of the light
O fortes peioraque passi mecum saepe viri,
nunc vino pellite curas;
cras ingens iterabimus aequorO brave men, who have often borne with me great sorrow,
now drive away your cares with wine;
Tomorrow, we shall set out again upon the vast ocean.— Teucer, in Horace, Odes 1.7.29-31
In Greek literature and mythology, there’s a pretty well-known term of hubris, describing a transgression and the consequences that follow. The Erinyes pursue those who swear a false oath. Figures like Ajax the Lesser or Arachne dared to challenge the gods and hence were slain for it. Oedipus seeks to avoid his own fate, only to walk into it. No one is too clever to avoid the fruits of hubris.
Certainly, such a perspective would be advantageous in antiquity. An ancient farmer would gain nothing from challenging Fate over the destruction of a harvest or a sudden plague. But in this era of science, we have conquered plagues and delivered billions from famine. “To Mars we’ll go,” exclaims the industrialist as our species tests the limits of the planet that bore us. Chemists and physicists labor to understand so that engineers may innovate new weapons that let us conquer space, time, death itself.
Is hubris now vestigial, a concept which has outlived its usefulness? Not so. For our capability for destruction has advanced apace with our innovations. We live in a world without smallpox, yet nuclear annihilation hangs over our heads like the double-edged Sword of Damocles. We have created man-made horrors beyond the comprehension of any ancient hero.
But there are more flavors now to what hubris once was, not all negative. How might we distinguish the dikes of Yu the Great from tilting at windmills? I think the former bears with it some intrinsic recognition of reality both present and future. We build dams or engineer our crops because it’s a plausible means of making the world more just, more verdant, than the way things were. I am reminded of this rallying blog post: “The world is awful. The world is much better. The world could be much better.”
And indeed—between the waves of hubris in the Iliad, there is a hero in whom this hope survived, without the divine favor of Odysseus or Diomedes. After Troy fell, the archer Teucris refused to depart before his brother Ajax was buried, despite his shameful suicide. After arriving home, he was banished for this same reason, for his father held the proper action would have been to return Ajax home. Horace wrote that he acknowledged his fate, beseeching his companions to “drown their sorrows in wine,” and yet even in his darkest hour he looked to a dawn more welcoming.
May there be Teucris in our futures then: we have so often borne great sorrow, but behold! Tomorrow we shall set sail across the vast ocean.