How Civilizations Die: (And Why Islam Is Dying Too)

by David Goldman

In 401 B.C.E. the citizens of Athens assembled at the foot of the Acropolis for the Festival of Dionysus to hear the last work of Sophocles, perhaps the greatest playwright in classical history. The author had died four years earlier, just short of his ninetieth birthday. Three years before the premiere of his final play, Oedipus at Colonus, his exhausted city had accepted a humiliating peace, ending the two-generation war with Sparta. Athens had lost its empire and its maritime preeminence in the Aegean Sea, as well as three-fifths of its military-age population—an unimaginable toll by modern standards—in the just-concluded Peloponnesian War. Sophocles’ protagonist, the ruined King Oedipus who wandered the earth after gouging out his own eyes, was a synecdoche for Athens herself. As the chorus circled the stage in the stately dance of ancient tragedy, it sang the saddest words in the high literature of the West: Not to be born at all Is best, far best that can befall, Next best, when born, with least delay To trace the backward way. For when youth passes with its giddy train, Troubles on troubles follow, toils on toils, Pain, pain for ever pain; And none escapes life’s coils Envy, sedition, strife, Carnage and war, make up the tale of life.