Rethinking the Classics – a new series from The Conversation

By Anna Walker, Senior Arts + Culture Editor

I recently read a poem about a fearsome warrior who brought a decade-old war away from city walls to a nearby riverbank. As the waters began to glut with bodies, the god that possessed it became enraged. Taking revenge for the damage humans had done to the great river, he almost drowned the warrior.

Trudging back through the city, corpses and discarded weapons all around him, the warrior was humbled. Acknowledging the error of his ways, he had learned that the forces of nature are inviolable and ultimately superior to the whims of man.

The story wasn’t a modern allegory…

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