The wisdom of the Greeks sometimes appears to be inexhaustible. In the epic poetry of Homer, you find thoughts, feelings, and emotions that are strikingly contemporary. In the Iliad, you find the brutal horrors of war, and in the Odyssey, you find the unbreakable bonds of family. In the plays of Aeschylus, you find characters whose foibles and flaws render them vivid, and you find dialogue fit for any occasion. It’s little wonder that when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, Robert Kennedy read Edith Hamilton’s translation of Aeschylus to a crowd of mourners. “My favorite poet was Aeschylus,” Kennedy said.
Revolutionary ideas like atomism and democracy can be traced to the Greeks. There are the different philosophers, thinkers, and mathematicians. Plato’s forms remain standard fare in books on philosophy. Euclid’s geometry remains a rite of passage for young students. And Pythagoras remains a mythic figure, both mathematician and mystic.
Last week, I was reading a book on Greece when I stumbled upon something very interesting. There was a fragment that concerned a legendary Greek hero named Kleomedes, who was an impressive athlete from the island of Astypalaia. In 492 BC, Kleomedes participated in the boxing event at the Olympics. Unfortunately, things ended poorly. The fragment, taken from Pausanias, a kind of Ancient Greek travel writer, states:
“At the Olympiad…they say that Kleomedes of Astypalaia, when boxing with Ikkos of Epidauros, killed Ikkos in the fight. He was condemned by the Hellanodikai for breaking the rules, and deprived of his victory. The distress of this drove him out of his mind, and he returned to Astypalaia, attacked a school in which there were some sixty children, and removed the pillar which held up the roof. The roof fell in on the children and Kleomedes was stoned by the citizens and fled to the temple of Athena.”
The citizens of Astypalaia pursued Kleomedes into the temple, but the pugilist barricaded himself in a wooden chest. The people were unable to open the chest and soon resorted to breaking through its wood. At the end, when they finally succeeded and broke through the chest, they found it empty. Kleomedes was nowhere to be seen. The people were dismayed and confounded. To seek clarity and answers, they sent emissaries to the oracle at Delphi and asked what had become of Kleomedes. The oracle responded: “Kleomedes is the last hero of Astypalaia. Honor him with sacrifices. He is no longer mortal.” Upon hearing this, the Astypalaians gave “cultic honors to Kleomedes as to a hero.”
Unfortunately, I consider this story to be another example of Greek prescience and wisdom. The story of Kleomedes—his actions and his psychology—bears a striking resemblance to the more modern phenomenon of school shootings. And as far as I can tell, this is the first instance of mass violence being carried out in a school. I think that the story demands further scrutiny, insofar as it gives us insight into the nature of school shootings.
Like many school shooters, Kleomedes is unstable. Before executing their atrocities, school shooters often demonstrate a pattern of atypical behavior. In this case, Kleomedes betrays his instability by breaking the boxing rules and killing his opponent with an illegal blow. This is an instance of abnormal behavior. The judges of the Olympic games, the Hellanodikai, duly respond by “condemn[ing]” the malefactor and “depriv[ing]” him of his victory.
Given the depraved mischief that Kleomedes would soon perpetrate, this action undertaken by the Olympic judges can be interpreted as our own feeble attempts to prevent mass shootings. Condemning Kleomedes and depriving him of his victory can be seen as lax gun laws and insufficient background checks. School shooters should not be able to access firearms with such ease. But even with glaring red flags, these disturbed individuals are often able to purchase weapons without much in the way of resistance.
I think that the psychology of Kleomedes is revelatory. For Greeks, success in the Olympics—or athletic competitions like the Olympics—was of paramount importance. A victory in the Olympics elevated one’s profile and enhanced one’s reputation. Athletic success could also be translated into raw political power in one’s polis. When Kleomedes was deprived of his victory, he wasn’t just deprived of a win in the boxing arena. He was deprived of a win in the political arena as well. In the aftermath of his boxing match, I imagine Kleomedes felt more than “distress.” I imagine he felt outraged and bitter and impotent. He felt impotent because there was no one to whom he could direct these feelings of outrage and bitterness. Almost no one.
Schoolchildren are vulnerable and exposed. And Kleomedes, anticipating school shooters, found a target in schoolchildren precisely because they are so vulnerable and exposed. He attacked 60 young students.
After a school shooting, our society traditionally demands some kind of change to gun legislation. We are overcome with righteous anger. We are disgusted and devastated that something so unfathomably cruel could happen in our country. We are like the people of Astypalaia. We would like to stone the murderer, to root him out from the chest in which he is hiding. We want answers. We demand change.
At the end of the story of Kleomedes, something interesting and tragic and terrible happens. The oracle at Delphi declares that the murderer is “the last hero of Astypalaia. The oracle orders the people to “honor” Kleomedes “with sacrifices.”
I think that the oracle at Delphi functions like some media outlets. In our desire for answers, for truth, we look to the media. And what does the media do? Yes, they cover the atrocity. Yes, they feature the names and families of the victims in their stories. But the media is also guilty of lavishing attention on the shooters. They spend hours exploring who the shooter was and what—if any—their motives were. The name and image of the shooter are widely disseminated. It’s almost like the honor of which the oracle spoke.
The media builds the shooters into larger-than-life figures. The corollary of all of this? There are sick individuals out there who see the attention and the notoriety the shooter gets, and they are inspired. This is what’s known as the theory of mass shooting contagion. The effects of this contagion became apparent in the aftermath of Columbine, when media outlets circulated footage that the shooters had recorded prior to their attack. In the footage, the shooters expressed a desire for recognition. One peer-reviewed study conducted in 2015 estimated that Columbine has inspired at least 21 shootings and 53 attempts to perform such mass shootings.
Last week, the surviving first graders from the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School graduated high school. Twelve years ago, a depraved former student walked into the school and murdered twenty first graders and six educators. Later, investigators learned that the shooter was active in online forums about mass shootings in the U.S. He had begun researching shootings in 2011 and was inspired by the massacres at Columbine and Virginia Tech. He once posted a spreadsheet in an online forum that contained information about over 500 rampage shooters. In his room, police found a newspaper clipping about a man who shot schoolchildren in 1891.
At the graduation for the Sandy Hook students, there was time reserved for the twenty victims killed in 2012. Their names were read aloud.
On their gowns, the graduating students wore ribbons adorned with the words: “Forever in Our Hearts.”
Asked by People Magazine how she felt, one student said: “To graduate and miss 20 kids out of your class, there’s no way to go about it without remembering them.”
But that’s what we need to do. We need to remember the victims and not the shooters. We need to dismiss the oracle, banish him from his sanctuary. We should not build up Kleomedes and his ilk into dark heroes. We should not honor them. We must honor the victims, whose lives were cut tragically short, whose awesome potentials will never be realized, whose families will never again be whole.
When RFK addressed that crowd of forlorn mourners after Martin Luther King was shot, he quoted these lines of Aeschylus: “In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”
At the end of his speech, RFK added these poignant words of his own: “Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.”
Two months later, RFK was killed.
One more victim of gun violence.
So let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago and let us dedicate ourselves to what RFK wrote some years ago. Let us tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.
This is spot on. I’d also throw in the fact that the oracles at Delphi and other places were extremely politically motivated and served very particular agendas, not unlike most (if not all) modern media outlets. Super interesting!
"Let us tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world" indeed! Well done Mitch!