‘Man is the most terrifying of beasts,’ Sophocles said. Boris Johnson, in his speech to the United Nations General Assembly in September 2021, paraphrased the line and explained what the ancient tragedian truly meant: humans are ‘scary yet admirable,’ the Telegraph stated.
He couldn’t have picked a better example than himself. Boris intrigues everyone, like the best heroes in Sophocles’ plays, we are on pins and needles, waiting to see when his good fortune will leave him.
He seeks danger, exudes ambition without remorse, enthrals us, and plays on our worries for him. We know, as the audience did in ancient Greece’s municipal theatres, that he is doomed, for all political careers end in failure and no rise can be sustained indefinitely.
‘The change from good fortune to terrible fate in the life of certain prominent men,’ Aristotle said, ‘is the topic of every tragedy,’ the Telegraph quoted on Saturday.
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