Donald Trump’s book on business Think Big and Kick Ass makes taking personal revenge a very high priority. Given recent events in a US court, it will clearly be a priority if he wins the forthcoming election. For ancient Greeks, it was taken for granted that, if you were harmed by someone, it was your duty to get your own back.
So Greeks regularly took their grievances into the public arena. The orator Demosthenes told a jury that, because he saw a man who had wronged him injuring the whole city, ‘I proceeded against him in the belief that I had got a suitable opportunity for defending the interests of the city and at the same time obtaining revenge for what had been done to me.’ Rather Trumpian.
Trump would also applaud the sentiments put in the mouths of Greeks in Thucydides’ history: ‘No one can begrudge a person acting in defence of his own well-being’; and, more fully, ‘It is entirely acceptable in dealing with adversaries to satisfy the anger in one’s heart by taking revenge upon the aggressor, and also that retaliation upon enemies is proverbially the greatest of pleasures.
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