... The ancient Greek city-states were filled with intense passion and rivalry and faction and conflict. But from that constant struggle for distinction came the great flowering of art and philosophy and political and intellectual energy that would transform a collective of Mediterranean cities into the birthplace of the greatest civilization in the world.
The thumos, as the ancient Greeks called it, the fire of passion, strength, courage, pride, is the heart of great civilization. And without it, without it, nations lose their will to fight, the will to strive, the will to survive. Today, too much of the West has forgotten this quality. ...
Passion is one of the works of the flesh (Galatians 5:19f.), the angry heat which almost got Jesus killed at Nazareth:
And all they in the synagogue, when they heard these things, were filled with wrath [θυμοῦ], And rose up, and thrust him out of the city, and led him unto the brow of the hill whereon their city was built, that they might cast him down headlong.
-- Luke 4:28f.
Civilization is most certainly not built on the disorder and conflict of passion, but on the mutual respect its people have for law and order, in the state and in themselves. The quickest way to end it is to surrender to passion, as the Athenians did in the Sicilian Expedition.
Marco is seriously confused, as are all spermologoi. Today's Athenians, alas, might have told him so.
And some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers as well were conversing with him. Some were saying, “What could this scavenger of tidbits want to say?” ...
-- Acts 17:18
