History as Challenge and Validation
Review of the great works of Sophocles, Plato, Marcus Aurelius and Andreas Capellanus suggest that each of these men were shaped by their respective eras. Curiously, the classical writings of Sophocles and Plato appear not only to codify the age in which they lived but to challenge it to aspire to new heights. In The Oedipus Cycle Sophocles presents Oedipus the King as an Everyman who struggles to do good and avoid evil. Yet the drama heightens when the audience understands that despite his well established objectives, Oedipus commits the horrendous crimes of murdering his father and marrying his mother. Sophoclean drama appears to argue that unless societies can learn to deal with its deviances as well as its norms, they are destined to self-destruct. Sophocles adopts a stance of exhortation shared even more intensely by Socrates. As Plato records in The Last Days of Socrates the great philosopher thinker Socrates willingly embraces his own politically-induced death in order to demonstrate that virtue rather than superstition be a civilization's guiding principle. In the later works of Marcus Aurelius and Andreas Capellanus, two highly skilled social observers labor to show society how it actually is being lived. In The Meditations Marcus Aurelius suggests that a life guided by reason will produce the best results. Yet the latent despondency of his Stoic philosophy indicates that the Emperor was attempting to accommodate rather than challenge his Roman era. The medieval Capellanus depicts a society in transition which is torn between its civil and religious leanings. His own status as a Catholic cleric determined that he would uphold a religious code above the social norms he so artfully observed.
Sophocles (496-406 B.C.) lived during the famed fifth century, part of the Golden Age of Greece. In 499 B.C. just before Sophocles' birth the Ionaian Greeks of Asia Minor revolted agai...