Sophocles, Plato, Marcus Aurelius, and Andreas Capellanus were individuals believed to have considered the times in which they lived to be regrettable departures from a more secure and desirable past. Each man responded to this perception in their writing, seeking personal consolation in their work while at the same time trying to influence the society in which they lived. Each author lived in a historical context from which they could look to the past with nostalgia while perceiving their present as a struggle against the disintegration of earlier values. However, each man also offers a prescription for the future, and none is so truly disenchanted with the present in which he lives that he rejects its attitudes and conceptions outright. Instead, they adapt and reinforce those aspects of their society that they believe are most valuable. This fact can be seen in their writings and in the circumstances of their time and place, as an examination of their lives and writings will show.
These writers also tend to address these issues in two realms, or more properly in the meeting of two realms--the religious and the political. Sophocles holds up the mirror to his society and finds where the religious and the political clash. Plato analyzes the meaning of political action in a society that bases its values on a close and even direct relationship with a pantheon of gods. Marcus Aurelius was writing at a time of religious change when he also considered the political realm in need of guidance. Andreas Capellanus examined a secular issue, that of human love and sexuality, in terms of a political nobility and its behavior and in terms of how that love could be fitted into the religious structure of the Church of his era.
Aristotle surveyed the drama of his time and developed certain concepts regarding the nature of the tragic hero. The tragic hero must be an important person with a character flaw that causes him to make a grea...