Currently Reading: The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy by Martha C. Nussbaum 📚

We must never forget that tragedies were vehicles of political deliberation and reflection at a sacred civic festival — in a city that held its empire as a “tyranny” and killed countless innocent people. For that audience, tragedy did not bring the good news of resignationism; it brought the bad news of self-examination and change.

In short, instead of conceding the part of ethical space within which tragedies occur to implacable necessity or fate, tragedies, I claim, challenge their audience to inhabit it actively, as a contested place of moral struggle, a place in which virtue might possibly in some cases prevail over the caprices of amoral power, and in which, even if it does not prevail, virtue may still shine through for its own sake.

(Extended quote here.)