I’ve been thinking of democracies threatening democracies, of once great nations turning on their allies, of war crimes and liberty perishing, of cities levelled and children dead, of ‘might is right’, and the terrible cost to freedom which comes when citizens celebrate cruelty and lose their moral compass.

How can such ideas not invade our imaginations given the news we read?

It’s strange, though, how current affairs seem so mirrored in the past; how the great events of long, long ago seem so similar to what’s happening today. Not events of the 1930s, but much further back, in the fifth century BC.

That resonance may account for the flurry of Ancient Greek tragedies now thronging theatres. Classical scholars have talked of ‘the global resurgence of Greek tragedy’ for some time.

Books about the ancient world are remarkably popular among those who still read. The gauche and gaudy London West End, of all places, is home to a revival in Greek tragedy. A run of Oedipus the King, by Sophocles, just ended, while his Electra has begun.

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If you want to understand the civilian cost of war watch - or read - The Trojan Women. It tells what happened to the women of Troy once the Greeks had butchered their men and burned their city. You can imagine.

Euripides, who wrote the play, was inspired by a current event, a major news story of the ancient world: the Siege of Melos. The siege seems to speak directly to many events today. Isn’t it curious how little humanity really changes over millennia?

Here you’ll learn how democracy destroys itself, how liberty gives way to tyranny, how valuing raw power is the surest route to moral collapse, how embracing........

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