If you’re feeling fed up with the way things are in the world, then, no matter your politics, you are experiencing an emotion people have felt for millennia.

Perhaps you feel helpless. Maybe you feel like the character in the Roman dramatist Terence’s play The Brothers (160 BCE), who exclaims:

we’re enclosed by so many things from which there’s no escape: violence, poverty, injustice, loneliness, disgrace. What an age we live in!

we’re enclosed by so many things from which there’s no escape: violence, poverty, injustice, loneliness, disgrace. What an age we live in!

What can you do? As we will see, ancient people had different ideas about how to act.

One popular option was to retreat – or try to retreat – from the world, renouncing involvement and avoiding society. A less common option was to try to sort things out in the world by yourself, as one person facing all its woes.

Heraclitus of Ephesus (c.540-480 BCE) is one of the most prominent Greek philosophers known for becoming disillusioned with worldly affairs.

His main gripe was with politics. He disliked the insolence and stupidity of politicians and the laws they created. He was also tired of the foolishness of the people, who didn’t defend their laws and constitutions: “the people,” he said, “must fight for the law as for city-walls”.

When his friend Hermodorus was banished from Ephesus, Heraclitus condemned the city for elevating foolish men and destroying good men. As the historian Diogenes Laertius informs us, Heraclitus told the leaders of Ephesus that they were so worthless they should kill themselves:

The Ephesians would do well to end their lives, every grown man of them, and leave the city to beardless boys, for that they have driven out Hermodorus, the worthiest man among them, saying, “We will have none who is worthiest among us; or if there be any such, let him go elsewhere and consort with others.”

The Ephesians would do well to end their lives, every grown man of them, and leave the city to beardless boys, for that they have driven out Hermodorus, the worthiest man among them, saying, “We........

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