'We should flatten a country or two,' said a young man to the television camera on 11 September last year. 'Justice, not revenge,' the Roman Catholic bishops warned that same day. They were not given time to explain the difference, nor was the young man asked to name a country or two for flattening. But the bishops had reason to speak out.

It would be going too far to say that 11 September undid centuries of Christian teaching and made revenge respectable again, just as William Harris is over the top when he opines: 'In the United States, views about revenge seem to have sunk to a level appropriate to a neolithic village.' But it is troubling how much public talk of revenge there is at present. This study of rage restraint in classical antiquity must have been completed before 11 September. In the shadow of that trauma, it has a topicality its author can hardly have expected.

LRB 17 October 2002 | PDF Download