This is what Huns mean by "getting ahead."
There's nothing like a good, wholesome Greek classic for kids... this is far more educational and cultured than most of the junk that's on television nowadays. (I got this one in eighth grade, as I remember.) Bronze Age "Mortal Kombat" at its best:He reeled, and on Herminius he leaned one breathing-space;
Then, like a wild-cat mad with wounds, sprang right at Astur’s face.
Through teeth, and skull, and helmet so fierce a thrust he sped,
The good sword stood a hand-breadth out behind the Tuscan’s head.
Achilles now
like inhuman fire raging on through the mountain gorges
splinter-dry, setting ablaze big stands of timber,
the wind swirling the huge fireball left and right--
chaos of fire--- Achilles storming on with brandished spear
like a frenzied god of battle trampling all he killed
and the earth ran black with blood. Thundering on,
on like oxen broad in the brow some field hand yokes
to crush white barley heaped on a well-laid threshing floor
and the grain is husked out fast by the bellowing oxen's hoofs--
so as the great Achilles rampaged on, his sharp-hoofed stallions
trampled shields and corpses, axle under his chariot splashed
with blood, blood on the handrails sweeping round the car,
sprays of blood shooting up from the stallions' hoofs
and churning, whirling rims-- and the son of Peleus
charioteering on to seize his glory, bloody filth
splattering both strong arms, Achilles' invincible arms--
Now let's try good old Will Shakespeare, not only acceptable but often required reading in the best 19th and early 20th century middle and high schools:Homer, The Iliad, Robert Fagles' translation
| ACT II SCENE 3 The same. Before the gates of Harfleur
[The Governor and some Citizens
on the walls; the
KING HENRY V How yet resolves the governor of the town?
|
What is't to me, when you
yourselves are cause,
If your pure maidens fall into the hand Of hot and forcing violation? What rein can hold licentious wickedness When down the hill he holds his fierce career? We may as bootless spend our vain command Upon the enraged soldiers in their spoil As send precepts to the leviathan To come ashore. Therefore, you men of Harfleur, Take pity of your town and of your people, Whiles yet my soldiers are in my command; Whiles yet the cool and temperate wind of grace O'erblows the filthy and contagious clouds Of heady murder, spoil and villany. If not, why, in a moment look to see The blind and bloody soldier with foul hand Defile the locks of your shrill-shrieking daughters; Your fathers taken by the silver beards, And their most reverend heads dash'd to the walls, Your naked infants spitted upon pikes, Whiles the mad mothers with their howls confused Do break the clouds, as did the wives of Jewry At Herod's bloody-hunting slaughtermen. What say you? will you yield, and this avoid, Or, guilty in defence, be thus destroy'd? |
This, mind you, is the play's hero. Note that Henry V is not threatening to order his men to sack Harfleur and massacre his inhabitants-- this was, in fact, contrary to his orders for the treatment of French civilians. He later acquiesces to the hanging one of his own men (Bardolph, a former drinking companion) for robbing a French church. However, once soldiers forced a city's defenses, their officers could no longer watch all of them and they did pretty much whatever they wanted.
But guess what... they didn't have school shootings, drug gangs, or violence in those days. It's not the guns, stupid (or the entertainment, stupid), it's American culture... which is being eaten away by the coercive collectivists, Serviles, and victim mentality panderers who are out to destoy it.
