A Necessary Evil?

When the Greek captain Menelaus was tempted to spare the life of an incapacitated opponent on the killing field outside the walls of Troy, his brother Agamemnon rebuked him: “Once in our hands not one should squirm away / from death’s hard fall! No fugitive, not even / the manchild carried in a woman’s belly! / Let them all without distinction perish, / every last man of Ilion, / without a tear, without a trace!” And in the end, as Homer’s listeners knew, that is...

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