‘By Superstition we are driven to deeds of such great evil.’—From the sacrifice of Iphigenia to Iran, Israel and the USA
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| The Sacrifice of Iphigenia by Pieter Aertsen (painted c. 1555-1560) |
(Click on this link to hear a recorded version of the following piece)
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At this time of year, spring, I habitually pull from my shelf Lucretius’ magnificent, two-thousand-year-old poem, De Rerum Natura—On the Nature of Things—and read the beautiful proem to the Goddess Venus at the beginning of Book I. In it, Lucretius speaks about how ‘in spring’s first days, the nurturing western breezes breathe free again and the birds in the air, smitten by you, warble the news of your coming, as beasts of the woods and fields cavort in the meadows and splash through brooks—and all for love.’ I have always found this a delightful text to contemplate, especially on a sunny and warm spring day, perhaps whilst reclining, as Lucretius himself must surely once have done, on soft grass bedecked with spring flowers beneath the branches of some tree just beginning to blossom.
But this year my mind could not rest for long upon this passage as I was all too aware of the extreme violence being meted out, directly and indirectly, upon so many innocent people by the current governments and military forces of the USA, Israel, and Iran. And, as if that alone were not disturbing enough, in every case superstitious religion is at the forefront of the conflict.
In the USA, in line with the fundamentalist, religious-nationalist views of the Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, reports have emerged of military commanders invoking fundamentalist Christian ‘end times’ rhetoric to justify the war with Iran. The Military Religious Freedom Foundation has received numerous complaints from service members who were told that the conflict is part of a ‘divine plan’ for Armageddon, with some officers even claiming that President Trump has been ‘anointed’ to trigger the return of Christ.
Simultaneously, the current Israeli Government—similarly influenced by fundamentalist religious factions—frequently employs biblical language to legitimise both the war in Iran and the occupation of Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon. By invoking the ‘Amalekites’—a people the Hebrew Bible mandates for total eradication—Netanyahu and his officials often frame the current geopolitical struggle as a literal fulfilment of ancient scripture regarding the promised land.
Iran, too, operates under a fundamentalist state ideology of Welayat al-Faqih [Guardianship of the Islamic Jurist]. Since the death of Ali Khamenei last month, his successor, Mojtaba Hosseini Khamenei, governs as the representative of the Twelfth Imam, Muhammad al-Mahdi, who remains in ‘occultation’—it means ‘in hiding’. This eschatological figure is believed to be the messianic redeemer who will return at the end of time to establish Islamic justice—rendering the current conflict, in the eyes of the regime, a sacred prelude to this global redemption.
In short, the current conflict is, in part, being driven by three competing, fundamentalist, messianic frameworks in which, in what we would call conventional diplomacy has become incredibly difficult, because so many people on all sides believe—at least in their maximalist expressions of faith—that they are executing a divine mandate.
Now, after my rehearsal of these beliefs—and I could have added many more—please do not simply shake your head and dismiss them as merely ‘mad, bad, and dangerous’ and therefore not to be taken seriously. Why? Because the vital thing to understand is that, however we may judge them, these doctrines are genuinely held by the current leaders of the USA, Israel, and Iran. These beliefs are not only driving the conflict in the Middle East but are precipitating consequences that, even for us some 3,000 miles from the epicentre, will be very grave indeed.
Consequently, when I pulled my copy of Lucretius from the shelf this year, rather than lingering upon the proem to Venus, I turned immediately to the subsequent section in which Lucretius observes that far too many crimes have been committed in the name of superstitious religion, illustrating his point by recalling the sacrifice of Iphigenia by her father, Agamemnon.
As the Greek fleet gathered at Aulis to sail for Troy, they were stalled by a persistent and unnatural calm. The seer Calchas revealed that the goddess Artemis was offended because Agamemnon had killed a sacred deer and boasted of his superior hunting skills. To appease the goddess and win the winds necessary for war, Artemis demanded the sacrifice of Agamemnon’s eldest daughter, Iphigenia.
Agamemnon, torn between paternal duty and the pride of command, eventually succumbed to the pressures of his brother Menelaus and the Greek army. To lure Iphigenia to Aulis, he sent a message to his wife, Clytemnestra, claiming their daughter was to be wed to the hero Achilles. Trusting in this great honour, mother and daughter arrived at the camp, only to discover a grim and brutal ceremony awaited them. In the version recounted by Lucretius, Iphigenia is indeed sacrificed—an act that poisons Agamemnon’s eventual homecoming and leads Clytemnestra, years later, to murder him in revenge. Lucretius closes this section with a line that Voltaire famously cherished: ‘Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum’—which we may translate, along with the poet David R. Slavitt, as saying: ‘By Superstition we are driven to deeds of such great evil.’
The first-century BCE Roman poet Lucretius employs this seventh-century BCE Greek myth because the ancient hold of superstitious—we would say, fundamentalist—religion upon the mind is the primary target of his entire poem. He saw that such religions of his own time, just like those of our own, are always rooted in a profound ignorance of the nature of things; an ignorance that, in turn, allows superstitious, fundamentalist priests, rabbis, and imams everywhere to drive so many people to deeds of such great evil.
And so, here, in this liberal, free-religious gathering, I think we should continue to hold to Lucretius’ basic insight. For him, as for us, the remedy for the ‘evils’ of such belief was not to adopt and promote what we today might call an equal and opposite dogmatic liberalism, but instead to promote an ongoing liberal, inquiring, and free-religious project that encourages a clear-eyed observation of the world as it actually is—that is to say, to try and truly see the Nature of Things. Our time of mindful meditation is, of course, one powerfully effective way to practise this, as, indeed, were you ever to come on a Sunday, you would find is followed by a period of thoughtful conversation, an attempt to be clear-eyed about what has been said and presented, and so forth.
Anyway, in a world currently gripped by competing religious certainties and violent, messianic expectations, I think it is entirely appropriate to draw to a close with some words by Lucretius himself, taken from Book V of the poem (De Rerum Natura, 5.1198–1203, trans. David R. Slavitt):
How is it pious and wise to approach with covered head a piece of stone and fall prostrate before it to ask it for favours or for forgiveness? What is the point of splashing the blood of innocent beasts in showers upon these altars? Make promises to it? Swear oaths? Is it not better to live with a tranquil mind, surveying whatever one sees with a steady, clear-eyed acceptance? Our lives are hard enough, and full of sufficient woes that we have no need to look up at icily distant stars, imagining powerful gods who have been the cause of our griefs.
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