Just yesterday I was beginning a re-read^* after twenty years of Gore Vidal‘s historical novel Julian, in the course of which I was reminded of a remark attributed to Sophocles (by Plato, apparently) as an eighty year-old.

…to my great delight I have escaped from it, and feel as if I had escaped from a frantic and savage master.

One guess as to what the “it” was that Sophocles thought he had escaped from.

–Note–

^*Actually, “listened,” to a fine narration done by Charleton Griffin. There are two reasons for listening. First, as my own middle age draws deeper presbyopia makes reading more difficult, a fact which serves to rob me of one of the few genuine pleasures in life, but I had at least have the consolation of living in an age of readily-available audio content. Second, my existence obliges me to spend a lot of time driving (shudder) hither and yon. Back to text.