Here my decree, you men of Attica, first ever to pass judgment over bloodshed, from this day forth in the Aegean ranks, this place will serve forever as a jury court. This is the Hill of Aries,

headquarters of the Amazons, their campgrounds in their war of retribution against Theseus.

They set this settlement of theirs against their own,

city for city, tower for tower.

Then they made a sacrifice to Ares, hence the name the Ariopagus, the war gods rock.

All right, welcome back to Young Heretics.

I love that speech.

I'm going to go on with it in a little bit.

It's from Escales-Orestiah, the climactic moment of the only complete trilogy that we have left over from Athenian drama.

It's a profound statement, a mythological and dramatic statement,

but also a philosophical statement about the nature of justice, and of course, justice is what we're talking about today, carrying forward our conversation from last time about personal justice, the private virtue of

arranging the soul so that it harmonizes with itself, bringing yourself into a kind of

unity, and I said that this central virtue this cardinal virtue which is

the capstone of the human soul in some sense is also expressed in social relations, in civilizations, in cities, in states, in law courts,

and all of the things that we do as sociable animals and political animals together.

And so today I want to talk about that part.

I want to zoom out to the macro level and think about justice as we tend, I think, more often

to think about it, not as this personal virtue that completes the

soul but as the interpersonal virtue that makes human civilization function.

And if you are like me you are looking out at the world right now and

in America right now getting a little bit hot under the collar when it comes to justice

when it comes to the social fabric holding together when it comes to

...