Achilles showed no mercy as he slaughtered Hector, prince of Sparta. Other village men stabbed his fresh corpse before Achilles sliced open his ankles and strung a leather rope between his tendon and his bone. The ropes were tied to the chariot. Achilles proceeded to drag Hector back to his homeland. He wasn’t the only culprit; Hector was doomed to this fate by Zeus before the battle began.

The ancient Greeks were brutally violent. War was a part of life. Killing occurred without punishment. Today, violence is inexorable. People still commit horrific crimes. Inane criminals with no ethics are the people with the weapons. Those who flagrantly hurt others are the ones who get caught, but it’s the clandestine plotters with years of experience who get away with it.

The Greeks used wooden spears, bow and arrows (sometimes blazing in flames), and swords. The danger of technology becomes apparent with modern weapons. Were the creators of the machine gun and the nuclear bomb admonished of the destruction their weapons would cause? Are the inventors partly at fault? The gun holder has control, but things might be different if technology wasn’t so advanced.

The crime rate is increasing. In years it will fall. How often do we read about crime? Is the news ever positive? Crime stories sell. Humans focus on the self destruction of our species. Ancient Greeks wrote and read the Iliad. Today, we watch violent movies and read about killings.

The world will never be without violence. People of the past committed crimes, we are violent in the present, and there will be criminals in the future. We can look for ways to decrease the crime rates; hopefully it’s possible to decrease them. Do you concur that if we ever reached world peace, we could not be able to appreciate it? The world needs contrast. Crime is devastating, but right now, it cannot be stopped.