https://www.wsj.com/opinion/the-pagan-nationalism-of-marco-rubios-athens-speech-dc530f58?st=TS7xCd
Untethered from law and justice, overweening power becomes dangerous not only to those on its receiving end, but also to those who wield it. The Greeks understood that when daring and pride go too far, they mutate into reckless and self-destructive hubris.
Egged on by demagogues, Thucydides narrates, Athens embarked on a war of choice—the Sicilian expedition, the disastrous failure of which contributed to Athens’s eventual defeat in the Peloponnesian War. Hubris leads people and nations to overestimate what their power can accomplish and to underestimate the effectiveness of their opponents’ response. This lesson isn’t obsolete.