It's Been A Good Few Years For The Greeks (2)

Recent times have seen many examples of hubris and nemesis. The ongoing Murdoch saga is only the most recent, but if you cast your mind back a while, just look at the swaggering world leaders, or TV personalities, or sports stars in their pomp, inebriated with the exhilaration of their own success, fawned over, flattered, deferred to until even the toughest mind starts to believe that the adulation is justified.

Ceausescu couldn't believe it when a crowd turned against him; a few days later he was put against a wall and shot. The bombastic Chavez who arranged to rewrite Venezuela's constitution to allow him to stay in office indefinitely is now facing the reality of cancer, that may render the rewrite unnecessary. Across the Arab world the old certainties are crumbling, to the disbelief of many of the hitherto-entrenched leaders.

In business, media, politics, and even in the churches, today's exalted masters are only one or two steps away from disaster.

You don't have far to look to find hundreds more examples. Those Athenians knew a thing or two.

(later) From A-list party to an arrest in a few days - so Rebekah is helping police with enquiries.