In 2025, I spent a year exploring the four Stoic and Cardinal virtues: wisdom, moderation, justice and courage. Every week, I shared a post on Substack. This was part of a lifelong engagement with virtue traditions, and a personal quest for coherence. To live well in a fragmenting world without amplifying harmful patterns, was there something I could learn by turning not towards Eastern or indigenous traditions, but my own European past?

Pick a side

The first text I wrote was a verse tragedy called The Sirens, based on The Illiad. It opens with Achilles’ mother Thetis, the sea goddess, luring her son away from the Trojan battlefield to the comfort of her realm. Achilles will not leave without his lover Patroclus. The Greek leaders—eager to continue the fight—convince Patroclus to stay. He’s just a mortal: what hope is there that a half-god would continue loving him, unless he gains glory through battle? Patroclus walks to his doom. Achilles vows revenge. Troy falls. The tragic machine worked.