By John Leake
Courageous Discourse
June 13, 2025
On a cruise in the Aegean-the first time in 20 years-I am reminded that contending with adversaries lies at the heart of the human condition. For millennia, the lands and islands that are now the territories of Turkey and Greece have been contested by a bewildering array of tribes with conflicting tribal and religious identities.
Many of the places I have visited were the scenes of conflict between the Knights of Saint John and the Ottoman Turks. The following photo is of a little church that was built around 1407 in Bodrum Castle by the Knights of St. John.
The Knights constructed the castle out of the ruins of the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, also knowns as the Tomb of Mausolus. They called their fortification the Castle of St. Peter.
After the Knights were kicked out of Bodrum in 1523 by Suleiman the Magnificent, the chapel was converted into a mosque and a minaret was added. The minaret was fired upon and struck by a French warship cannon in 1915, but later rebuilt.
When I was growing up in the United States in the 1980s and 90s, it sometimes seemed like "We the People" had overcome the faction and strife that had characterized the human condition for so long. This was an illusion. Clearly humans have a strong and enduring predilection to conflict with each other.
While on my modern Aegean odyssey, I have often thought of the ancient Greek hero Odysseus, and the first lines of Homer's epic poem about his adventures.
Sing Muse, about that man, skilled in all ways of contending, who wandered
So many ways after he sacked the sacred citadel of Troy.
It was Odysseus's idea to build the Trojan Horse to penetrate the city walls. His gift for coming up with such clever devices is what enabled him to get home to Ithaca, overcoming all the obstacles thrown in his way during his ten-year odyssey. Homer depicts him as tough, resourceful, clever, cheerful, eloquent, and wise.
Whenever you are feeling overwhelmed by all of the adversarial humans and circumstances in the world, think of Odysseus and how-no matter how great the adversary or formidable the obstacle-he always figured out a way to prevail. He is a timeless classic of a man who contends with an adversarial world.
This article was originally published on Courageous Discourse.