74 Ancient Ideals
for themselves and themselves alone is now for everyone. They
share. The people in the crowd are no longer a gathering of sepa-
rate and distinct selves. For now, in their act of compassion for each
other, they are one body. What was once a crowd is now a commu-
nity. The prison- house of individuality breaks down. They have im-
itated the Savior in his generosity.
And what precisely does the Savior save one from? He saves you
from Self. He delivers you from the horrible illusion that you are
alone in the world and that no one can ever care for you and love you
and sustain you. That crowd, through sharing, becomes a node of
universal being, and the people in it are fi nally, if temporarily, free.
Some of them, perhaps, will spend their lives seeking this feeling
in which Self melts away and the Soul becomes ascendant. They
will do so by following Jesus, not in the literal sense of trooping after
him, but in the deeper sense of trying to do as he would do, trying
to be compassionate, trying to be kind.
How diff erent this world of sharing is from the Homeric world.
In Homer, the protocols of dining are of central signifi cance. It’s a
matter of real consequence who carves the meat, who is served fi rst,
who gets the choice pieces. When Andromache laments the future
of her son Astyanax in a world without his father Hector, her synec-
doche for his suff erings is a scene at a future meal. There other
young men whose fathers are alive thrust Astyanax away from
the table. He gets no choice cuts of meat. He barely gets a drink
from the golden cup. “Years ago,” says Andromache, “propped on
his father’s knee, / he would only eat marrow, the richest cuts of
lamb... / Now what suff ering, now that he’s lost his father” (XXII:
588–589, 593). At the table that Jesus sets no one is thrust away and
no one is compelled by rank, age, or gender to eat last. This is the
meal in which all become one and feel themselves free from the
burden of identity— the social armor of Self hood.