More than 50,000 Carthaginian slaves

built the valley of the temples at Agrigento.

Treadmills and cranes moved the drums

of sandstone which were pegged together, and

the columns fluted and plastered. A coat

of paint, and the soft stone gleamed like marble.

The work of two dozen years, creating eternity.

Each temple held the cella of a god –

the classical embodiments of oh so many

precious human qualities. Imagine

worshippers outside, terror-annointed

in the burnished sun, wailing in ecstasy,

hungry for sacrifice – which they could buy

and eat at home. Oh, sacred takeaways.

And how awake were these Greeks, and Sicily

their chief disciple, their second home.

Great was their knowledge, their Mathematica.

Philosophers had logic to a T. Morality and sacrifice

their duty, and they loved a hemlock ending.

Dramatists posed the greatest questions,

and knew how to make ‘em laugh like kings.

And still those columns standing!

Still declaring for the everlasting things –

how genius rests upon the shoulders of slaves

whose judgments die unspoken in the dust.

And those invisibles, death-worked, fleshless,

likely beaten bones in pits, weep not for

them – for ages greatness grew from their labours.

Being one was the just reward for defeat,

as every Nazi knew. Our miracle that capital

investment, industrial production and the

despoiling of the planet should have put

to death the need for slaves. Progress indeed.