According to Apollodorus, Thetis advised her son Achilles, before going to war, to not be too eager to disembark, for the first man to touch the Trojan shore would also be the first among his peers to die. Iolaus the Phylacean, aware of this prophecy, takes one for the team and readily leaps from his ship while everyone else held back. Managing to kill four Trojans before falling to Hector’s spear, he is from that point onwards referred to as Protesilaus by his fellow Achaeans, as he was the first (protos) of the host (laos) to perish.
While some versions of the story are less flattering and attribute his action to an unforced error—the cunning Odysseus is said to have jumped first onto his shield on the sand, dodging the prophecy while prompting everyone else to jump after him—, the figure of the sacrificial first mover is revered in mythology.
The admiration for Protesilaus transcends his fellow warriors. When the news of his death reached his wife Laodamia, her grief was so overwhelming that she pulled a reverse-Orpheus and summoned him back from the dead for three hours to say her good-byes. Devastated by his return to the Underworld, she built a bronze statue of her husband to lie in bed with her, and ultimately committed suicide when it was discovered and destroyed.
Despite being among the lesser-known Achaeans, Protesilaus alone is responsible for ferrying his team across the first phase-gate of the Trojan War. He is the embodiment of self-sacrifice for the good of the collective interest; a lightning rod of guaranteed misfortune required for his party to ultimately advance, and conquer.
March 30, 2023
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg becomes the first to indict a US president with 34 felony charges, accusing Donald Trump of falsifying New York business records to conceal a hush money payment before the 2016 presidential election. This unprecedented action immediately attracts aggression from all sides of the political spectrum: Republicans in Congress rebuke it as a witch-hunt, while Democrats seem equally upset at the insignificance of the accusation vis-à-vis several other, more substantial, claims of Trump’s malfeasance.
And yet, Bragg’s lone battle around a misdemeanor overcomes the inertia that kept other accusations from manifesting, giving rise to the opportunity for new challengers to take up arms against Trump. “In the coming weeks or months, we may see other prosecutors file charges against the former president, as well”, wrote Time Magazine.
A new generation of battles—the Georgia votes, the Mar-a-Lago documents, January 6—are now accessible as such due to a lesser character accepting his role in the larger scheme of things, embracing the trade-off of the first mover’s disadvantage.
Rather than bravely sacrificing himself for the collective good like Protesilaus, Bragg is more akin to he who casts the first stone. He is not sacrificing himself for the greater good, but instead choosing a scapegoat from the completely corrupt political class upon whom to act out collective violence. His casting of the first stone will start a mimetic contagion of violence, in which criminal prosecution of one's political enemies becomes the norm. Bragg is not Protesilaus, but Apollonius from The Life of Apollonius of Tyana. He is not sacrificing himself, but glorifying himself while directing the mob's lust for vengeance towards a sacrificial victim.
As Rene Girard tell us:
"To accomplish his ends, Apollonius has to distract the Ephesians from the deed he asks them to commit, so he tries to make them forget the physical reality of the stoning. With a ridiculous grandiloquence he denounces the beggar as an “enemy of the gods.” To make the violence possible, he must demonize the individual he has selected as victim. And finally the guru succeeds. He obtains what he desires: the first stone. Once it is thrown, Apollonius can take a nap or whatever, for now violence and deceit are bound to triumph. The same Ephesians who had pity on the beggar a moment earlier now demonstrate a violent emulation of one another that is so relentless, so contrary to their initial attitude, that our surprise can only equal our sadness. Not purely rhetorical, the first stone is decisive because it is the most difficult to throw. Why is it the most difficult to throw? Because it is the only one without a model.
When Jesus finally responds, the first stone is the last obstacle that prevents the stoning. In calling attention to it, in mentioning it expressly, Jesus does all he can to reinforce this obstacle and magnify it. The more those thinking about throwing the first stone perceive the responsibility they would assume in throwing it, the greater the chance that they will let their hands fall and drop the stone. Do we really need a mimetic model for an act as simple as throwing stones? Yes, when the target is a human being, most people do. The positive proof is the initial resistance of the Ephesians. It is certainly not in order to undermine the prestige of Apollonius that Philostratus tells us about his difficulties. These must be real.
Once the first stone is thrown, thanks to the encouragement of Apollonius, the second comes fairly fast, thanks to the example of the first; the third comes more quickly still because it has two models rather than one, and so on. As the models multiply, the rhythm of the stoning accelerates.
Saving the adulterous woman from being stoned, as Jesus does, means that he prevents the violent contagion from getting started. Another contagion in the reverse reverse direction is set off, however, a contagion of nonviolence. From the moment the first individual gives up stoning the adulterous woman, he becomes a model who is imitated more and more until finally all the group, guided by Jesus, abandons its plan to stone the woman."
- Girard, René. I See Satan Fall Like Lightning (p. 57).
Who will play the part of Jesus in our current political environment? Who will say to our corrupt ruling class, "Let whoever is without sin among you cast the first stone!”? Unfortunately, I see a lot more Apolloniuses among the current ruling class.