Margaret and Her Friends / or, Ten conversations with Margaret Fuller upon the mythology of the Greeks and its expression in art, held at the house of the Rev. George Ripley, Bedford Place, Boston, beginning March 1, 1841

by Caroline Wells Healey Dall; Margaret Fuller

Then we began to talk about Theseus in connection with Tartarus. Why should he sit forever on a stone?

Margaret thought he represented reform!

Mr. Mack said reform checked itself by its own fanaticism.

Wheeler, in this connection, asked after the Greek notion of accountability.

Margaret did not think the Greeks had any.

Wheeler assured her to the contrary, and told anecdotes to prove it. He spoke of the fatal transmission of guilt in one family, generation after generation.

Margaret said the Greeks never rejected facts.

Ida Russell spoke of the last King of Athens, Codrus, supposed to have been punished for the crimes of his ancestors.

Wheeler said that when the Greeks killed some ambassadors, they felt so sure that Heaven would avenge the sin that they sent two citizens to expiate it; but Darius, to whom they were sent, refused to release the Greeks from their impending doom.