The poem presents the Trojans, and the future Romans of Virgil’s own time, as both the underdogs and the oppressors, both the migrants and the colonizers, both the wretched refugees and the imperial overlords.
Each regime, from the Pahlavi dynasty to the Islamic Republic, claimed to uphold human rights and castigated its predecessors as torturers, only to ratchet up the incarceration of political opponents.
That is a nasty process which involves digging up Ambar’s still-fresh corpse, then subjecting it to various grisly indignities night after night as retribution gets visited upon our heroine’s persecutors.
—
Dennis Harvey,
Variety,
6 Aug. 2025
Using it to describe this week’s attack on Huwara – or other similar attacks in Israel or Palestine – effectively puts Israel in the place of the Jews’ historic persecutors.
Republicans have been plagued by raucous town halls for months, with hecklers usually targeting cuts by the Department of Government Efficiency or cuts made through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
—
Brady Knox,
The Washington Examiner,
5 Aug. 2025
There are no protagonists or antagonists, just people moving through life, Jarmusch catching moments of them the way that David Lynch once caught ideas like fish moving down a stream.
—
Ryan Lattanzio,
IndieWire,
31 Aug. 2025
Small groups blocked roads while one contingent of vandals roughed up the lobby of traditionally anti-Kirchner TV station TN (owned by Grupo Clarín, one of Cristina’s historical antagonists).
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