 As the Gilgamesh epic begins, there is a threat to civilization, a fundamental threat. It resides in us men, and I'm speaking now of adult males and not human beings generally. It's masculine aggression. Something has to be done with masculine aggression, otherwise there is no civilization. And yet with all that, it's still an amazing thing, not just to have this city, but to have any city, any city at all. The fact that there can be such a thing as civilization. And this is what I think the epic of Gilgamesh celebrates. Not so much the Babylonian civilization in its particulars, but the fact of civilization, that there should be any civilization at all.