Who built Thebes of the seven gates? In the books you will find the name of kings. Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock? And Babylon, many times demolished. Who raised it up so many times? In what houses of gold-glittering Lima did the builders live? Where, the evening that the Great Wall of China was finished did the masons go? Great Rome is full of triumphal arches. Who erected them? Over whom did the Caesars triumph? Had Byzantium, much praised in song, only palaces for its inhabitants? Even in fabled Atlantis the night the ocean engulfed it the drowning still bawled for their slaves.
Bertolt Brecht, 1935
