At the start of his third book, Valerius Flaccus’ narrator turns to his Muse to ask the “causes for the unspeakable battle” that brought Jason and the Argonauts into deadly conflict with their former host, King Cyzicus. The Muse relates the origins of Cybele’s anger (Argonautica 3.21–6):

While harsh Cyzicus was exhausting the forests, deceived by a huge desire for spoils, he struck down with his lance a lion accustomed to convey his mistress [Cybele] through Phrygian cities as he was returning to her reins. And then he mounted the seized head, mane and all, above his doors, a calamitous trophy abominable to the goddess.

If Cyzicus’ situation sounds familiar, it might be because we’ve also experienced outrage over the murder of a lion. Since Americans learned that a Minnesota dentist named Walter J. Palmer had killed Cecil, a beloved Zimbabwean lion, the viral story has been a consistent part of the media landscape. We’ve learned how Palmer’s shuttered office was besieged by protesters and excoriated on Yelp. A retired Minnesota insurance salesman told us he’s received hundreds of angry phone calls simply because he has the same name as the confessed lion killer. Even Betty White shared her disgust, declaring, “You don’t want to hear some of the things I want to do to that man.”

It’s anyone’s guess whether Ms. White would exact her vengeance in the same way as Valerius’ Cybele, but both are incensed over identical crimes. In a statement widely reprinted Palmer admitted to slaying the lion but asserted that he believed his actions were “legal and properly handled.” Like Palmer, Valerius’ Cyzicus was unaware that he had personally done anything wrong when he killed his prey. He only understands his crime at the moment of his death, when he hears “the raging roars of lions” (3.237) as Jason’s spear barrels through his chest.

I’ve always been surprised at how few scholars view Cyzicus’ fate with sadness or disgust. The poet first introduces him as a warm host who receives the epic’s heroes admirably. The later revelations of his crimes against Cybele are as jarring and discordant as their outcome is tragic. Lions can be dangerous creatures, and Cyzicus had no way of knowing the particular lion he killed was beloved to the goddess. Disturbed by the news of Cecil’s death and confronted with Palmer’s statement that he “had no idea that the lion [he] took was a known, local favorite,” I now understand the goddess’ wrath a bit better.

But the situation remains fraught. When I compare Palmer’s actions with those in the Argonautica, I remember that Valerius’ Cybele draws at least part of her literary inspiration from Virgil’s furious (even bigoted) Juno. Cyzicus himself, though characterized as “harsh,” evokes another innocent hunter from epic, Ascanius, whose murder of a “local favorite” stag in Aeneid 7 provides one casus belli for the Italian Civil War that occupies that epic’s second half. How do we reconcile the sense that these hunters, Cyzicus and Palmer, are both cruel butchers getting what they deserve and also victims of disproportionate anger?

I propose to consider this question in light of the position that our pair of lion hunters occupy in a specific and extensive tradition of Western thought. Situated in this context, it becomes easier to see how the distress summoned by their actions reflect concurrent anxieties about constructions of masculinity and cultural footprints in a global society. Valerius Flaccus’ fuller treatment of Cyzicus, the civil violence his actions cause, and its aftermath, also helps us see more clearly the deficiencies both of our current anger and the media’s reporting of it.

The lion’s regal majesty has remained a facet of the Western imagination since Homer composed the Iliad, where lion similes frequently connect the animal’s bravery to a man’s violent domination of an enemy. In these similes the poet normally compares an elite fighter, Argive or Trojan, to a marauding lion attacking weaker animals. At Iliad 16.487–9, Patroclus’ assault on the Trojan Sarpedon reminds the narrator of “when, upon entering a herd, a lion discovers a bull, fierce and greathearted among the shamblehooved oxen, but the bull perishes groaning under the maw of the lion.” When Hector attempts to beg for Achilles’ mercy, the Greek hero declares, “Between lions and men there are no oaths” (Iliad 22.262). Comparisons such as these affirm the lion’s position at the top of the metaphorical animal kingdom because the lion, like the hero, emerges triumphant. They also confirm the hero’s superiority by contrasting the penetrated carcass of the loser to the dominant, continent body of the lion.

Yet lions are not only avatars of heroism in the Iliad, but also objects of fear to be hunted. Hector’s unrelenting assault on the Argive wall in Iliad 12.41–50 is compared to the aggression of a lion or a boar against a hunting party of dogs and men, a scene that almost certainly represents a lion or boar hunt. In a scene on Achilles’ shield (Iliad 18.579–81) young men defend a bull from the onslaught of two lions. Homer presents lions as paradoxical animals, simultaneously admirable and threatening. These disparate characterizations work together dynamically: nothing is greater than the lion except the man who can defeat and thereby become the lion.

Hercules exemplifies this tradition as a figure we might call a lion-hero hybrid. After strangling the Nemean lion, who according to Diodorus 4.11 was unable to be penetrated by weapons, Hercules adopts the pelt as his own protection. By his actions Hercules demonstrates Western masculinity’s constituent elements, superior strength and impenetrability. Wearing his trophy demonstrates this strength and amplifies his body’s already impressive integrity. Yet, as a lion-hero hybrid, Hercules is also a figure of beastial savagery who frequently loses control of himself and at one point slays his own family.

Valerius Flaccus included Hercules among his cadre of Argonauts, and he likewise takes part in the fight against Cyzicus, killing several of the king’s subjects. One victim remains conscious long enough to hear the son of Zeus boast (3.169–70) that he “is falling now to the weapons of Hercules, a huge gift, a fate your family will always admire.” But just like the suffering hero of Euripidean and Senecan tragedy, Hercules does not know whom he slays. The dying man “first recognizes his friend’s name and bears this dire crime to the ignorant shades” (3.171–2). Leonine strength asserts Hercules’ dominance even as his manipulation by a frenzied goddess’ anger gestures towards the “dire crime” he will commit against his wife and children.

The interconnected themes of lion killing and monstrous masculinity have hardly lost their ancient appeal, at least if the murdered beast is fictional. Promotional material for the 2014 movie Hercules pitted a roaring CGI feline against a ferocious Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. In the opening lines of the movie’s trailer a thick, male voice intones: “No matter how fast you run, no matter how far you go, the beast will follow.” As he delivers this last phrase the Nemean lion pans snarling into view. Of course Hercules cannot outrun the beast: he is the beast.

If violently slaying a lion has been, and remains, a paradigmatically male thing to do, then the outrage caused both by Palmer’s murder of Cecil and Cyzicus’ similar crime reflect two moments of masculine crisis. Peter J. Davis has recently argued that Valerius’ Argonautica reflects upon “the problem that the principate posed for the display of aristocratic virtus,” a Latin word whose best English translation is “manliness.” The Argonauts’ nighttime fight deeply problematizes the manliness of all involved. Cyzicus’ heroic lion killing triggers his punishment, while Jason’s warrior prowess desecrates the guest-host relationship, rendering its merit dubious. We have already seen how, in this fight, Hercules plays both the dominant male and the angry goddess’ pawn.

Through this lens we may also reflect on the position of men in American society. Although men (and especially white, cisgender men like me) continue to enjoy a host of inherited, structural advantages, some traditional perks — like better pay for equal work — are rightly coming into question. Yet even as some men seek to conform to new cultural expectations, they find it hard to overcome institutional structures that, for example, prevent them from being more hands-on parents. Men are still raised to glory in dominance but can’t find a way to translate that desire into any world other than the universe of the most recent Halo release. Simultaneously, men who look forward to modeling less violent paradigms are shepherded back to the old ways by hidebound institutions.

Reactions to the parallel deaths of Cecil and Cybele’s lion also reflect concerns about the place of the Western male in a global world. Cybele's violent anger at accomplishments Valerius’ readers might normally view as praiseworthy distances the goddess from those readers, reinforcing her traditional, uncomfortable intolerance of men. Because she wields power over Rome as a state god, the Argonautica seems hesitant about state support for self-assured exercises of manliness in foreign regions. Cyzicus parallels Roman anxieties later developed, for example, in Tacitus’ Agricola. Could aristocrats lay claim to a juicy trophy without enduring the wrath of a superior being, their emperor?

Modern attitudes towards lion hunting, however, distort the paradoxes of the lion-hero hybrid to the point of unrecognizability. Palmer asserted that he “relied on the expertise of [his] local professional guides to ensure a legal hunt,” but it is now clear that, in the course of his “hunt,” Palmer shot the lion once with a crossbow and initially failed to kill him. The wounded animal had to be tracked for 40 hours and, eventually, put out of his misery with a gun. Between the reliance on local guides commanded by modern legality and Palmer’s ineffectiveness in confronting the lion, heroic masculinity becomes impossible to inhabit as it gets downsized to pampered souvenir seeking.

More broadly considered, the West enforces a deep double standard across Africa when it comes to hunting and killing lions. While in some countries big game hunting by well-heeled Westerners is legal and even integral to supporting conservation efforts, in others Westerners are establishing programs to discourage Africans from killing their hungry, wild neighbors. The Maasai people, whose men traditionally pursue lion hunts “as a sign of bravery and personal achievement,” can now compete in a biennial Maasai Olympics, a series of athletic contests established by Westerners and meant to substitute for the usual rite of passage. Even as Western men pay to bow hunt lion trophies, Maasai men are asked to adopt Western-style athletics in order to conserve big cats and support Western tourism.

Although the stories of Cyzicus and Palmer demonstrate, and respond to, crises in parallel constructions of domestic and international masculinities, their differences are also illuminating. Valerius Flaccus gives a full story of Jason's fight with Cyzicus, from its origins, through the combat, and into its devastating aftermath. When the sun rises on the nocturnal battlefield and the Argonauts understand for the first time that they have killed their friends they fall into a deep mourning. Even though a goddess caused these horrible acts, the wind dies and the Argonauts cannot sail before atoning for their violence. As the prophet Mopsus explains to the Argonauts, they cannot sail because of the ghosts of the men they have slaughtered. “Their anger remains, and their grief hardens” (ira manet duratque dolor, 3.384).

Cyzicus’ lion hunt and its brutal aftermath presents a story full of human dimensions. As readers we get to know Cyzicus before the poet explains his crimes, where the phrase “deceived by a love of spoils” provides an accessible motive. The poet’s exploration of Cybele’s rage justifies his punishment. The narrative of the Argonauts’ return, combat, and shame tells their whole story and dramatizes the impact of Cyzicus’ crime on his wider community. Rounded and whole, Valerius Flaccus crafts this tragic episode into a multifaceted reality.

The narrative around Palmer’s poaching of Cecil has been much flatter. In part this may be due to the generic limitations of modern journalism contending with limited data as Palmer goes to ground and clams up under the threat of impending legal action. But Valerius’ narrative should remind us that there is more to this tale than a single act of violence on the savanna. The Cecil story is about us, and about our rage. Our anger places us in Cybele’s position, blind to the full human dimensions of the story. In order to see these fuller dimensions we need to set our anger aside.

Enraged at the beheading of this majestic cat, we haven’t stopped to ask whether Zimbabweans are as angry as we are. According to two articles published in the New York Times, one as an editorial, the other almost two weeks after the story first broke, there is a widespread hostility towards lions in Zimbabwe and elsewhere in Africa. Western media have relayed that Zimbabwe’s environment minister, Oppah Muchinguri, called for Palmer’s extradition, but his statements were calm and technical, not angry. A Reuters video surveying the controversy interviewed two white Americans and zero Zimbabweans. Early reporting about this big cat’s death, then, either evidenced a lack of parallel anger coming from Zimbabwe or generally excluded African perspectives on the event.

This fact should remind us that the Cecil story is about us — white Americans like Palmer — and the problematic nature of our masculinity and our relationship with Africa and Africans. Even as the story performs American anxieties about our role abroad and the place of big game hunting in the list of acceptable male activities, its narratives imperiously re-inscribe the priorities of white knowledge by excluding most African perspectives. Their opinions don’t matter; their knowledge doesn’t count.

In the wake of the media firestorm over Cecil the Lion some have asked what it takes to get (white) Americans to care about Africa. Like Cybele’s emotions, the only voice raised in response has been the voice of anger. Before we decide on Cecil’s value to Zimbabwe, why don’t we listen to the opinions of those whom the lion’s death directly impacts?

Instead, we resolve our anxieties by feasting on self-righteous anger at a Midwestern dentist, a well-off version of an everyman. Our response gives shape to a rift within our culture more subtle than other, more obvious rifts — but all the more sensitive for its latency. Before they even knew what they were doing, the Argonauts fought their former hosts over Cyzicus’ actions. We are fighting ourselves.

I mean that literally. Disaffected internet users have mocked the mainstream reaction to Cecil’s death by juxtaposing laments for the big cat with institutional indifference for black lives. Roxane Gay eloquently called us out for crying for Cecil while failing to muster a similar anger at the brutal, pointless murder of Samuel DuBose. A meme, ‘black lion problems’, cropped up in the wake of our collective indignation, featuring the photoshopped picture of a lion overwritten by phrases that echo American race disparities. One entry connected the plight of the black lion to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. by declaring he “has a dream,” but “gets shot by poachers.”

As a beautiful animal Cecil has intrinsic value, and I agree that we ought to support the preservation of endangered species. But our anger here is misplaced and ill-spent. If Africans want to milk big game hunters for cash to support conservation efforts, we should accept their sovereign decisions. If an American citizen wants to spend his money in accordance with Zimbabwean law, we should not let internet vigilantes drive him unlawfully out of our society. Whether Palmer acted in accordance with Zimbabwean law is for Zimbabwe, not us, to decide.

In our war against Palmer we are also ignoring an actual, all too real war being waged on our own fellow citizens. A little over a year has gone by since the death of Michael Brown, and in the time since then our attention has been drawn again and again to the actions of protesters and police alike. Although the media has given voice, sometimes fumblingly, to the perspectives of black protesters, reporters and social media have more often scolded rioters as “thugs” or told them to go home. Big cats deserve our sympathy, but apparently black Americans do not.

By juxtaposing Valerius Flaccus’ treatment of Cyzicus with our own popular and journalistic responses to Palmer’s killing of Cecil we can see how inhumane and inhuman our anger is. Valerius’ tragic story contains all the pieces we ought to be talking about, but it would appear that we feel none of the regret for our actions that Jason does. Valerius captures the troubling dimensions of a culture in crisis. We can see the same disturbing aspects of social strain beneath Palmer’s story, but where Valerius offers a complete narrative we suppress the parts we don’t want to hear.

An animal’s death is only important to Valerius because it leads to sacrilege, human loss, and civil war. We have magnified the value of a specific great cat above the value of human life. Whether this action is sacrilege or not, it calls for some of the same reflection and communal solidarity exercised by the Argonauts to expiate their crime and make their way forward as a sodality, as a society.

All Americans have inherited systems of monstrous masculinity and unequal, disproportionate justice. We’re not to blame for that. We need to see beyond our anger over Cecil to the bodies of the men and women our systems have unjustly killed. Their anger remains, and their grief is hardening.

Leo Landrey is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Classics at Fordham University in the Bronx, N.Y. He has published on Silius Italicus’ Punica and is currently writing a book on Valerius Flaccus’ use of audacity to examine Roman society and the principate in the wake of civil war.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the views of the Paideia Institute.