The Past Is What We Save

The Paradox of Being Traditional

It’s common to think of tradition as something handed down or inherited. The etymology of the word suggestions tradition is something done to us.

Yet the image of Aeneas (founder of Rome) bearing his father, Anchises, on his shoulders, as they flee the wreckage of the Trojan War, is an under-appreciated image of tradition:

Not the past as something that …