Eric Auerbach (Mimesis) notes that, in the whole of Greek literature there is nothing to compare with this scene--Simon Peter's confrontation with the maid in the courtyard tonight. In Greek literature, ordinary people--like fisherfolk and servants--are always low­ life, comic, buffoons. Tragedy is for kings, queens, for who cares deeply for the souls of common people? The power of great tragedy occurs when a great king, like Lear, falls a great way down, when the once proud monarch is turned out into the storm. Never, says Auerbach, would a Greek god be caught in some petty police action, hustled off to jail for interrogation, as happens to Jesus this night.

In our day, nobody writes tragedy. When our "heroes" (really anti-heroes) fall, it is not the gods (who as in Oedipus), strike them…