In a 1985 essay on the tragedian Aeschylus, the Albanian writer Ismail Kadare argued that the most remarkable thing about the ancient Greeks—even more than their invention of philosophy and democracy—was their sense of “collective regret.” A brave claim, but consider: Centuries earlier, the Greeks had waged a savage and morally indefensible war against Troy. A less developed civilization would have erased that shameful period from its memory. Instead, the Greeks made it the touchstone of their literature. “The crime was exposed from all angles by the Greeks themselves, without any pressure exerted by other nations,” Mr....