Ancient writers speculated that Herostratus was motivated by a sense of injustice—not injustice that the world was overlooking his great talents but, on the contrary, injustice that the fates should have given him no talents whatsoever. It was not fair that society should grant the immortality of fame only to those who were simply lucky enough to have been born with an artist’s eye, the silver tongue of the rhetorician or the strong arm of the warrior. Psychologists’ studies suggest that this combination of a sense of injustice and inadequacy is common to those who make their names by killing the talented or destroying their works.(…) Those who believe they have an equal right to a place in the firmament of fame but who do not have the talent to earn it are likely to become frustrated, neurotic and very, very dangerous—blazing comets crashing into the earth. We cannot all be heroes; most of us accept this fact, but some choose instead to be villains.

Immortality Stephen Cave

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