Imprisoned by the Philistines, blind and chained, his hair shorn and his strength sapped, Samson's story is one of great feats of violence and even greater hubris. He believes that he has been sent by God to deliver his people from the heathens, and so strong is his conviction in his divine mission that his behaviour verges on the psychopathic. His delight in killing for God knows no bounds, and his Herculean speed and strength seems unstoppable, but then there's Dalila...

In Samson's egomaniacal bloodlust Maine holds the mirror up to the actions of those running our world now, and in the suicidal bringing down of the twin pillars of the temple presages the defining event of the twenty-first century.