One of the defining features of civilised states that distinguishes them from many primitive societies, and a few modern fundamentalist religious ones, is the existence of laws that deny individuals the right to take personal revenge for crimes against themselves or their families. In Hamlet a Viking code of heroic values (represented by Fortinbras and the ghost of Old Hamlet) is contrasted with Horatio's philosophic stoicism. The former valorises retaliatory vengeance, the latter an indifference to misfortune. In Othello the Venetian republic – famed for its legendary political wisdom – is threatened by the forces of barbarism in the form of the Ottoman empire; the two are symbolically brought together when the soldier charged with defending Venice against the barbarian, resorts not to a court of law, but to an archaic honour code in satisfaction of a supposed wrong. While humanists saw their task as the defence of civilisation against barbarism, they believed that the greatest danger didn't always come from an external enemy. The archetypal example of a city that fell as a result of help from within was Troy. In both Hamlet and Othello the ultimate threat to state security comes, not from an invading power, but from within the city gates. Though both tragedies reflect humanist distrust of heroic values, it's only in Hamlet that there's any talk of the liberal arts, and even then Hamlet seems more interested in heroic poetry than in the civilising power of the arts.