Tragedy and World Systems Theory

Given the striking way that Nemesis seems to be overtaking American capitalism 
after the hubris of the 1990s, does anyone on this list, think that the 
worldview of Greek tragedy has anything in common with a world systems approach.
After all, it is this worldview which Herodotus and Thucydides applied to 
explain the hegemonic cycle in the case of Persia and Athens.
Could the cycle of hubris and nemesis perhaps be compared to an evolutionary 
learning process of conjecture and refutation?
This essay by Francis Cornford 
(http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/Thucydides/Cornford/CTOC.html) may throw some 
light on the issue, in the case of Thucydides. As for Herodotus, maybe the 
father of history, was also the father of World systems theory?