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Western Classical Thought and Culture

2. The Homeric Moral Outlook

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1. The Ideal Person and the Ideal Life

Some of a person's goodness is outside his control.

A good person must have been born into a good family, and must himself be rich and strong.

The hereditary, social, and material components of a person's goodness are so important that, if you have them, you remain a good person, even if you behave badly.

The Homeric moral outlook is most easily understood from its conception of the ideal person.

Heredity

A Good Person

Social Status Wealth

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Illustration: The Shirker Paris

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Some aspects of a person's goodness are in his control.

A hero is expected to display his excellence in his actions, cha

racteristically and ideally the actions of a warrior and leader.

A good man excels in battle, and his characteristic virtues are

strength, skill, and courage.

The hero is individualistic, in so far as he is concerned primaril

y with his own success and reputation; he does not aim primar

ily at some collective goal that includes the good of other peop

le, or of a whole society.

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An example: Achilles

Birth

Achilles was the son of the nymph Thetis and Peleus, the kin

g of the Myrmidons.

His mother, Thetis is a sea nymph or known as the goddess o

f water.

when Achilles was born Thetis tried to make him immortal by

dipping him in the river Styx. However, he was left vulnerable

at the part of the body by which she held him, his heel.

He was taught by Chiron, an intellegent Centaur who was kno

wn for his knowledge and skills with medicine.

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Achilles' parents: Thetis and Peleus (Attic red-figured kylix 460 BC)

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The Education of Achilles (1772) by James Barry (1741-1806)

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Achilles in the Trojan War

Achilles' father sent him to Troy "always to be best and to exc

el the others".

Achilles is the "best of the Achaeans", above all because he i

s the strongest, the bravest, and the most skillful.

Achilles and Agamemnon quarrel at the beginning of the war,

because Agamemnon takes Briseis, who is Achilles' prize, an

d so slights Achilles' honour.

Honour, as Homer conceives it, includes, primarily, other people's good opinion, and, secondarily, the material and social "honours" that are both causes and effects of this good opinion.

Briseis being taken to Agamemnon10

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Achilles' rage by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, 1757

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2. Self and Others

The hero is certainly not indifferent to others.Thetis is concerned about her son Achilles

Thetis and attendants bring armor she had prepared for him to Achilles, an Attic black-figure hydria, c. 575–550 BC

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Hector is concerned about his wife and son.

Hector's last visit to his family before his duel with Achilles: Astyanax, on Andromache's knees, stretches to touch his father's helmet. red-figure column-crater, 370–360 BC

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Achilles tending Patroclus wounded by an arrow ( 500 BC)

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A hero of superior strength and power has inferiors who

depend on him, and he is expected to defend them.

A good husband, such as Hector, cares about his wife.

Achilles does what is expected of the greater hero, and cares

about his friend and dependant Patroclus.

Odysseus appeals to the common interest of the group in his

attempt to persuade Achilles to give up the quarrel with

Agamemnon.

Odysseus: was a legendary Greek king of Ithaca and the hero of Homer's epic poem the Odyssey.

Apart from these specific expectations of particular

people in special relations to the hero, people in general

expect him to be moved by common human feelings.

Achilles displays callous indifference in his dishonouring of

Hector’s corpse.

He finally outgrows this attitude when he meets Priam: when he

thinks of his own father, he understands Priam’s feelings and is

moved by them.

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Priam begs Achilles to pity him, saying "I have endured what no one on earth has ever done before — I put my lips to the hands of the man who killed my son."

Triumphant Achilles: Achilles dragging the dead body of Hector in front of the gates of Troy, painting, 1892 17

Priam Asking Achilles to Return Hector's Body, painting, 182418

The interests of other people are important to a hero, but

a hero’s attitude to these interests is not a prominent part

of his goodness.

A hero is criticized if he is as indifferent to them as Achilles is.

Achilles loses none of his heroic virtue by being selfishly

indifferent to others.

He remains the best of the Achaeans, and no one so much as

suggests that his selfish indifference might damage his reputation

for goodness.

If he had been captured by pirates and sold into slavery, he would

have lost half his virtue.

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3. Difficulties in Homeric Ethics

The Homeric outlook creates conflicts for those who

accept it.

Some of the conflicts arise for the individual himself.

Achilles knows that honour is unstable and transitory, and in any

case does not matter much to someone when he is dead.

However, his shame at the dishonour he suffers from the death of

Patroculus forces him back into the batter, even though he knows

his own death will be the result.

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Homeric ethics creates the conflict within an individual,

but it also creates it within a society.

Each hero wants his own honour and fights for it with others.

When everyone tolerates this system, it may be bad for

everyone.

Example: Penelope’s suitors. Their selfish and parasitic

behaviour is bad for the whole community. But from one point of

view, it is heroic, since it promises considerable rewards in

honour and status for the lucky one who marries Penelope.

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Penelope and the Suitors by John William Waterhouse (1912)

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Slaughter of the suitors by Odysseus, bell-krater, 330 BC

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Odysseus using a bow and arrow to slay Penelope's suitors

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Thersites’s criticism

Thersites was a soldier of the Greek army during the Trojan War.

He is a brash, obstreperous, and ugly rabble-rouser.

He denouces the kings as selfish parasites wasting the resources of the community.

He is beaten by Odysseus for his insolence.

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