The Mortal Hero: An Introduction to Homer’s Iliad
... In scientific literature, there are opinions that he lived between the 12th and 7th centuries BC. Homer was deaf, he wrote his works orally like Bacchus [8], [9]. There is no information on who recorded them and when. ...
... Some allusions in Homer's epic "Iliad" and their figurative meanings. The meaning of allusion: [9], [12], [13], [14], [15], [16], [17], [18], [19], [20], [21], [22], [23], [24] 1) Zeus is the supreme god, ruler of gods and men; the father of many heroes who carry out the will and good intentions of the gods, a terrible punishing force 2) Achilles is brave, brave, heroic; enthusiasm, leadership ...
The article "Linguistic Methodical Foundations of Teaching Allusions in Foreign Literature" explores the pedagogical approaches and linguistic principles involved in teaching allusions from foreign literature. The author delves into the significance of allusions as literary devices and their role in enhancing language comprehension and cultural understanding. Through a comprehensive analysis, the article highlights the importance of integrating allusions into foreign language teaching methodologies to foster critical thinking skills and deepen students' appreciation of literary works. The study offers valuable insights into effective strategies for incorporating allusions into language instruction, emphasizing the need for a nuanced understanding of both linguistic and literary elements. The article describes methods for analyzing allusions expressed in the works of foreign writers in high school literature classes, in particular, when teaching Homer’s epic “Iliad”.
... Thus he confounds heroes trained keenly to scent booty (which presumably confers most of the desired honour) and at least eighty-one generations of critics.' 8 Richard Martin and Seth L. Schein comment upon the unusual nature of Achilles' refusal; Schein suggests Achilles inhabits a world he 'qualitatively transcends but cannot leave', existing as 'a hero alienated not only from the world of the poem but from the world celebrated by hundreds of years of poetic tradition and cultural values'. 9 How can Achilles exist within heroic epic and yet defy its ethos? ...
This edited volume employs the paradoxical notion of ‘anticipatory plagiarism’—developed in the 1960s by the ‘Oulipo’ group of French writers and thinkers—as a mode for reading Russian literature. Reversing established critical approaches to the canon and literary influence, its contributors ask us to consider how reading against linear chronologies can elicit fascinating new patterns and perspectives.
Reading Backwards: An Advance Retrospective on Russian Literature re-assesses three major nineteenth-century authors—Gogol, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy—either in terms of previous writers and artists who plagiarized them (such as Raphael, Homer, or Hall Caine), or of their own depredations against later writers (from J.M. Coetzee to Liudmila Petrushevskaia).
Far from suggesting that past authors literally stole from their descendants, these engaging essays, contributed by both early-career and senior scholars of Russian and comparative literature, encourage us to identify the contingent and familiar within classic texts. By moving beyond rigid notions of cultural heritage and literary canons, they demonstrate that inspiration is cyclical, influence can flow in multiple directions, and no idea is ever truly original.
This book will be of great value to literary scholars and students working in Russian Studies. The introductory discussion of the origins and context of ‘plagiarism by anticipation’, alongside varied applications of the concept, will also be of interest to those working in the wider fields of comparative literature, reception studies, and translation studies.
The paper argues that in the imagery found in the narrative context of the Iliad, the image of public debates is involved. Especially the argument “you started the dispute” is emphasized because it is connected with the concept of blame attributed to Paris and all the Trojans. Under the influence of such works like Graeber and Wengrow (2021), that shed a new light on the prehistory of mankind, I postulate a change in the paradigm of the interpretation of the Homeric world. I believe it would be much more comprehensible if interpreted as expressing egalitarian relations. After all, social and political circumstances described in the Iliad correspond to the phase in which hierarchy is only an increasing tendency. Comparisons drawn from other egalitarian cultures indicate how significant it is who started the dispute and how this argument can be cancelled. In the blueprint of the Iliad, however, Paris’ blame defines the meaning of the Trojan story and, therefore, the indictment that it was Alexander who started the dispute plays a paramount role.
The paper investigates the themes of war in Sophocles’ Ajax , with a special attention to the neglected third stasimon. The meditation of the Chorus and its resolute condemn of war shed new lights on some key themes of the tragedy such as hate, vengefulness and violence, and establishes a dialogue with Homer’s Iliad , both through the reworking of many epic idioms and a reflection on the human values opposing to war.
A camera technique known among sports broadcasters as a “hero shot” is used to capture the moment the athlete has successfully completed the task that seals or celebrates a victory. However, the “hero shot” and its components have not been examined in a scholarly setting. The current study aims to build a theoretical understanding of the “hero shot” as a visual frame that conveys hero mythology. The authors used the hero mythology literature and Brooklyn College's film department film glossary to determine which distance, angles, content, and means were most often used to capture heroic imagery of former American professional cyclist Lance Armstrong. This was done through a content analysis of 927 individual shots of Armstrong, aired between 1999 and 2010. Results suggest that low-angle and long shots were most commonly used for “hero shots.” However, the prominence of three-shots suggests the importance of other actors in contextualizing the hero.
Just as the story of an epic poem is woven from characters and plot, so too the individual similes within an epic create a unique simile world. Like any other story, it is peopled by individual characters, happenings, and experiences, such as the shepherd and his flocks, a storm at sea, or predators hunting prey. The simile world that complements the epic mythological story is re-imagined afresh in relation to the themes of each epic poem. As Deborah Beck argues in this stimulating book, over time a simile world takes shape across many poems composed over many centuries. This evolving landscape resembles the epic story world of battles, voyages, and heroes that comes into being through relationships among different epic poems. Epic narrative is woven from a warp of the mythological story world and a weft of the simile world. They are partners in creating the fabric of epic poetry.
Challenging many established narratives of literary history, this book investigates how the earliest known Greek poets (seventh to fifth centuries BCE) signposted their debts to their predecessors and prior traditions – placing markers in their works for audiences to recognise (much like the 'Easter eggs' of modern cinema). Within antiquity, such signposting has often been considered the preserve of later literary cultures, closely linked with the development of libraries, literacy and writing. In this wide-ranging new study, Thomas Nelson shows that these devices were already deeply ingrained in oral archaic Greek poetry, deconstructing the artificial boundary between a supposedly 'primal' archaic literature and a supposedly 'sophisticated' book culture of Hellenistic Alexandria and Rome. In three interlocking case studies, he highlights how poets from Homer to Pindar employed the language of hearsay, memory and time to index their allusive relationships, as they variously embraced, reworked and challenged their inherited tradition.
The Bacchic gold tablets are a remarkable collection of objects from the Ancient Greek world: inscribed with short verse texts and buried in graves of mystery initiates, they express extraordinary hopes for post-mortem salvation. Past approaches to these objects have sought to reconstruct their underlying belief system. This book is the first to examine them primarily within the context of early Greek poetry and performance culture. The patterns of thought and expression in the tablets find instructive poetic antecedents and analogies, including in non-canonical and inscribed genres that are not included in conventional descriptions of the poetic tradition. Applying a range of analytical approaches from the fields of epigraphy, anthropology, and religious studies, this book ultimately uses the tablets to cast more familiar literature in a new light.
The series mainly includes original studies devoted to classical literature and the classical heritage in the medieval and modern literary civilization, as well as collections of writings by philologists of recognized international value. It is also open to historical studies with a strong focus on textual sources.
The Oresteia is permeated with depictions of the afterlife, which have never been examined together. In this book, Amit Shilo analyzes their intertwined and conflicting implications. He argues for a 'poetics of multiplicity' and a 'poetics of the beyond' that inform the ongoing debates over justice, fate, ethics, and politics in the trilogy. The book presents novel, textually grounded readings of Cassandra's fate, Clytemnestra's ghost scene, mourning ritual, hero cult, and punishment by Hades. It offers a fresh perspective on the political thought of the trilogy by contrasting the ethical focus of the Erinyes and Hades with Athena's insistence on divine unity and warfare. Shedding new light on the trilogy as a whole, this book is crucial reading for students and scholars of classical literature and religion.
In this book, Peter Ahrensdorf explores an overlooked but crucial role that Homer played in the thought of Plato, Machiavelli, and Nietzsche concerning, notably, the relationship between politics, religion, and philosophy; and in their debates about human nature, morality, the proper education for human excellence, and the best way of life. By studying Homer in conjunction with these three political philosophers, Ahrensdorf demonstrates that Homer was himself a philosophical thinker and educator. He presents the full force of Plato's critique of Homer and the paramount significance of Plato's achievement in winning honor for philosophy. Ahrensdorf also makes possible an appreciation of the powerful concerns expressed by Machiavelli and Nietzsche regarding that achievement. By uncovering and bringing to life the rich philosophic conversation among these four foundational thinkers, Ahrensdorf shows that there are many ways of living a philosophic life. His book broadens and deepens our understanding of what a philosopher is.
Michael Phelps was one of the first athletes to openly struggle with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, anxiety, and depression while still competing. During his career, his perceived identity was tied to his status as an athlete. In retirement, his identity shifted to that of a mental health advocate. This study examines the word choice of newspaper articles on the topic of Phelps and mental health using both social identity and framing theories. Mentions of suicide and seeking help, along with the descriptions of specific types of mental illness and perceived identity assigned to Phelps, were compared between two time periods. Results showed that during Phelps’s career, articles were much more likely to discuss his attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder diagnosis and not as likely to discuss suicide, seeking help, and depression. After his retirement, articles were more likely to identify Phelps as an advocate and less likely to focus on him as a celebrity.
This paper uses a textual decision at Iliad 9.394 to argue for irregularity as a functional and meaningful principle in the constitution of the Homeric text. In contrast to almost all recent major editions, I argue that the ‘irregular’ MSS γαμέσσεται should be preferred to the Aristarchaean conjecture γε μάσσεται. Aristarchus’ widely adopted emendation, I suggest, is the product of a drive towards standardization that is still operative in Homeric text-critical practice. This paper opposes that standardization with the evidence of ancient, perhaps pre-Alexandrian, responses to Iliad 9.394, in which the ‘irregularity’ of γαμέσσεται is embraced as an interpretive opportunity. The formal disruptions of γαμέσσεται, I propose, can be understood by locating them both within the immediate context of Iliad 9 and within the wider thematics of irregularity that mark the character of Achilles. This paper thus attempts to reframe our approach to the role of irregularity in the Iliad as an integral feature of meaning rather than grounds for suspecting the integrity of the text.
How many Homers (if any)? This is a question that has bedevilled professional Hellenists since the Alexandrian period. Luckily, such misgivings have not, in general, disquieted students or casual readers, who simply read, study, and enjoy the two lengthy epic poems traditionally ascribed to a composer or, if you lower the date a little, an author, to whom generations have given the name “Homer.” In 1955 the distinguished British Classicist D. L. Page delivered a set of lectures at Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania, entitled The Homeric Odyssey whose main thesis was that the two epics were composed in separate places ( a fortiori by different authors), independently of each other. My project in the study that follows is to examine more closely the stylistic features called into court by Page to attest to the separateness of the two works in respect of authorship. My ulterior motive is to look for explanations of the discrepancies Page claims to have found on a hypothesis other than separate authorship. Page’s linguistic “separators,” as they might be termed, fall into several categories: dialectal, the words used and especially those with the intensifying prefix ἐρι- “exceedingly”; morphological, e.g. datives plural with the short termination -οις vs. the long -οισι; metrical, the lengthening (or not) of naturally short vowels before mute + liquid or nasal; lexical, words, phrases and formular expressions that are favoured by the Iliad and which might be expected to occur also in the Odyssey but don’t, and vice versa, words and formular phrases found exclusively or predominantly in the Odyssey but which are rare in or totally absent from the Iliad.
In the postmodern era, concepts, notions, even ideologies that used to be concrete lost their precision. On the contrary to the clear point of view of modernism with linearity, postmodernism is circular and holistic. Thus, concepts like good and evil must not be seen as a total contrast. With the holistic approach of postmodernism, there can be evil in good and good in evil. In the popular fantasy texts that have been made especially in the last decade, this change easily can be seen in the characters. In this part, change of the good and the evil concepts in the fantasy genre will be examined in the context of postmodernism and developments in these concepts will be approached with the roles as hero, villain, anti-hero, anti-villain.
This article seeks to develop theoretical convergences between the science of nostalgia and the science of heroism. We take four approaches in forging a conceptual relationship between these two phenomena. First, we examine the definitions of nostalgia and heroism from scholars, laypeople, and across cultures, noting how the history of defining the two phenomena has shaped current conceptualizations. Second, we demonstrate how nostalgic experiences consist of reminiscences about our own personal heroism and about cultural role models and heroes. A review of heroism research, moreover, shows also that our recall of our heroes and of heroism is tinged with nostalgia. Third, we make linkages between heroism and nostalgia research focusing on functions, inspiration, sociality, and motivation. Nostalgia researchers have illuminated the functions of nostalgia implicating the self, existential concerns, goal pursuit, and sociality. Our review shows that heroism researchers invoke similar categories of hero functionality. Finally, we propose three areas of future research that can profit from the merging of nostalgia and heroism science, involving the mechanisms by which (a) heroism can fuel nostalgia, (b) nostalgia can promote heroic action, and (c) wisdom results from nostalgic reverie.
The article discusses the genesis of the political by treating this phenomena as a distinctive interaction between political and religious factors. The aim is to carry out the reconstruction of the premises of the political of ancient Greeks, by distinguishing its particular historic development features, exclusively characteristic for the Ancient Greece context. The rites of passage of Greek social communities are analyzed in order to understand why its youth initiation structure, formed during the Greek Dark Ages, became the basic model for Western Civilisation. The role of youth groups, the phenomena of Greek heroes, the educational structure of the young soldier class (ephebeia), and the first ever political revolution, initiated by Lycurgus, are examined by reconstructing the genealogy of the political.
This is a study of the literary modes and transformations of the narratorial νήπιος-comment in Greek epic from Homer to Nonnus. It explores the narrative settings, the typology, and the literary effects of this narrative device which both reveals the seams of the narrative levels and directs attention to the fragility of the human characters whose fate or ignorance of the actual situation is revealed by means of a narratorial νήπιος-intervention. The focus of the analysis is on the literary interplay and allusive engagement of later with earlier instances of the device as regards the replication or modification of the narrative setting, the constituent elements of the comment and its narrative function.
Human action and its consequences in the Iliad and the Odyssey are determined neither by fate nor by the gods. The reconstruction of the concept actually depicted in Homer confirms no conflict between fate and the gods as co-existing forces but reflects the personal motives of active agents, both human and divine, as the basis that underpins the sequence of events in both epics. Nature and individual purposes of each and every active agent, personal desires and aims harboured by human and divine actors shape these motives in a world that perceives life as a path leading to death with no preordained events but as a compound of actual alternatives. In this world every single action is attributed to choices, has its reasons, elicits reactions or rather consequences. As a result, the particular active agent takes resposibility for each choice he makes and shapes his own future. Various forms of divination as well as the perception of omens confirm this conclusion, as predictions in the Homeric epics do not point out predetermined events but motives, decisions and actions of the human actor involved.
Beowulf includes numerous narrative discontinuities. These disjunctions enable the relatively short poem to possess the scope and breadth of an epic. The most obvious of these disjunctions is the abrupt transition between part I of the poem, Beowulf’s youthful deeds, and part II, his heroic death tale. This break, the only disjunction that calls attention to itself, signals a change of genre. Other discontinuities are more subtle, and some can escape the audience’s notice. Hroþulf appears late, and then disappears. A cowardly retainer becomes the trusted messenger. The dragon’s treasure is concealed by the last survivor, and also by ancient kings who curse it. Beowulf’s men do not expect to survive the night in Heorot, and yet they fall asleep. All these disjunctions contribute to the unusual narrative structure, and they serve as guideposts to the concerns of the poet and the meaning of the poem and its parts.
It was as foretold: ‘You will come first of all to the Sirens, who are enchanters/of all mankind’ (Odyssey 12.39–40). The breeze dropped, leaving a windless calm, and the tossing waters of the sea were stilled. The complete stillness suggests the sense of an eternal moment beyond the passage of time. And the Sirens ‘directed their sweet song toward us’, that enticing song which claims an ability to tell all:
Come this way, honored Odysseus, great glory of the Achaians,
and stay your ship, so that you can listen here to our singing;
…
for we know everything that the Argives and Trojans did and suffered in wide Troy through the gods’ despite. Over all the generous earth we know everything that happens.
(12.184–5, 189–91)
Eberhard argues convincingly in his 1923 volume, Das Schicksal als poetische Idee bei Homer that fate is a narrative device in the Iliad and Odyssey which guides the narration towards resolution. As an example of fate at work, he cites the narrator harnessing fate to fulfil ‘what must happen’ when Zeus finds the deaths of Sarpedon and Hector difficult. Movement towards resolution, however, is not the only force motivating the narration. Achilles' vacillations between remaining or quitting pull the narration away from resolution: such episodes suggest the idea of an apparent freedom within fate. If Iliadic fate or free will were unwavering dogmatic notions, their coexistence would be problematic. But perhaps harmony between the two is possible when free will in the Iliad is—like Eberhard's conception of fate—a poetic or narrative device.
By predicating the epic on the notion of influence and inter-textual dynamics, we can trace the genre along a retrospect of influence to the eighth century BC — that is, to the Iliad and the Odyssey of Homer. Even then, it must be borne in mind that these Greek epics, which we attribute to Homer, were not composed in a vacuum. They were the result of an oral tradition of narratives telling of the creation of the world and of significant events in early human history. They are comparable — indeed, intimately related — to a body of stories circulating in the neighbouring Near East, among them a narrative often thought of as the earliest recorded epic: the epic of Gilgamesh. We begin our history of the epic, then, with Gilgamesh, before addressing Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. Homeric influence would of course extend well beyond later classical Greek literature and thought into the age of the Roman Empire, when Homer’s monumental achievements inspire, primarily, Virgil’s Aeneid. Virgil’s conscious and often meticulous imitation of Homer is the generic genuflection that establishes the epic as a living genre in the first place. Further innovation follows, and would comprise works such as Lucan’s Bellum Civile and Ovid’s Metamorphoses.
The Iliad and Odyssey are replete with single speeches or exchanges of speech which are described by the noun νεῖκος (‘quarrel’, ‘strife’) or its derived verb νεικέω. Some time ago, A.W.H. Adkins showed that νεῖκος and νεικείω are used in Homer to designate various kinds of agonistic discourse: threats, rebukes, insults, quarrels and judicial disputes. Critics often now describe νεῖκος-speeches and νεῖκος-exchanges in the Iliad as examples of ‘flyting’. This term, shared by the languages of Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse and the dialect of Old Scots, is transferred to the combination of boasting, invective and threats which Homeric heroes hurl at each other. This is because Iliadic νεῖκος has affinities with the traditional and highly stylised verbal exchanges which take place in the feasting halls and battles depicted in Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Germanic heroic poetry.
In his book The Language of Heroes Richard Martin has argued persuasively that the flyting νεῖκος is a significant speech-act genre performed by Homeric characters and that its competitive mode is analogous to the Homeric poet's poetic project tout court . Just as Homer produces a monumental epic whose focus on Achilles may well be competitive with other renderings of epic tradition and is certainly derived through the manipulation of memory, Homeric heroes and gods flyte by manipulating and contesting the resources of memory. The best Homeric flyting is creatively poetic within existing conventions or strategies and is thereby rhetorically devastating. And Martin sees Achilles as the best flyter because he rhetorically manipulates memory better than any other hero. Thus, the hero is like his poet and the poet is like his hero. Achilles' competitive way with words is unique in (and to) the Iliad and is emblematic of Homer's overpowering competitive poetic achievement.
General Considerations Ajax Trachiniae Oedipus at Colonus Guide to Further Reading References
This paper considers the figure of the realised or hypothetical effeminised male in Homer's Iliad, and discusses the impact of effeminacy upon idealised masculine identity in the epic. The idea of effeminacy in the Iliad is explored alongside several related but distinct concepts, such as cowardice, childishness, dress, physical appearance and battle-field rebukes and insults. The second half of this paper addresses more specifically the figure of Paris and the comparisons drawn between Paris and his brother Hektor. I argue that actualised or hypothetical effeminacy is constructed in the Iliad in order to define, by contrast, a 'proper' masculinity, founded on concepts of martial fortitude and civic responsibility, thoroughly antithetical to the 'other' which the effeminised male symbolises.
The concept of ideology has figured centrally in recent accounts of the fundamental social transformation sweeping Europe from the mid-fifth to second millennia BC. In particular, many have focussed on the human body as a principal medium of ideological expression, notably in terms of a growing 'prestige goods ideology'. This paper endeavours to expose the deficiencies of this model, which lie in its overly cynical nature and its disregard for the specific socio-cultural contours of status expression. Specifically, by linking the 'ideological' transformations of this Period to the development of a distinct institution, a male warrior status group, and its package of expressive themes - individualism, warfare, bodily ornamentation, horses and wheeled vehicles, the hunt, the ritual consumption of alcohol - I seek to demonstrate that the changing treatment of the human body in mortuary rites and in everyday life is more than ideological. In particular, it is implicated in the development of a coherent life style, and as such is fundamentally bound up with changing notions of Personhood and self-identity. Running through the fabric of this life style, through its embodiment of the subject in both life and death, is an equally distinctive notion of male beauty, unique to the warrior.
The funeral lament is the type of speech most closely associated with, and representative of, the female voice in the Iliad. In book 19, Briseis, war booty and geras of Achilles, utters such a lament over the dead body of Patroclus. In the preceding book, Patroclus was already the object of several laments, respectively spoken by the Trojan captives (18.28-31, 338-342) and Achilles (18.79-93, 98-126, 324-342). Briseis’lament in book 19 is the first proper female funeral lament in the Iliad which is spoken in the presence of the deceased. It is also Briseis’sole utterance in the entire poem. Briseis is a captive, like the seven women from Lesbos who wail in response to Briseis’lament (19.301) ; and like the captives of Achilles and Patroclus in Book 18. But Briseis is different from the other captives in the Achaean camp, who are mere concubines and remain anonymous as well as silent : alone among the captives Briseis is accorded (by the poet) the privilege of speech. The singularity of the voice of this special captive - special both for Achilles and for the poet - calls for closer inspection. In her lament for Patroclus, Briseis speaks with the voice of someone close to the deceased and assumes the function of the mourning female normally assigned to the mother or wife. Her speaking up can be explained from a ritual as well as from a narrative point of view. Usually, the duty of the funeral lament falls to the closest female family member. In the Greek camp, however, no such female exists. The task of lamentation is delegated to the captive who is the indirect cause of his death and who at present deplores her own solitude. In fact, it is Briseis’own fate as war captive that is foregrounded in her lament. The terms and formulas used to describe her gestures and speech are closely associated with laments triggered by the husband’s death on the battlefield ; when Briseis utters her lament for Patroclus it is the wife’s lament that the poet has in mind. In a sense, Briseis'lament constitutes an update and actualisation of the lamentation she shaved have spoken on the occasion of her husband’s death, before becoming a slave. Clearly, therefore, it is only in comparison with the other ‘mourning voices’ in the Iliad that it is possible to identify the most significant aspects of the mise en scène of Briseis’voice.
My objective in this paper is to consider the question of the mysteriousness or numinosity of the gods in the Iliad by examining first how heroes talk about and react to the gods, and second how Homer handles fate. My aim is to integrate the findings into a wider thesis about the Iliad's narrative strategy.
Griffin (1980) 152 discusses the mysteriousness and numinosity of Homeric gods, and cites Il. i 43–52, Od. iii 371–82, xix 33–42, saying ‘It is perhaps worth emphasising that in each of these … episodes, we see not only the god behaving like a real god, mysteriously, but also the characters who are present at the moment of revelation responding to it in what can only be called a religious way: adoration or reverent silence’.
At Iliad xxiii 192—211, Iris carries Achilles' prayer to the banqueting winds, in a passage whose humour offers relief after the funeral of Patroclus. At the same time, both in its immediate context and in its relation to Iris' two missions in Book xxiv, the scene contributes to Homer's presentation of the relation between gods and men.
The passage describes divine aid testifying to that concern of the gods for men which is to be so important in Book xxiv; and it immediately follows the account of another manifestation of divine concern, one which looks forward more directly to the next book—the description, at 184—91, of the protection of Hector's body by Aphrodite and Apollo. The fact that Homer anticipated here the description at xxiv 18—21 of Apollo's protection of the body points to the importance of the concern thus emphasised. In its position preceding the episode of the winds—rather than, for instance, following Achilles' earlier threats of maltreatment at xxiii 21–5—the description seems designed also to underline the fact that the parallel between Hector and Patroclus, most obvious in their deaths, is maintained here: both are the objects of divine aid, which in both cases takes the same form, the warding off of a threat to the hero's corpse, whether it is that of maltreatment by Achilles or the lesser threat of the pyre's failure to burn.
The technoscientific consequences of both the human drives for glory on the one hand and a comfortable life on the other potentially threaten human existence. R.U.R., a science fiction play by Karel Čapek, bridges ancient writers and contemporary technoscientific endeavors, encouraging us to consider these issues in light of persistent human nature.
The ethos of leaving no one behind has traditionally animated military forces distinguished by elite status, closed cultures, and frequent operational isolation (e.g., the French Foreign Legion, US Marines, and US Army Rangers). With the recent approval of the Soldier’s Creed, however, the exhortation to leave no one behind has been formally disseminated throughout the US Army. This creed, embraced by the media and further popularized by Hollywood cinema, dates back to ancient Greece, specifically to the literary models found in Homer. However, profound changes to the nature of warfare as well as to the structure of the force and the society it serves have dramatically altered the moral and political significance of retrieving the fallen for the US military. Renewed emphasis on returning for not only the wounded but also, more provocatively, the dead, reveals the enduring appeal of aristocratic sentiment to a democratic force. This article traces the roots of this gesture back to the classical epics of Homer and Virgil in order to evaluate the implications of its recent reemergence in popular and military culture. The analysis extends to contemporary film (Saving Private Ryan and Black Hawk Down) and to recent US operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Empathy is thought a desirable quality in doctors as a key component of communication skills and professionalism. It is therefore thought desirable to teach it to medical students. Yet empathy is a quality whose essence is difficult to capture but easy to enact. We problematise empathy in an era where empathy has been literalised and instrumentalised, including its measurement. Even if we could agree a universally acceptable definition of empathy, engendering it in the student requires a more subtle approach than seems the case currently.
We therefore examine this modern concept and compare it with others such as pity and compassion, using the medium of Homer’s Iliad . Two famous scenes from the Iliad elicit pity in the characters and the audience. Pity and compassion are, however, given a complexity within the narrative that often seems lacking in modern ways of conceptualising and teaching empathy.
In current undergraduate medical curricula, much emphasis is placed on learning the skills of communication. This paper looks at Homer's Iliad and argues that from it we may learn that our skills can be mechanistic, shallow and simplistic. Homer was regarded in the Greek and Roman world as the father of rhetoric. This reputation rested greatly on book 9 of the Iliad, the embassy from the Greek leaders to the bitter, wrathful Achilles. The mission of the three emissaries is to persuade him to return to the ranks of the Greeks, who are being routed since his refusal to fight. We learn how the outcome of a conversation may be predetermined by the previous relationship of the speakers, and how a man beyond reason responds to reason; we should reflect that Homer's audience heard the piece knowing the outcome, giving it a tragic inevitability. We, the audience, cannot analyse the discourse rationally, because in this, as in all communication, reason is disturbed by emotion.
Although most political theories imply some view of the role of emotion in political life, some are hostile to emotion; and no general treatment of the emotional has yet been written in normative political theory. The theoretical study of political emotion should begin with the history of ancient Greek thumos as understood by Homer, who wrote free of the philosophical elevation of reason. Recent theorists have understood thumos as the angry and manly defense of one's own honor, family, and country. In Homer's Iliad, thumos motivates both men and women, participates in deliberation, and suggests not one disposition or emotion, but many emotions. The typical readings of ancient thumos neglect these elements in Homer, and fail to investigate the relationship between political regime and emotion. Employing recent studies of emotion, I articulate the mutual effect of political organization, morality, and emotional character focusing particularly on the story of Achilles.
Achilleus′ speeches and action in Iliad 24 ‘complete a development of character-or better, enlargement of experience and comprehension-which stretches through the whole poem’. I largely agree with this statement, but since I also believe that an ‘enlargement of experience and comprehension’ necessarily entails ‘ a development of character’, I do not hesitate, as its author does, to assert that Achilleus′ character develops, i.e., changes for the better, in the course of the Iliad. It is my purpose here to discuss one of the ways in which his speeches in Book 24 are specifically designed to bring this out. I will also argue that it is precisely because his character changes for the better that the poem fits the Aristotelian concept of epic. Lastly, I will attempt to refute Redfield's arguments in support of his opinion that Achilleus does not change in the course of the story.
Simone Weil's work has always been appreciated for its evocative beauty, but not always for its potential contributions to political thought. In this essay, we engage in a reappraisal of her political thought, and of her relevance to contemporary politics, by way of her discussion of the power of words. Weil shares much with contemporary approaches that view the world as a text to be interpreted. But for Weil, the power of interpretation carries with it an illusion, exemplified in Weil's example of Achilles watching over his war-work, in which the world can be seen, measured, and shaped according to one's will. For Weil, the illusion of control that accompanies this perspective is undermined by our encounter with a world of physical causes and sensations that impact us, quite without us being able to control them.
This article reviews research on modern British heroes (in particular Henry Havelock, Florence Nightingale, Amy Johnson and Robert Falcon Scott) to argue that heroes should be analysed as sites within which we can find evidence of the cultural beliefs, social practices, political structures and economic systems of the past. Much early work interpreted modern heroes as instruments of nationalist and imperialist ideologies, but instrumental interpretations have been superseded within the New Cultural History by broader analyses of the range of gendered meanings encoded in heroic reputations. Studies of heroic icons have generated important insights for historians of masculinity and femininity. More research, however, is needed on the reception rather than the representation of heroic icons, on visual and material sources, and on the changing forms and functions of national heroes after 1945.
Vietnam Veterans with severe post-traumatic stress disorder often report the following combat experiences: a leader''s betrayal of what''s right, lost responsiveness to claims outside a tiny circle of combat-proven comrades, grief and guilt for a dead special comrade, lust for revenge, renunciation of homecoming, feeling already dead, going berserk, dishonoring the enemy, and atrocities. These elements are all in Homer''sIliad account of Achilles, allowing the reader to witness them as they happen, so to speak. Homer''s view of healing and regained humanity is discussed in relation to theIliad''s final scene. TheIliad offers a cross-cultural look at men in battle, and raises questions about some assumptions in American military culture, particularly regarding grief and the need to degrade the enemy to make men fight. Betrayal of what''s right and the berserk state are suggested as key pathogens for PTSD in combat soldiers.
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