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Odysseus and the Genus ‘Hero’*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2009

Margalit Finkelberg
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Extract

The Iliad proceeds from an idea of hero which is pure and simple: a hero is one who prizes honour and glory above life itself and dies on the battlefield in the prime of life. Indeed, in spite of what Achilles says at a bitter moment of the choice between a short and glorious life and a long and obscure one, his actual choice is made when, warned by Thetis that Hector's death is only a prelude to his own, he prefers to kill Hector and die himself rather than leave Patroclus unavenged. Hector behaves in a similar way: having chosen honour over life, he remains outside the walls of Troy to meet his death at Achilles' hands. Hundreds of minor Iliadic warriors make the same choice in a less spectacular way, by the very fact that they volunteered to come to Troy in order to win glory in war. This is true both of young Simoeisios, who came to Troy even before he had time to take a wife, and fell ‘like a black poplar' at Ajax’ hands, and of Lycaon son of Priamus who, having slipped away from nearby Arisbe where he was kept in safety as a hostage, returned to the battlefield only to be taught in his last moments the bitter lesson that death is after all the inevitable conclusion to life.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 42 , Issue 1 , April 1995 , pp. 1 - 14
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1995

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References

Notes

1. The Greek word ‘hero’ can designate either people of the remote past who lived up to the time of the Trojan War and whose deeds are celebrated in the epic songs, or people who became the object of cult after their deaths; the latter category also includes those who lived in historical times. The religious aspect of the word ‘hero’ is completely alien to the Homeric epic, either because the formative stage of the Greek epic tradition preceded the development of the phenomenon of the hero-cult or because for some reason or another this tradition preferred to ignore this phenomenon See further West, M. L., Hesiod, Works and Days (Oxford, 1978), pp. 37OffGoogle Scholar. and Nagy, G., The Best of the Achaeans (Baltimore and London, 1979), pp. 114ffGoogle Scholar.

2. See Griffin, J., Homer on Life and Death (Oxford, 1980), pp. 81ff.Google Scholar; Schein, S. L., The Mortal Hero (Berkeley, 1984), pp. 67ff.Google Scholar; Edwards, M. W., Homer, Poet of the Iliad (Baltimore and London, 1987), pp. 149ffGoogle Scholar.

3. Il. 9.406–20; 18.94–126. Cf. PL Symp. 179e: ‘after learning from his mother that if he slew Hector he should die, while if he spared him he should end his days at home in the fullness of his years, he made the braver choice and went to rescue his lover Patroclus, avenged his death, and so died…’ (tr. M. Joyce). Cf. also Ap. 28c–d.

4. Il. 22.90–130; cf. 6.440–65.

5. Simoeisios Il. 4.473–89; Lycaon Il. 21.34–114.

6. Il. 12.322–8; cf. also 6.487–9; Callin. 1.8–13. The English quotations from the Iliad are given in the translation by Andrew Lang, Walter Leaf, and Ernest Myers, and those from the Odyssey in the translation by S. H. Butcher and Andrew Lang; a few slight changes have been introduced for the sake of terminological uniformity.

7. See further Nagy (above n. 1), pp. 42ff.

8. The Ulysses Theme2 (Oxford, 1963), p. 66Google Scholar.

9. Ibid., p. 69.

10. Il. 19.154–83; 198–237.

11. As part of the formula πολ⋯τλας δος 'Oδνσσεύς; the meaning of the epithet ταλασ⋯øρονος, which appears with the genitive of Odysseus’ name, amounts to much the same. Note that Stanford (above a 8), p. 74, is mistaken in claiming that the epithet ‘much-enduring’ is also applied to Nestor.

12. Stanford, loc. cit.; cf. also Griffin, J., Homer, the Odyssey (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 93ffGoogle Scholar.

13. Od. 1.18; 4.170,241; 23.248, 261, 350.

14. Il. 24.732–4.

15. The same tendency can be seen in the translation of πολλά περ ⋯θλ⋯σαντα at Il. 15.30, relating ‘havinggone through many struggles’: see LSJ s.v. ⋯θλ⋯ω.

16. Od. 11.620–2.

17. Nagy, G., ‘Early Greek Views of Poets and Poetry’ in Kennedy, G. A. (ed.), Vie Cambridge History of Literary Criticism (Cambridge, 1989), p. 12Google Scholar; cf. id (below a 28), pp. 136ff. This double use of the word aethlos can already be seen in the presentation of the chariot race in the pseudo-Hesiodean Shield of Heracles; see vv. 310–11: ‘So they [the charioteers] were engaged in an unending toil (π⋯νον), and the end with victory came never to them, and the contest (εθλον) was ever unwon’ (tr. H. G. Evelyn-White).

18. Il. 8.363; 15.30; 19.133; Od. 11.622, 624; cf. H.Hom. 15.8; Hes. Th. 951. Of the remaining four, two relate to the participants of the Trojan War en masse (II. 3.162; Od. 3.262), one to the work done by Poseidon and Apollo in the service of Laomedon the king of Troy (Il. 7.453), and one to the possible future of the child Astyanax (Il. 24.734).

19. Cf. H. Horn. 15.6 (of Heracles), ‘he himself did many deeds of violence, and endured many’.

20. In Heubeck, A. and Hoekstra, A. (edd.), A Commentary on Homer's Odyssey II (Oxford, 1989), p. 116Google Scholar (on 11.623–4); cf. Galinsky, G. K., The Herakles Theme (Oxford, 1972), pp. 132fGoogle Scholar.

21. Od. 11.617–19.

22. See, e.g., Rohde, E., Psyche 1 (Tübingen, 1921), pp. 148ff.Google Scholar; Guthrie, W. K. C., The Greeks and their Gods (Boston, 1954), pp. 221fGoogle Scholar.

23. Greek Hero Cults (Oxford, 1921), p. 19Google Scholar.

24. Greek Religion (Cambridge, Mass., 1985), p. 208Google Scholar; OCD s.v. ‘hero-cult’.

25. Diod. Sic. 1.2.4; cf. 4.1.4–6.

26. Perseus 3.52.4; Jason 4.40.2; Heracles 5.8.5; cf. 4.11.1.

27. Pyth. 12.28–9 and 01. 10.22–3.

28. See esp. Isthm. 6.48 (Heracles); Pyth. 4.220,165 (Jason); cf. Pyth. 10.29ff. (Perseus); cf. also Bacchyl. 9.8; 13.55–7. See further Nagy, G., Pindar's Homer (Baltimore and London, 1990), p. 138Google Scholar.

29. Soph. Track. 1011–13 and Phil. 1419–20. Cf. Eur. H.F. 1252; cf. 1309–10.

30. Ap. 22a6–7.

31. Hdt 5.67.5.

32. See especially O. C. 563–64, Theseus' recognition of the labours of Oedipus as being of the same kind as those endured by himself.

33. ProdicusB 2.28 DK (= Xen. Mem. 2.1.28).

34. Ibid. 33.11–12. Cf. Galinsky (above n. 20), p. 103.

35. Cf., e.g., Hes. Th. 954–5; cf. also Pind, . Nem. 1.68–75Google Scholar; Soph, . Phil. 1418–22Google Scholar.

36. Od. 1.16–19.

37. This was the interpretation preferred by Aristarchus; for a different assessment of these lines see West, S. in Heubeck, A., West, S., and Hainsworth, J. B. (edd.), A Commentary on Homer's Odyssey I (Oxford, 1988), p. 74Google Scholar ad locum.

38. Od. 23.248–50.

39. Od. 11.134–7; cf. 23.281–4.

40. Burkert (above n. 24), pp. 207 and 431 n. 50; cf. West (above n. 1), p. 370. Characteristically, all the examples of the worship of those who fell in battle adduced by Burkert relate to collective rather than individual worship, such as that of those who fell at Marathon, at Plataea, or the Persian Wars in general: this seems to be in accordance with the Homeric practice of applying the term aethlos to the participants of the Trojan War in general rather than to the individuals who fell in this war (see n. 18 above).

41. Hdt. 1.30.3–4. 5ee further Asheri, D., Erodoto. Le Storie 1 (Fondazione Lorenzo Valla, 1988), p. 284Google Scholar ad locum.

42. Arr. Anab. 5.26; cf. also 4.15; 4.29; 5.25 (twice); 5.29; 6.24.

43. Theog. 1013–14.

44. Mima 2.15–16; cf. Theog. 767–8; Soph. O.C. 1224–38.

45. See Hdt. 1.31; cf. 7.46.3–4.

46. Il. 24.525–6; cf. Od. 18.130–42.

47. Note that the epithet polutletos, ‘much-suffering', which comes very close to Odysseus’ epithet polutlas, is applied in the Odyssey to old men in general; see Od. 11.38.

48. Eur. H.F. 1349–60; cf. 1347–8.

49. BacchyL 5.150–2.

50. Phil. 1422.

51. Od. 5.202–24; 7.254–8; 23.333–7; cf. 9.25–36.

52. Characteristically, it was Odysseus who, again together with Heracles, was adopted as an exemplary figure in the vein of Prodicus' exegesis by the fifth-century philosopher Antisthenes and later by both the Cynics and the Stoics. The reasons why these two were chosen as a philosophers' ideal lie in their self-restraint, endurance of hardships, disregard for indignities and humiliation, and in their readiness to serve the common good. See Stanford (above n. 8), pp. 96 ff. and 121 ff.

53. Od. 11.481–91.

54. Cf. Griffin (above a 12), pp 95 f.: ‘We must hear in this scene the retort of the Odyssey to the glamorous and passionate heroism of the Iliad; they would sing a very different tune, the poet suggests, when they really faced the facts of death. The heroism of the survivor is not such a small thing.’

55. There is good reason to suppose that Od. 11.602–4, commenting on the emergence of Heracles among the ghosts of the Underworld to the effect that this is only a ‘phantom’ whereas Heracles himself dwells with the gods (cf. Hes. Th. 954–5; frr. 25.26–33; 229.6–13), is an interpolation. On this passage and the apotheosis of Heracles in general see West, M. L., The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women (Oxford, 1985), pp. 130, 134, 169Google Scholar.

56. On an interesting attempt to reconcile Odysseus' cunning with his endurance by interpreting these two qualities in terms of the development of character see Rutherford, R. B., JHS 106 (1986), 145ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

57. It is doubtful whether Hesiod's account of the race of heroes as found in Work and Days reflects a belief different to that found in the Iliad. According to Hesiod, while the people of the golden and the silver races were transformed after death into spirits (daimones), the people of the race of heroes, which embraced all those who fought at Thebes and Troy, either died in battle or were transferred to the Isles of the Blessed: see Op. 166–73. Whatever the idea of immortality enshrined in the myth of the Isles of the Blessed (on this subject see especially West [above n. 37], p. 227), it is clear from Hesiod that it does not concern those who fell in war; see further West (above n. 1), pp. 192 (on line 166) and 186 (on line 141).

58. As is generally recognized, the Iliad and the Odyssey substantially differ from each other in their treatment of the religious and moral issues. This difference is alternately approached either in terms of historical development or in those of the social or genre standing of both poems. On the discussion see, e.g., Guthrie (above n. 22), pp. 117ff, Lloyd-Jones, H., The Justice of Zeus2 (Berkeley, 1983), pp. 27ffGoogle Scholar.