Heroic Behavior Then: Why is Achilles the Greatest of the Greek Heroes?
Time and Kleos - Honor and Reputation
|
||
|
||
|
||
"The reward for great honor and virtue is fame (kleos), which is what guarantees meaning and value to one's life. Dying without fame (akleos) is generally considered a disaster, and the warriors of the Homeric epics commit the most outrageous deeds to avoid dying in obscurity or infamy...."Rumor may have a forked tongue, but it will preserve your memory for posterity as surely as your children will carry your DNA, if your deeds are noteworthy enough. You don't necessarily have to be upright and honorable to be remembered, but to have an epic written about you (or even a few tragedies), there has to be something noble and heroic.
Homer And The Odyssey
We're puzzled by the qualities the ancient Greeks looked for in their heroes. Agamemnon was honored and obeyed by those under him despite slaying his own daughter and seizing his second-in-command's prize. Said second-in-command, Achilles, tried to dodge the draft by the ruse of transvestitism. Even after he was drafted and his troops were mobilized, Achilles threw the world's biggest hissy-fit. Yet Achilles was the Greeks' mortal hero par excellence. The nearest contenders were Ajax and Odysseus, the former such a bad sport he tried to kill Odysseus when he bested him in the contest for Achilles' armor. Odysseus was a charming, womanizing, conniving strategist, who had, like Achilles, tried to avoid deployment in Troy by seeking a 4-F draft deferment.
Obviously there were qualities the Greeks looked for in their role models that didn't include obeying the Ten Commandments. Looting and taking priests' daughters as war prizes was acceptable. No one, not even the god whose priest's daughter she was, would have batted an eye had Agamemnon simply taken Chriseis back home with him. Trouble came because he dishonored Apollo's priest, and by extension, Apollo himself when he refused the priest's generous ransom offer.
Even Achilles' pitiless sulking in his tent while the Trojans slaughtered the Achaean troops was not against the Greek ethic. But to die old and unsung would be a disgrace, as Odysseus remarks when he tries to persuade Achilles to rejoin the fray:
"... yet have thou pity at least on the rest of the Achaeans, that are sore bested throughout the host; these shall honour thee as though thou wert a god, for verily shalt thou win great glory in their eyes."
Iliad 9.300
Because of a prophecy, Achilles knows if he fights he will die young, but if he returns home he will live a long, unremarkable life. Definitely, not worth it:
"For my mother the goddess, silver-footed Thetis, telleth me that twofold fates are bearing me toward the doom of death: if I abide here and war about the city of the Trojans, then lost is my home-return, but my renown shall be imperishable; but if I return home to my dear native land, [415] lost then is my glorious renown, yet shall my life long endure, neither shall the doom of death come soon upon me."What the Greek heroes most longed for was a reputation for excellence, time (worship, esteem, honor) and kleos (fame). What they shunned was anything that lessened their reputation. After Achilles -- the greatest hero of at least of the Achaean forces in the Trojan War -- had died, Agamemnon awarded his armor to the next best man. When Odysseus was selected over Ajax, Ajax was defamed (akleos). Achilles was by far the greatest hero even according to the ancient criteria since his reputation has been kept alive as the subject of one of (if not the) most famous works in the West, the primary subject of generations of Greek and Roman education, and the model for later literature -- The Iliad.
Iliad 9.410
