[lit-ideas] More on Honor
- From: "Andy Amago" <aamago@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 14 May 2006 12:24:10 -0400
(Sorry, can't make this font behave) Quoted from below: ?The aim of every hero
is to achieve honor, that is, the esteem received from one's peers.?
http://depthome.brooklyn.cuny.edu/classics/dunkle/studyguide/homer.htm
In today?s psychotherapy terms, we would say that the Homeric hero is a very
uncentered, which is to say, very dysfunctional, person. Instead of looking
into himself and getting his *self* esteem, he?s looking to the outside and
getting other esteem. Living for other esteem is the road to emotional illness
and misery, and ultimately paves the way to violence and war, and that is
exactly what history shows us has happened. Human history is a chronicle of
life imitating art. If we are so unsure of life that we need art to tell us
how it?s done, why don?t we change our art to something more rational? What if
we changed the paradigm to reflect McGovern?s thinking that for a fraction of
what we spend in Iraq we can feed all the hungry children of the world? How
would the world look if we did that? Why is that not considered manly, but
eating the liver of the vanquished, uh, sorry, taking his gear, manly? Why is
it not insane instead of manly? Re Lawrence?s poem, yeah, it?
s a good poem, but he?s waving a bloody sword and associating it with glory.
Another example of honor obviously. Whose esteem is this going to bring him?
That of the widow and orphaned children? Or that of the others who created
more widows and orphans?
Heroic Code
The code which governs the conduct of the Homeric heroes is a simple one. The
aim of every hero is to achieve honor, that is, the esteem received from one's
peers. Honor is essential to the Homeric heroes, so much so that life would be
meaningless without it. Thus, honor is more important than life itself. As you
will notice in reading the Iliad, when a hero is advised to be careful to avoid
a life-threatening situation in battle, his only choice is to ignore this
warning. A hero's honor is determined primarily by his courage and physical
abilities and to a lesser degree by his social status and possessions. The
highest honor can only be won in battle. Here competition was fiercest and the
stakes were the greatest. Two other heroic activities, hunting and athletics,
could only win the hero an inferior honor. An even lesser honor was won by the
sole non-physical heroic activity, the giving of advice in council (1.490;
9.443). Nestor, who is too old to fight, makes a specialty
of giving advice since that is the only heroic activity left to him
(1.254-284).
The heroic ideal in the Iliad is sometimes offensive to modern sensibility, but
what is required here is not the reader's approval, but understanding of these
heroic values. One can only understand the Iliad, if one realizes what
motivates action in the poem. Indeed, Homeric heroism is savage and merciless.
Thus the hero often finds himself in a pressure-filled kill-or-be-killed
situation. Success means survival and greater honor; failure means death and
elimination from the competition for honor. But victory in battle is not enough
in itself; it is ephemeral and can easily be forgotten. Therefore, the victor
sought to acquire a permanent symbol of his victory in the form of the armor of
the defeated enemy. As you will notice, furious battles break out over the
corpse as the victor tries to strip the armor and the associates of the
defeated warrior try to prevent it. Occasionally, prizes from the spoils of war
are awarded for valor in battle as in the cases of Chryseis and Br
iseis, who belong respectively to Agamemnon and Achilleus. The importance of
these captive girls as symbols of honor is evident in the dispute which arises
in book 1. The Homeric hero is also fiercely individualistic; he is primarily
concerned with his own honor and that of his household,6 which is only an
extension of himself. As is particularly true of Achilleus, the Homeric hero is
not likely to be as concerned about his fellow warriors as he is about himself
and the members of his household. Loyalty to the community or city had not yet
achieved the importance it was going to have in later times.
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