Homeric Values

The poet Homer is said to have lived during the eighth century BC just after the Dark Age. To him we attribute two great epic poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey, which helped shape the Greek identity. For centuries, Greek youngsters grew up reciting the Homeric epics and admiring the Homeric heroes, who strove for honour and faced suffering and death with courage.

For centuries in the West, it was believed that Homer was a great poet, and that his epic tales were just that: stories with no basis in historical fact. However, at the end of the nineteenth century, archaeologists began to uncover evidence that the civilisations Homer described might actually have existed. In 1868 a German archaeologist named Heinrich Schliemann claimed to have found the ancient city of Troy, location for the Iliad, on a hilltop on the Turkish coast near Istanbul. Later, he uncovered a vast walled city, a palace and a wealth of treasures at another site in the south of Greece which he claimed was the palace of Agamemnon, leader of the Greek army in the Iliad.

The significance of Schliemann’s discoveries, though undeniably dramatic, have yet fully to be explored by modern scholars, and there is no final decision on whether Homer was poet or historian. For the ancient Greeks, however, the answer would have been clear: Homer was both an individual speaking to them about their great and glorious past while simultaneously revealing their deepest thoughts, feelings, and conflicts in a few brilliant lines. For this reason, Homer's poetry became not simply a treasury of ancient history but also a vital source of moral instruction for the Greeks. Achilles and Odysseus, the two heroes of the two epics, became the great role models in traditional Greek thinking about how one should live one's life.

Homer’s Humanity

As an account of war, much of the Iliad is devoted to descriptions of combat. However, interspersed between these scenes of action and drama, Homer includes scenes of simple domesticity which serve to remind us of our shared human values. One of the most famous takes place as Trojan warrior Hector and Greek warrior Achilles prepare to do hand-to-hand combat outside the city walls. Hector is well aware that the time has come for him to fight and die and Homer includes a long scene in which Hector says a final farewell to his wife and child. Another scene takes place during a large scale battle between the Greek and Trojan armies in which two opposing soldiers discover that their grandfathers enjoyed a friendship. Laying down their weapons, they each swear to continue their ancestors’ bond.

Such depictions of humanity are typical of Homer’s style, which often lingers on the simple, sensual pleasures of being human. As one commentator observes: “Just how much of this poem is taken up with eating, drinking, storytelling, listening to music, intimate conversations, warm beds, perfumed baths, dancing, beautiful architecture and silverware—all the sensuous detail that transforms everyday events into something joyful and worthwhile.”

Strife and Conflict

As the Iliad begins, the Greeks have just destroyed a town allied to Troy. Achilles has taken a woman, Briseis as his lover but his commander Agamemnon claims her for his own. Angry with his commander, Achilles refuses to fight. It may seem odd to devote the opening scene of an epic account of war to what amounts to a petty argument, but strife and conflict are central to the Greek worldview world and play a symbolic role at the heart of the Iliad itself.

Achilles' life begins with an unsuccessful attempt to avoid strife. His parents, the goddess Thetis and the mortal Peleus, invite all the gods to their wedding except Eris, the goddess of strife. Eris, however, like the evil witch in fairy tales, attends anyway and throws out a golden apple marked, "For the Fairest." The introduction of the apple has the desired effect and the three major goddesses, Aphrodite, Hera and Athena argue over who should be allowed to keep it. In the end, they consult future prince of Troy, Paris, who at this early stage is a lowly shepherd boy. Each goddess offers him a bribe to win his favour, and in the end Paris is won over by Aphrodite’s promise to give him the most beautiful woman in the world. Unfortunately, the woman in question, Helen, is already married to Menelaus, King of the Greek city of Sparta. In helping Paris to steal Helen away from the Greeks, one can argue that it was Aphrodite who started the Trojan war. However, it was Eris the goddess of strife who originally set the story in motion.

For the Greeks, to live in the real world was to accept the inevitability of strife and conflict: to try to avoid strife was to avoid life itself. It should therefore come as no surprise that although the Iliad begins 10 years after the abduction of Helen, it nevertheless begins with another argument.

Arête, or Human Excellence

In ancient and classical Greece, a hero was something quite specific. The interest for these heroes was not the common man, but themselves. They lived for a single moment to prove their status, an instant where they could stand out from the rest. The word for this moment, in Greek, is arête, and it is perhaps the strongest and clearest value of Homeric Greek culture. Translated as "virtue" the word actually means something closer to "being the best you can be", or "reaching your highest human potential". It also has strong associations with effectiveness, or getting the job done. As Homer shows us through the two contrasting heroes of Achilles and Odysseus, intelligence and cunning as much as strength, bravery can be effective means of meeting with success. The importance of arête implies that the Greeks saw their universe as one in which human actions are of extreme importance – that the world is a place of conflict and difficulty, and human value and meaning are measured against how effective each individual is in the world.