Homer's unique approach towards ancient poetry has proved to leave a lasting impression for the history of literature. While subsequent writers have often alluded to elements from Homer's work, many of them also challenged the strange worldview offered from this ancient master of literature.
Leaving the issue of narrative aside, the most contentious issue for Homer's poems, for both Classical Greece and modern audience, is the worldview known as the Homeric outlook. For today's audience, this outlook is very different from the epistemological and moral outlook of the modern era, and will certainly spark intense debate regarding their implications. Even at ancient Greece, the Pre-Socratic philosophers have already been providing critiques on the Homeric way of understanding the world, and the tragedians of the Classical Greece also questioned and challenged the Homeric moral outlook in their plays.
Starting from the values of the Homeric world, we can build up the shape of man in this distanced universe. Homeric heroes, in a sense, are simplistic when they are compared to the psychological makeup of modern humans. The most important value of the Homeric Greece was honor – which was ' tîmê ' in ancient Greek. For the men of this ancient world - bear in mind that the equality of sex was absent in ancient Greece – achieving honor was to gain respect from others and to boost one's self-esteem. Any actions taken by a Homeric hero were always motivated by the potential of achieving honor, and that was as simple as that. There were no other moral considerations, including the consideration of other's well being. Thus, one can conclude that these ancient heroes showed a strong sense of individualism, and they were so single-minded to achieve their own sense of honor, often obliviously ignoring the other factors that might become an obstacle to their final aims. To the people of today, these warriors could be seen as rather self-centered characters.
The Homeric world was a violent and physical world. Warriors, who fought in battles, were the most well-respected and success in battles would achieve the highest honor. Even the way of fighting was crucial for the categorizations – the full-contact, one-on-one sword fights represented the ultimate test for honor; other means such as archery was seen as a less esteemed form of weapon. The Homeric world prioritized so much on physical strength and prowess that other attributes such as oratory and intelligence were viewed as something secondary and they would lead to less respect from the peers.
Homeric heroes were very courageous. Because they knew that they were not immortal gods, they appreciated the fact that they only had limited chances in their lives to achieve honor. In fact, they anticipated crossing path with the threats from death from time to time. Only by winning in a battle, thus evading death for the time-being, could lead to a sense of honor. By accepting the inevitable end of mortality, they believed that they could achieve a sense of timelessness through honor, and were then remembered by future generations.
Thus, the warriors knew they always had to give their very best shot in every violent encounters. In today's language, they could not tolerate weakness. If they showed some pity or forgiveness, which were the positive attributes of humanity, they might be perceived as weak by others. As illustrated in the works from Homer, the heroes spoke out their minds, and there were no confusions or ambiguities about what they were thinking about. Because for these ancient warriors, when they said they would do something, they had to commit to it for the sake of being honorable men. The creation of a Homeric hero is thus complete.
Some readers may start to get a bit uncomfortable about such a character. Instead of a muscular, sword-wielding athlete, they may picture a self-centered, unsympathetic, narcissistic bigot instead. Homeric heroes have proved to puzzle readers of many generations, yet many scholars advise that the key to the problem is to appreciate that they are very different from us, and there is not much point to debate whether they are moral or not by today's standard.
The reason for such a difference is because in the ancient world depicted by Homer, the concept of 'polis' (city-state) has not yet been developed and therefore concepts like communal values and public interests were something alien to the Greek people from the Mycenaean era and the Dark Age. When It came to the era of Classical Greece, city states have already seen a mature development. The Athenian empire, the birthplace of Greek tragedies, was a prosperous place and they have commenced a preliminary form of democracy. The most important aspect for the citizens was the commitment to the polis, meaning that the citizens had to consider the benefits to the public when they took any actions. While the Greek tragedies took place in a mythical world, Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides reflected the issues of Classical Greece, including the various aspects of the polis, in their many tragedies.
While Aeschylus has certainly admired Homer and Homeric influence could be observed in his tragedies, the tragedian from Classical Greece also questions the Homeric outlook, in terms of its epistemology and morality.
Aeschylus's plays questioned the moral implications offered from the Homeric outlook and the danger of staunch individualism from the heroes. In Homer's epic poems, it was the gods and goddesses who drove the action of humanity by influencing the human characters. As these divine figures often had conflicts in interest, that led to all the folly in the human world. Thus in a moral point of view, a Homeric character could always explain something by attributing it to the action of gods, and though the explanation of divine will they could shift the responsibility to other factors.
While the intervention of the divine was still evident in the Aeschylean plays (and indeed, also the plays by Sophocles and Euripides), these plays had a tendency towards a more naturalistic outlook and stressed man's action and responsibility as much as the divine will itself. While the actions taken by the human characters reflected the divine will – which was the worldview of this particular framework, the tragedians since Aeschylus allowed more room for the human characters to commit to the moral choices, and face the consequences of the choices they have made.
Even for the same incident, a Homeric outlook and a Classical outlook can point to different moral conclusions. For example, Orestes's murder of his mother, for cuckolding and killing King Agamemnon, is totally justified by a Homeric ethical perspective, as it is a matter of honor. Indeed in Homer's 'Odyssey', the incident was seen as a benchmark for Telemachus, Odysseus' son. That suggested Telemachus had to do something as significant as that to become a 'real man'. Yet in Aeschylus's 'Oresteia', the murder led to the anger of the Furies, the guarantor of justice. The matricide had to be examined from a legal perspective through the trial endorsed by Athene. Aeschylus placed a more rational and analytical lens onto the issue, which fit well with the rational inquiry demanded by both Pre-Socratic and Classical Greek Philosophy.
From that, a fantastic art form has transformed!
by Ed Law
Conatus Classics
