I have recently read ‘Homer’s People : Epic Poetry and Social Formation’ by Johannes Haubold, who is currently a Honorary Professor at Durham University. The book is the revised version of a dissertation he wrote when he was having a tenure at the Faculty of Classics at University of Cambridge. The prestigious environment led to a work of high academic standard, yet the book was not merely about serious inquiries into Classical Antiquity. Through the philological approach and close-reading of various sources, Professor Haubold has provided an insightful perspective about the Homeric age, as glimpsed from the two surviving masterpieces of ancient literature - The Iliad and The Odyssey. The book has certainly provided me a few interesting viewpoints that has clarified my understanding of this distanced past, and that is an enjoyable reading experience due to its eloquence in words.
The key concern of the book is the Greek word ‘λᾱός’ (lāós), which has a few related meanings if one looks it up on the dictionary. Loosely translated as ‘people’ (of a country), it can also mean ‘soldiers’ and ‘common people’ (as opposed to the leaders). The latter definition is in particular interesting, because it points to the meaning of the word in Homer’s context. Haubold has pointed out that in the Homeric age, which has a starkly different ethical code than our era, can be divided into the groups of heroes and common people. For the heroes, they were seen as ‘shepherd of the people’, and that suggested that heroes needed to possess a leadership skill to lead the people to complete the mission. Using the words of today, one can say the Homeric hero had an accountability to lead and protect the people under his leadership, to avoid casualties in wars (which, as we will soon see, is a rather absurd position). The motivation of this may not be out of compassion or kindness towards others : bear in mind the goals of the Homeric heroes were to achieve honor and recognition from their peers. Thus, being a good leader, by winning in battles and protecting your fellow men from death, the hero would be admired and recognized by others, and they would be remembered in a positive light by future generations.
Yet one may start to see a tension in the communal interest and personal aspiration when considering this moral outlook. The concern for the soldiers’ well-being served merely an instrumental purpose for accumulating one’s achievement. That was placed in strategies and cold calculations. Homeric heroes would only show genuine compassion for limited number of people – the members of their ‘oikos’ (household). They have yet to develop the concept of ‘universal love’ or altruism, important for a ‘polis’ setting and the later ages. The primitive social structure in the Homeric world also worsened the condition somehow. Professor Haubold stated that Homer already had the keen foresight to discover this dilemma. In ‘The Iliad’, all the key characters would eventually lose something significantly, because they could not reconcile between the desire for self-interest and the demands from communal interest. The tragic dimension from The Iliad is that when the heroes – Achilles, Agamemnon, Hector - were blindly focusing on fulfilling their self-interests to achieve honor, not only that led to the death of their people, all the consequences would bite back and they had to bear the moral responsibilities for their choices. I will further elaborate my views in later articles.
I have also been reading ‘A History of Greek Philosophy’ by Professor W. K. C. Guthrie (1906-1981), a Classics scholar from Cambridge. I have read ‘The Greek Philosophers: From Thales to Aristotle’ (1975), which I think is the shortened version of the 6-volume magnum opus. Hope you will be inspired by such a great mind!
by Ed Law
Conatus Classics
