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Thanks, Alan. I swear I didn’t read the article you cite but I also swear that I will read it pronto.
I grew up under the good angel/bad angel rule but you were supposed to pick one or the other for all time.
Impossible of course. Silly people.All the great stories are a study of balance in decision making. Sadly, we can only see the whole picture
in hindsight so decision-making in the field is particularly difficult. Make your decision and prepare to deal with
your fate. All hail the human who can do it without hedging.I hedged in my reading of The Iliad, I bought the translation by Stephen Mitchell narrated by Alfred Molina.
I hadn’t read it since school days and I didn’t want it to seem like school. Alfred did a terrific job with
the Mitchell translation (whether the translation is terrific or not I do not know).To return to the question Socrates asked,’Can a soldier be a hero without his pride?’
A fuller answer would be: No. But the type and level of pride in a soldier will determine whether he’s done an honorable job.How did honor and pride compare in Ancient Greece?
Hector did what Hector had to do. There was no way out for him so he took care of business.
Staying with his family – staying behind at all – wasn’t something he could do.
Would’ve been damned un-Hector-like.
I see Hector’s pride as being appropriate for the time and circumstance and much more seemly than Achilles’ prideful temper tantrums.There are so many qualifications to deal with. Pride is on a continuum. Too much; too little…you know?
I think Hector had the balance just about right.This is a tough one, Socrates. There’s at least one role model for everyone and in everyone but as you point out every human is deeply flawed. So you pick and choose among the virtues you’d like to have and the vices you’d rather avoid. And then there’s the difficulty of one man’s virtue being another man’s vice a la Jack Nicholson: “You can’t handle the truth” –he was right. There are times, as in warfare, when you can’t believe the horrors you’ve perpetrated in the name of god and/or country; you did them because it was the thing to do given the loathsome circumstances you were presented with at the instant you had to make the choice.
All this to tell you that I can’t chose a role model among the characters in the Iliad. There’s good and bad among’em all. I see Homer’s work as grand metaphor and I can’t get past it.
My own favorite role model was thought up by Shakespeare: Iago, not an admirable man but he taught me the power of words softly spoken and timely.‘Patriotism: devoted love, support, and defense of one’s country; national loyalty.’ Dictionary.com
With 5 armies going at it, 5 different cultures and pride as a ruling passion (pride: a high or inordinate opinion of one’s own dignity, importance, merit, or superiority, whether as cherished in the mind or as displayed in bearing, conduct, etc. per Dictionary.com. And being the most pathological, in my opinion, in the pride hierarchy of definitions), Achilles is not viewed as a traitor. His wealth, charm, good looks and history of successful engagements in warfare, and of course his lineage protects him. Such was the thinking of the time.
I found some info here: http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/history/21h-301-the-ancient-world-greece-fall-2004/assignments/pa1_iliad_rev_dn.pdf
Reading The Iliad with today’s attitudes I consider many of the warriors to be small-minded traitors. But that was then.
I hope over the course of many years to achieve a more full-bodied opinion.Warning! Warning!
I dug into the Iliad only a few days ago; my answers may/will be shallow.The gods enrich the story. The gods are, to me, the passions. And what country or kingdom gets into a passionless war?
How do you convince the regular troops to go to their destruction without the commands and requests of higher powers?
Even a secular state has higher powers to call on.
Gods always take to the battlefields, even now — flags and anthems and prayers are right there in the stew.
It’s hard to imagine a war, even a cold one, without the gods or whatever is used in their place.I’ll jump back into this when deeper thoughts strike me.
At the end of the play he seems to believe that we ought to be humble and submit to whatever destiny befalls us. Should we still accept this sort of mentality? Or can it be said that we still have a say over our lives, that we are, in part at least, the authors of our own stories?
~The KeyMaster (above)
We are still the masters of our lives and humility plays quite a part. Corralling the passions and thinking is good per the Masters and it helps a lot to submit to training and education to prepare for the corralling and thinking. This is hard for me.
Again, it depends on the resources available to a person at the particular time and place.Hi,
Here’s a link to look at.I like this. Life/fate is tough, you can guide yourself along if you’ve got the wherewithal (Bandura’s suggestions, I think: environment,personality, behavior) but it’s not always going to be kind.
Work with what you have &
Learn to love the struggle.
Simplistic, but easy to remember when the weather gets heavy.
