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Timē and aretē in Homer
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
Extract
Much effort has been invested by scholars in defining the specific character of the Homeric values as against those that obtained at later periods of Greek history. The distinction between the ‘shame-culture’ and the ‘guilt-culture’ introduced by E. R. Dodds, and that between the ‘competitive’ and the ‘cooperative’ values advocated by A. W. H. Adkins, are among the more influential ones. Although Adkins's taxonomy encountered some acute criticism, notably from A. A. Long, it has become generally adopted both in the scholarly literature and in general philosophical discussions of Greek ethics. Objections to Adkins's approach have mainly concentrated on demonstrating that his denial of the cooperative values to Homer is untenable on general grounds and is not supported by Homeric evidence. Characteristically, Adkins's thesis concerning the centrality to Homer's ethics of the so-called ‘competitive values‘ has never received similar attention, probably owing to the fact that this is the point at which his picture of the Homeric society concurs with the influential reconstructions by W Jaeger and M. I. Finley. The present study of timē and aretē, generally held to be the two competitive values central to the Homeric poems, purports to address this issue.
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References
1 Dodds, E. R., The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley, 1951), pp. 28–63 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Adkins, A. W. H., Merit and Responsibility. A Study in Greek Values (Oxford, 1960), pp. 30–85.Google Scholar
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7 Cf. e.g. Hes. Erga 291; Tyrt. 12.43 West; Pi. N. 6.23.
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11 N. 11.29–32; my translation. See also N. 3.70–1 Cf. I. 1.68–70; Parth. 1. 6–10.
12 Etk Nic 1.8 1099a3–7, tr. D. Ross. These words were paraphrased by Pierre de Coubertin at the Berlin Olympics as follows: ‘The important thing in the Olympic Games is not winning but taking part. Just as in life, the aim is not to conquer, but to struggle well.’ See N. Spivey, ‘Faster, Higher, Stronger?’ (without acknowledging the Greek source), in TLS July 19,1996.
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15 EtkNic 1.5 1095b23–4.
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17 II. 9,328–33. Tr. M. Hammond, with slight changes.
18 II. 1.165–8, 2.225–34.
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24 Seeesp.II. 6.119–211 (Glaucus and Diomedes), 20.176–258 (Achilles and Aeneas).
25 II. 9.318–19
26 Hainsworth (n. 20), p. 104. Characteristically, Aristotle in Pol. 2.7 1267al-2 quotes Achilles' ‘Coward and hero are given equal honour’ in support of his argument that the distribution of honour must be proportionate to one's contribution to the well-being of the state.
27 Finley (n. 5), p. 115.
28 II. 12.310–21; cf. Griffin (n. 14), p. 14. While I agree with Gill (n. 19), pp. 131–6, that comparison of Sarpedon's speech to Achilles' great speech in Iliad 9 does not prove Achilles a ‘social outsider’, I cannot share his marginalizing of Sarpedon's speech into a private statement which has very little to do with the so-called ‘heroic code’. As Gill himself points out, Achilles' deviatory behaviour and social criticism as expressed in Iliad 9 directly result from the breach in the normative behaviour on the part of Agamemnon, his social equal, who ‘has undermined the relationship of generalized reciprocity which should exist between chieftains’ (p. 135, cf. also p. 149). However, the reciprocity meant in Sarpedon's speech is the one between the chieftains and their vassals, a sort of contrat social intended to regulate the division of functions between the nobles and the commoners, and therefore it can hardly be relevant to the conflict between Achilles and Agamemnon, both of whom belong to the class of the nobles. Cf. Cairns (n. 4), p. 95: ‘while one hero may have more time than another, in dealing with his fellow heroes he is never dealing with one who has a negligible claim to time of his own.’
29 II. 11.408.
30 See Gill (n. 19), pp. 69–74.
31 Cf. Cairns (n. 4), p. 101: ‘It is certainly not part of the structure of Homeric values that any and every action of an agathos is legitimized by his arete.’
32 JHS 90 (1970), 123–6. See also Zanker (n. 4), pp. 1–45.
33 II. 6.442, 22.105
34 Cf. Cairns (n. 4), p. 81: ‘Hector's education will have taught him how society expects him to behave, and so contributes to the formation of his social role; in as much as his thumos and his aidōs combine in leading him to pursue this role, he has obviously made the values under which he acts his own, made the expectations of society equivalent to his own expectations of himself.’
35 The subject is discussed in Cairns (n. 4), pp. 43–4,139–40.
36 II. 6.208, 11.784 Cf. Jaeger (n. 5), p. 7.
37 Od. 17.322–3 . Tr. S. H. Butcher and A. Lang, slightly changed.
38 II. 15.642; Od. 18.204; Od 5.725, 815; 22.268; cf. … Od. 13.45.
39 Od. 18.251, 19.124; Od. 12.211; II. 9.498; cf. II. 23.578
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42 II. 11.603–4.
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49 Ap. 28cd; tr. H. Tredennick, with slight changes. Cf. Symp. 179e
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54 II. 11.784; see above, n. 36.
55 Cf. Eth. Nic 1.5 1095b26–30: ‘Men seem to pursue honour in order that they may be assured of their merit ; at least it is by men of practical wisdom that they seek to be honoured, and among those who know them, and on the ground of their virtue clearly, then, according to them, at any rate, virtue is better.'
56 CA5 (1986), 127. Cf. Raaflaub, K.A., in Latacz, J. (ed.), Zweihundert Jahre Homer-Forschung (Stuttgart and Leipzig, 1991), p. 212: ‘Finleys Argumente sind aus historischen Grunden nicht zwingend, und seine Datierung ist schlecht mit den Charakteristika von oral tradition im allgemeinen und oral poetry im speziellen zu vereinbaren.’Google Scholar
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63 On the traditional poets' individual creativity within the fixed framework of their plots see Finkelberg, M., ‘A creative oral poet and the Muse’, AJP 111 (1990), 293–303, and The Birth of Literary Fiction in Ancient Greece (Oxford, 1998), pp. 151–60Google Scholar
64 Nicolai, Cf. W., ‘Rezeptionssteurung in der Ilias’, Philologus 127 (1983), 1–12. Characteristically, it is first of all in direct speech that such anomalies of language as nonformulaic and metrically faulty expressions, linguistic innovations, etc. are concentrated in HomerCrossRefGoogle Scholar. See further Shipp, G.P., Studies in the Language of Homer2 (Cambridge, 1973)Google Scholar; Griffin, J, ‘Homer's words and speakers’, JHS 106 (1986), 36–57, and Homer, Iliad Book Nine (Oxford, 1995), pp. 32–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar; M., Finkelberg, ‘Formulaic and nonformulaic elements in Homer’, CP 84 (1989), 179–97, and ‘Homer, a poet of an individual style’, SCI 16 (1997), 1–8.Google Scholar
65 Homer's famous comment on the inequality of exchange in the Glaucus-Diomedes episode in Iliad 6 provides a good example. Seaford (n. 57), p. 15, sees in it ‘the implicit criticism of the increasingly dangerous institution of gift-exchange from the new perspective of commodityexchange, in which inequality is more surprising’.
66 II. 14.364–9.
67 II. 3.8–9.
68 On the relevance of hoplite tactics to Homer see J., Latacz, Kampfparanäse, Kampfdarstellung und Kampfwirkllchkeit in der Mas, bei Kallinos und Tyrtaios (Munich, 1977)Google Scholar; Wees, H.van, ‘The Homeric way of war’, Greece and Rome 41 (1994), 1–18, 131–55, and ‘Homeric warfare’, in Morris, I. and Powell, B. (edd.), A New Companion to Homer (Leiden, 1997), pp. 668–93.Google Scholar
69 On Achilles' ‘institutional obligations’ to Patroclus and the feeling of shame and guilt issuing from his failure in fulfilling these obligations see especially Zanker (n. 4), pp. 16–17, 100.
70 Cf. Nicolai's distinction between the ‘affirmative’ and the ‘kritische Wirkungsabsicht’ in the Iliad in Philologus 127 (1983), 9.
71 A somewhat different line of interpretation of the same theme seems to be pursued in Books 9 and 24, where Achilles' behaviour is criticized, by Ajax and Apollo respectively, as not answering to the accepted social standards of mutual reconciliation; see Il. 9.628–38,24.46–9.
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