Peace and the Epic Hero in the "iliad"
Open Access
- Author:
- Mandell, Zachariah J
- Area of Honors:
- Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Arts
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Zoe Stamatopoulou, Thesis Supervisor
Mary Lou Zimmerman Munn, Thesis Honors Advisor - Keywords:
- Iliad
Epic Hero
Peace - Abstract:
- Often lost on the gory and glory-ridden battlefields of the Iliad is the theme of peace. This poem is an epic of war; what place does peace have in it? Actually, peace is of great significance to the Iliad and its characters, the epic heroes. Peace is found in abundance throughout the Iliad, not in the poem’s current reality, but in places such as, but not limited to, the Shield of Achilles, similes, objects, and characters’ longings for and reflections on past peace, present peace-parallels, and various conceptions of peace in the future. Together, these create an image of the world beyond the war, the full Iliadic world. However, the idea of peace in the Iliad raises a problem: how does the epic hero, a character predicated on war, exist, function, and maintain and even augment his status during peace? To answer this question, I turn to the instances of civic and quasi-civic action in the Iliad in tandem with the peaceful world described above. Civic function is seen throughout the scenes of peace, especially the Shield of Achilles, and is mirrored in the assemblies of the Achaeans and the funeral games of Patroklos. Upon my analysis of the correlation between civic and peaceful settings, in conjunction with characters who act in the role of quasi-civic leadership, it would seem that in order to understand how the epic hero functions outside of war and how the hero improves his status during peacetime, one must look no further than the hero’s civic role.