Tweet

Throughout the Iliad and the Odyssey, Homer depicts great men performing great deeds, but he does not depict men of virtue. Instead, the most noble of characters are still deeply flawed, and the virtues they do embrace are often buried amongst their many vices. Even one of the most noble characters, Odysseus, is a lecherous daredevil who would risk his crew and his kingdom for passion and adventure.

It should come as a surprise, then, that Homer is taken to be a writer of virtuous men. In “William Barr Laughs at Homer—but He Doesn’t Get the Joke,” a blog post for The Daily Beast, Mimi Kramer attempts this very thing. The post was a response to a statement by Attorney General William Barr, who said, “I am at the end of my career. Everyone dies, and I am not, you know, I don’t believe in the Homeric idea that, you know, immortality comes by, you know, having odes sung about you over the centuries.”

Barr is referring to Achilles choice. Within Book 9 of the Iliad, we are told that the warrior had a choice: he could live a short, glorious life that people would talk about forever or he could live a long life in obscurity. Of course, Achilles chose the former, and he precedes to butcher and rape his way to the gates of Troy as a result. Though he was famous, he was not an ideal person, and we have account after account of him performing great deeds along with some of the most embarrassing of actions, including throwing fits about the most petty of slights.

Any laughter that would come from Barr would be laughter at the idea that Homeric fame is associated with some of the worst events to befall yourself. In essence, you must suffer greatly, or you must act in a way in which you would not want to be remembered. But Kramer doesn’t seem to understand this point. She even comments, “It’s not clear to me what Barr finds so uproarious about Homeric values.”

But matters get worse when Kramer shows her misunderstanding of Homer:

But to get back to the code of the Homeric hero, Barr has it a little backward. Starting out with the notion that one does something heroic with a view to being granted everlasting fame, Barr notes that he doesn’t care about that sort of fame. Ergo, he has no incentive to do the right thing. Barr’s value-system though is purely transactional.

It is uncertain if Kramer has actually read Homer. Even some of the “good” characters, like Hector, are deeply tragic because they are willing to do the right thing (defend one’s family) for the wrong reason (his family refused to give back the wife of another man). One does not become famous in Homer for doing the right thing but for doing the wrong thing in such a horrific manner that hundreds of thousands of lives are ruined as a result.

It should be made very clear: Achilles was not a noble person. After slaughtering Hector through deception (via divine interference), Achilles took his corpse and dragged it around Troy in order to mock his opponent, the city, and everything that could be decent about war. It was a childish, terroristic act that was done to show just how inhumane he could be.

The reason why Achilles was so vicious towards Hector? Hector killed Patroclus, Achilleus friend and possible lover. Why did Hector kill Patroclus? Because Achilles refused to fit while throwing one of his many childish fits, and Patroclus, knowing that only Achilles could inspire the Greeks to fend off near defeat, pretended to be Achilles. So Hector’s body was desecrated because Achilles was throwing a childish fit due to losing his close friend who only died because he threw a childish fit. So the greatest characters of the Iliad are all doing horrible things for horrible reasons.

The Odyssey is no better. Time after time, Odysseus leads his sailors, his very people that he is supposed to protect and guide, to their death. It seems as if Odysseus’s unwillingness to do the right thing and return home causes his crew to meet the worst monsters of the Mediterranean Sea, including the Cyclopes, Circe, the Laestroygonians, Scylla and Charybdis, the Sirens, and others.

Of course, Odysseus is able to bed many women during this time, including a seven-year-long stint with the nymph Calypso, while his wife is forced to take care of everything along in Ithaca, his city that no longer has a ruler. The only reason why Odysseus even makes it home in the end is for Athena to protect Telemachus, his son, from rivals who want to steal his right to rule. The only “good” thing Odysseus could be remembered for is building a wooden horse that allowed the Greeks to slaughter the Trojan people.

None of the legendary Homeric characters are heroes, let alone role models. In short, Barr is rejecting doing the wrong thing while arguing that doing the wrong thing is the only way for him to truly become famous. Unfortunately, Kramer’s confusion runs deeper. She argues, “It’s true that the epic hero’s fame, his kleos, is what will make him immortal. But that’s not his motivation; that’s his consolation prize.”

As pointed out, the Iliad describes Achilles making this very choice and tells the audience that it is his actual motivation. He is the hero. Hector is the tragic figure, a man forced into being a villain because his one virtue (loyalty) clouds his better judgment. While Kramer uses the word kleos, she does not recognize the term that applies here: hamartia. Hamartia, the tragic flaw, is what a character thinks is a virtue but actually leads them to their doom.

Now, Kramer isn’t too far off the mark. Instead, she makes an old mistake by confusing Homer for Virgil. Virgil, the writer of the Aeneid, celebrates actual virtues. Aeneas, the son of Venus, is dedicated to his country, is self-sacrificial, and he pursues truth. He is added by many deities, and for every mistake Odysseus makes across the Mediterranean Sea, Aeneas seems to avoid the same. Aeneas’s only problem is that he fell in love, not a base “love” that is really an attempt to escape a commitment to a wife (like Odysseus) but a true romance born out of an attempt to help his people find a new home.

Now, if Barr scoffed or laughed at the Virgilian hero, then Kramer would have a point. Throughout the Aeneid, Aeneas never desires to become famous or do anything but serve his people and follow the will of the gods. The Greeks, or, at least, Homer, describe how great men are also deeply flawed, and what makes them legendary also destroys them. Virgil, however, shows that a hero is one who perseveres because he gives up his personal desires for a higher purpose.

When looking to the Classics, we are given two paths to fame: the selfish and the selfless. Although the Virgilian path does lead to a sort of immortality, it seems that few people are able to recognize it and those who do, unfortunately, confuse it with the Homeric. It is ironic, then, that Virgil’s virtues are transposed on Homer’s “heroes,” and we some how believe that some of the worst people are somehow good.

What we learn in this is that even in doing the right thing for the right reasons, people wont actually remember you or your deeds. That is the obscurity that comes from a noble life. We should not so easily dismiss those who laugh at the Homeric path to fame and instead worry about those who refuse to laugh. After all, Homer gave us two great epics to serve as warning against those who would try to be remembered.