All Due Respect - Homeric Culture and the Ethic of Divinity

Conceptualising Divine Unions in the Greek and Near Eastern Worlds, 2022

It has long been academically established that certain common elements and motifs can be traced between the Iliad, the Hittite and other Near Eastern literary texts. These documents, as well as various archaeological evidence, reveal an emerging complicated cultural syncretism among the peoples of the Eastern Mediterranean area during the Late Bronze Age; a process which apparently continued in later times. This study shall be focused on the relationship between human and divine, as well as the divine conceptualisation, as described in various religious texts. On many occasions, for example, certain myths, beliefs, and heroes are transmitted by word of mouth, and they are further adapted to the local needs and requirements of the traditions of the diverse peoples of the Aegean and, more broadly, the Near East. My paper examines such examples from the Iliad, the epic of Ullikummi, and other literary traditions of the peoples of Caucasus.

The Journal of Hellenic Studies, 1970

FOR the lack of forty-nine drachmas Socrates was unable to attend the costly epideixis of Prodicus from which he would have learnt the truth about correct use of words (Plato, Cra. 384b). 1 From Prodicus' u>pai Socrates could also have learnt the concepts and characteristic words associated with arete and kakia: 2 these compete in that work for the allegiance of Heracles, parading their respective characteristics. Thanks to Professor Arthur Adkins we have had for the past decade a book which not only confronts arete and kakia, but also analyses the meaning and usage of many Greek words for the evaluation of action from Homer to Aristotle. 3 The importance of this book is generally acknowledged but it has not received the detailed discussion it deserves. Professor Adkins finds the social structure of ancient Greece inimical to the development of an adequate concept of moral responsibility. He shows, in a most interesting manner, how Greek values changed as the needs of society changed. But, he argues, from Homer onwards the key terms, dyaOos and dperrj, were so closely linked with social status and competitive excellence that even after dperrj became associated with the 'quiet virtues' (e.g. SIKCLIOOVVT], ouxfrpoovw]) it commends 'successful living' rather than 'doing one's duty'. Undoubtedly Professor Adkins has performed a valuable service in focusing attention on some of the social and historical factors which underlie Greek ethics and help to differentiate them from others. But the grounds for his dissatisfaction with the Greek conception of moral responsibility are difficult to grasp. Adkins never clearly explains what Greek word or set of words he takes to express 'moral responsibility' or 'responsibility' nor does he define what he means by these terms in English. 4 It appears however that the standard against which he measures Greek ethics in this respect is a Kantian one: 'we are all Kantians now', he writes, meaning by this that we all regard the concepts of duty and responsibility as central in ethics (p. 2). 'Central' they may be, though Moore, Ross, Prichard and many recent writers have shown how difficult philosophers find it to agree on an analysis of Adkins' 'basic (moral) question', 'What is my duty in these circumstances?' However by 'we' Adkins refers not specifically to moral philosophers but 'any man brought up in a modern western democracy' (ibid.). Such a man, he thinks, would find it very difficult to accept the idea of 'a society (i.e. ancient Greece) so different from our own as to render it impossible to translate "duty" in the Kantian sense into its ethical terminology at all'. It is often illuminating to compare the values and institutions of one society with those of another. But the notion that modern western man's moral values may be properly distinguished from those of an ancient Greek by reference to Kantian ethics is a highly debatable proposition. From time to time in this paper I shall find it necessary to raise certain general points of this kind. But my primary purpose is to express strong reservations concerning the philosophical and philological analysis of certain Homeric texts which Adkins offers on the basis of his general assumptions. More positively, I hope also to point to some characteristics of Homeric ethics which seem to fall outside Adkins' scheme. Needless to say, my indebtedness to Merit and Responsibility is considerable.

American Political Science Review, 1987

A decision-theoretic analysis of the central incident of Homer's Odyssey reveals the insufficiency of rational calculation as a guide for political prudence. Surprisingly, the poet distinguishes between two rational and formally identical calculations in no uncertain terms; he condemns one as utter recklessness and praises the other as consummate wisdom. I maintain that this discrepancy is neither an artifact of sloppy editorial patchwork nor the result of a “homeric nod” but instead points toward a politically significant distinction as yet obscured by a merely rationalistic perspective. The recklessness of Odysseus' crewmen, who deliberately slaughter sacred cattle to forestall starvation, consists in their rationalistic transgression of the limits of reason. These limits are most evident in the defiance of commensurability that characterizes the sacred. The wisdom of Odysseus, by contrast, is manifest in his learning to temper reason with respect for the sacred. By virtue...

In this paper I examine the speech of the gods of Homer's Iliad from the social perspective of discourse analysis. In investigating how the social alignments of the gods are managed--and disrupted-- through talk I study the speech acts that they use, the discourse options that they select, and the ways in which status, generational distinctions, gender, and divinity itself are reflected in their speech. I demonstrate that Homer attributes to his gods many of the same speech habits that he attributes to his mortals. But the poet reserves some speech acts and some discourse modes for immortals, a way of asserting the difference of gods from men, in much the same way that a small number of novel lexical items reminds us that the gods are a race apart.

The Wednesday, 2022

You'll find my short paper on pages 3 to 6 of the WEDNESDAY, issue no. 172. The Homeric poems (the Iliad and the Odyssey) had a powerful influence on ancient Greek civilization, if not the whole of humankind. Many find this statement to be true but do little to examine it. I propose to reopen Homer’s case to show how the poems established themselves within their culture and gained a widespread circulation in ancient Greek society. Their appearance and diffusion are much more significant than commonly believed. Why? Because they were able to portray a sort of society (and of Olympus) that was astonishingly 'modern'. Just one example could be supplied here: Nausicaa thinks something and says something different, helpful in view of what she thought or considered. This distance between thought (eventually wished) and actually said enacts a dialectic totally unexpected in those old times).

Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, 2022

Models that treat belief as an object of study lead modern scholars to ask questions/make statements about ancient Greek relations with Greek gods that are structured according to our own contemporary perceptions of that term—and bring in anachronistic notions (e.g., of atheism) or categorizations. This chapter offers an alternative model for those relations, based on comparative anthropological approaches, which focuses on the dynamic activities of building effective relationships with the gods. Examining the Greek concept of êthos, the chapter argues that these relations with the gods must be understood as part of a larger cultural worldview, in which an individual’s external setting, embodied experience, and emotional and mental worlds were understood to be crucially related and interactive.

The disconnection between contemporary understandings and ancient experiences of "religion," "theology," and the "supernatural" has plagued attempts to understand Homeric imagination for more than a century. The chasm might be measured by judgments that the theomachy of Iliad 20 and 21, for instance, must be "bad art," "black comedy," or represents a "comic agon" imitative of Near Eastern creation stories. In other words, it is not to be taken seriously. This paper defends religious sensibilities in the Iliad. It summarizes the problems of uncovering these sensibilities with an ear toward some basic issues in hermeneutics: the difficulties posed by the poem's diachronic development, conceivably over centuries, but more importantly difficulties internal to the poem, such as fickle Muses and the world they open for us. Finally, the tools of poetic extension and catachresis help to grasp the poem's sophistication in representations of divine violence.