How to be a good man according to the Iliad: Part I
The Iliad was the definitive guide on manliness in Ancient Greece. What did being a good man involve? Can we learn from it today?
Can you say what it means to be a ‘good’ man today?
In Ancient Greece, about 3 millennia ago, answering this question would have been easy. One only had to look to the characters of the Iliad, a story of the Trojan War.
For context, the war started because a Trojan prince Paris absconded with Helen, the wife of one of the Greeks, Menelaos. The rest of the Greeks were sworn to help Helen’s husband retrieve her. Led by Agamemnon, Menelaos’ brother they journey to Troy where Paris is hiding to demand her return. The Trojans refuse and a war casting valiant warriors against one another ensues. Most notable are Achilles and Odysseus on the Greek side and Hektor, Paris’ brother on the Trojan side.
The events of the Trojan War were as distant to the Iliad’s author Homer’s contemporaries as the American War of Independence is for us. Yet the heroes within its pages gave men clear role models:
‘Aeneas picks up a stone that no two men today could carry such as men are now.’ (p.433)
Though stronger, smarter, braver and more honourable than men of Homer’s time (i.e. 2800 years ago), they provided ample examples of the traits and behaviours men should aspire to. For Ancient Greeks, the Iliad was the definitive guide on manliness. The story centers around the actions of men. I estimate about 80% of its 518 pages is dedicated to scenes of battle. Most of its characters are men and what men these are! The regard for the Iliad’s heroes like Achilles was such that they became subjects of worship. The ‘Tomb of Achilles’ near the destroyed city of Troy became a pilgrimage site that even Alexander the Great reportedly visited.
Today, such role models are harder to come by. Men in the West are told traits traditionally associated with masculinity like the ability to exert physical violence, dominant behaviour within groups or possessiveness over one’s romantic partner are now part of ‘toxic masculinity’. So no longer ok. At the same time, men behaving as popular culture suggests - ‘emotionally vulnerable and sensitive’ - find that others don’t react to their crying with quite as much understanding.
It’s no surprise to me that many young men find it difficult to pinpoint exactly what they should be doing to be ‘good men’.
While reading the Iliad it struck me how many of the behaviours portrayed as positive resonated. If one looks beyond the spectacular violence of the Iliad, I suspect its characters would do rather well on the marriage market today. The men of the Iliad are strong, take care of their families and beyond all are action-oriented. I can’t speak for women as a whole but can say that for me, those are traits I value highly in selecting the father of my children.
Clearly, the societal context of Ancient Greece is starkly different to ours but can we perhaps draw some inspiration from the male role models of 3,000 years ago?
The good man is the honourable man
A good man is an honourable man. Honour is at the center of what is a good man in the Iliad.
In Ancient Greece the behaviour of a man’s wife directly impacted his standing in society. Menelaus’ honour is injured when Paris takes his wife. This spurs the entire Trojan War endeavour. Achilles’ honour is similarly injured when Agamemnon takes his war bride Bryseis. War brides were awarded to warriors as rewards for prowess in battle. By taking Bryseis from Achilles, Agamemnon challenged his status as a warrior, invoking Achilles’ ‘righteous wrath’, the resolution of which forms the main narrative arc of the Iliad.
Honour is not a concept we’re as familiar with today but the world of the Iliad was deeply honour-focused. Honour meant worth or value in a literal sense. It was a culturally constructed evaluation based on a person’s actions, which determined the person’s worth. Simply put, a person was what they were in the eyes of other people. Their honour was who they were.
There were two types of honour - ascribed and achieved. Ascribed honour was bestowed on a person without any necessary action of their own. It was a function of which family a person was from, what level of wealth they had, what land they owned, etc.
Achieved honour could be earned by citizens through military conquest, glory in battle, public performances and political or social actions including the following of social conventions. Achieved honour is similar to our notions of reputation or fame. Paris taking Menelaos’ wife breached an important social convention - taking away some of Menelaos’ achieved honour. Agamemnon taking Bryseis took away some of the achieved honour Achilles acquired through his fighting in battle for which he received Bryseis.
Through this prism of honour - ascribed and achieved - we can draw up a list of traits and behaviours that make for an honourable, ergo ‘good’, man.
Ascribed honour - the honour you have by accident of birth
Ancestry:
The first kind of honour is yours as a result of your birth. The ancestry of a man, his genealogy is a crucial aspect of how ‘honourable’ he is to begin with in the Iliad.
This explains one of the oddest behaviours in the Iliad - in the heat of battle men will stop to detail their lineage to the opponent before attempting to kill one another.
When Aeneas (the ancestor of Romus and Romulus, the founders of Rome) challenges Achilles to a fight, he recites to him his ancestry. To my 21st century mind this seems outlandish but if your value is based on your honour, and your honour is tied to who your father was and who his father was etc., it makes some sense.
The highest level of ascribed honour is reserved for men who are the sons of gods. Achilles is depicted by Homer as extra special because of his mother Thetis, the water nymph/goddess.
Physical beauty:
A man who is beautiful is ‘better’ than a man who is not. Though one’s beauty is not solely determined by birth, it’s clearly dependent on it.
The Greeks believed that one’s external appearance was a direct reflection of one’s internal character. A beautiful man, must have therefore been a good man. Achilles’ physical beauty is often mentioned throughout the Iliad in a positive light.
‘…who for his beauty… surpassed all other Danaans, after the blameless son of Peleus [Achilles].’ (p361)
Whereas when describing one minor character Dolon, Homer calls him an ‘evil man to look at but he was swift footed’. (p226) Dolon is selected as a spy for the Trojans and swiftly betrays his compatriots upon being captured - confirming that bad looks means a bad man.
Beauty is treasured and treated as special by men and gods alike. Ganymede, a Trojan, most beautiful of all mortals, is kidnapped by the gods to become Zeus’ cupbearer.
Though beauty is special, it can turn ‘sickly’ when unaccompanied by other manly traits. Paris is described by Homer as beautiful in a feminine way, implying that this kind of beauty is unbecoming of a man.
‘Evil Paris, beautiful, woman-crazy, cajoling, better had you never been born, or killed unwedded.’ p101
When a man’s beauty is not accompanied by bravery or courage it can be negative.
Achieved honour - how do you gain honour?
Courage in battle
If I took one thing from the Iliad it is that to be a good man you have to show courage in fighting. Being a coward is anathema.
When Menelaus challenges Paris to a duel to decide the fate of the war, Paris attempts to get out of the duel. His brother Hektor calls this shameful and tells Paris he’s a coward.
After this shaming, Paris agrees to the duel only to be swiftly beaten by the clearly superior warrior Menelaus. Paris escapes death thanks to the interference of the Goddess Aphrodite who whisks him away into the safety of his bedroom. This escape prompts Hektor to exclaim ‘better had he never been born’.
Lack of courage in battle is not well received by men or women. When Paris ‘escapes’ his death, Helen receives him coldly. She declares she wishes she had ‘been a wife of a better man than this’ (p 162) and wishes Paris had died. To that Paris answers ‘let us go to bed and turn to love-making’. What a charmer.
Being fearful of fighting but rising above it and delving into the midst of battle is a repeating theme. The courage to fight in the face of fear is frequently prompted by ‘shaming’ by others that rouses men to find their courage. Hektor re-doubles his efforts and pushes to the front line upon being accused for shirking away from fighting. Diomedes, one of the Greek’s prime fighters exclaims it is ‘ignoble to shrink back in the fighting’. (p135) When Hektor is bidding farewell to his wife, she pleads with him to stay within the safety of the city’s walls but he says he’d ‘feel deep shame’ (p165) if he didn’t fight.
Holding your word - oaths
Making an oath, promising to do or not do a thing, is sacrosanct. Good men do not break their word.
The entire Trojan war is underpinned by an oath. Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world, is desired by all as a wife. To deter men from kidnapping Helen from her husband all men vying for her hand swear an oath. They swear that they’ll help her husband retrieve her should she be taken. It’s an ancient version of the NATO article 5 ‘an attack on one is an attack on all’ - you’d think carefully about taking Helen if it means most of the Greeks will go to war with you as a result.
Breaking your word or rules agreed upon and sworn to is depicted as shameful and deserving of punishment in the Iliad. During the set up of the duel between Menelaus and Paris, both armies agree to not fight or fire at one another until the duel resolves the war. After Paris’ shameful exit, an archer from the Trojan side fires at Menelaus and injures him. This is decried as foul and is the catalyst to re-start the war.
In a world with scant access to courts and no contracts as such, your word is your currency. Breaking your word is dishonourable and not worthy of ‘good men’.
Wisdom of the aged
Reverence is shown to men of a certain age. I suppose that in a world where honour was gained through battle, achieving old age was of its own quite a feat.
Nestor, an aged king on the Greek side, appears throughout the Iliad to deliver advice to other characters on how to fight and more. He’s called upon for council when decisions are being made.
‘Nestor, whose advice had shown best…’ (p177)
When Achilles holds funeral games for his fallen friend Patrokles, Nestor gets a prize in recognition of his ability in youth. His age is clearly considered special and he’s treated with reverence.
Priam, the father of the Trojan hero Hektor is also elderly. After Hektor is killed by Achilles who keeps his body, Priam pleads for his son’s remains. Achilles shows mercy to the elderly man on account of his age and the age of Achilles’ own father Peleus who is at the end of his life back home.
Physical ability
Showcasing a man’s physical ability, be it in battle or in sporting feats, is a way to gain honour. Being an able and competent warrior is clearly necessary for gaining honour by fighting. But it is also through competition with others in sports that men could showcase their physical ability and gain honour. In the Iliad Achilles organises funeral games in honour of his fallen companion Patrokles. Men compete in a way not dissimilar to the ancient Olympics and win trophies for their feats.
There is a foot race, a chariot race and wrestling. Men who do well are depicted in a positive light. Laggards less so.
Duty and care for wife, children and family
Good men take care of and care for their wife, children and family.
Hektor is the best example of a ‘family’ man in the Iliad. His caring for his wife and son is strongly positively valenced. Especially so, when he is bidding his wife and infant son goodbye - knowing he’s unlikely to see them again in this life.
He knows Troy will perish and tells his wife:
‘it is not so much the pain to come to the Trojans that troubles me, not even of Priam … nor Hekabe [his parents], not the thought of my brothers… as troubles me the thought of you, when some bronze-armoured Achaian [what they called the Greeks] leads you off, taking away your day of liberty, in tears…’ (p165)
Hektor is likewise tender with his son as he says goodbye:
‘taking up his dear son he tossed him about in his arms and kissed him’. (p165)
There is an element of duty to family in Ancient Greece. Actions of one’s family members result in obligations. Agamemnon, the commander of the Greek armies, is the brother of Menelaos. Agamemnon organises the offensive on behalf of his brother, whose honour was injured. Later when Menelaos is injured in breach of a truce deal, Agamemnon rages and the fighting re-starts partly to avenge his brother.
Hektor has many brothers and with many brothers come many responsibilities. Paris the errant brother brings great misfortune on the family by capturing Helen which leads to an all-out war against Troy. Yet Hektor, who clearly has reservations about Paris, stands by him and his family and fights. Later, Achilles kills Hektor’s younger brother Polydoros. As an older caring brother, Hektor eventually challenges the killer.
Family is clearly a societal unit of prime importance and to be a good man a man has to take care of his family.
Lessons for today
The good man of the Iliad is a man who is from a good family, is good-looking, courageous, keeps his word, is physically fit and takes care of his family. This good man of the Iliad lived more than 3,000 years ago but he doesn’t sound half bad.
The only good-man attribute that doesn’t resonate as it once would have is the ‘wisdom of the elders’. It is no longer as special to live to an old age as it was in Ancient Greece. Nor is it a mark of some great individual achievement anymore. Being an old man today does not indicate that you had great skill in battle for a long time. More likely than not you’re lucky and live in a place with accessible healthcare. Wisdom of the elderly seems to be something our society doesn’t value as highly as the Ancient Greeks did.
Now that we have a list of attributes that make a good man in the Iliad, the obvious question is: Can these attributes help uncover what makes a good man today?
My theory about the classics - of which the Iliad is an indisputable member - is that these works must say something of relevance to each successive generation to remain in circulation. Let’s put this to the test. Can the Iliad point me to what a good man is today? (forthcoming in Part II).
P.S. The Iliad is the first book I read on my quest to read more of the classics and understand their exceptional longevity and value. My journey will continue with the Odyssey next.
P.P.S. I read the Lattimore translation of the Iliad and all page references are to this edition: Lattimore, R. (trans.) (2011) The Iliad of Homer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.