In the Iliad, then, there is no unity. There are quite clearly two Heroes, Hector and Achilles. There are two sources of interest which diverge one from the other, one for the first of these Heroes and his cause, the other for the second and the cause of the Greeks: interests which are entirely opposed to each other, both of which Homer expressly intended to awaken, and does so, which he intended to kindle and keep alive continually in his readers, which he did; he intended to do so equally for both one and other interest, as though in parallel with each other, and he did so.
It is typical of man to admire good fortune and success in an undertaking, to be induced by one and the other into attributing praise, and on the contrary, to be induced by bad luck and failure into apportioning blame, to exalt the one who achieves what he set out to do, and bring low the one who did not, to esteem the former as superior to the common run, the latter as equal or inferior to it, [3098] and to believe himself inferior to the former and surpassed by him, and better than the latter, or his equal, in short, to bestow glory in accordance with fortune. This characteristic of man throughout all ages was more common among the ancients than at any other time. To enjoy good fortune was the highest praise as far as they were concerned (see among others p. 3072, end, and p. 3342).1 This was for a variety of reasons. In the first place, good fortune was never adjudged to be distinct from merit, so that even if only a person’s fortune and not his merit were known, this was deemed sufficient evidence to judge that person worthy. As in free states few preferments are obtained without some form of merit, and as the most ancient peoples, in the distribution of honors, dignities, positions, and rewards, ordinarily had regard to merit above all, so too, and consequently, did they esteem that the Gods only shared their favors with, and that good fortune was friend only to, those who were worthy of it. Hence even natural gifts, such as beauty and strength, were thought of as accompanying [3099] and signaling qualities of spirit and custom, and wealth or nobility and other felicitous accidents of birth fell into the same category. Second, as the ancients did not suppose there to be any benefits greater than those of this life, going so far as to believe that the dead, even those placed in Elysium, were more interested in earthly matters than in Avernus, and that the Gods were more concerned with earthly than with heavenly matters, so consequently they held good fortune to constitute the most important part of praise. For how can merit that did not lead to good fortune be profitable, for itself or for others? And how can that which was not profitable be seen as great or good? If merit did not lead to good fortune, how could it shine? And if it did not shine and was unprofitable on this earth and in this life, where, according to ancient opinions, could it acquire luster and splendor? Where and in what way could it be profitable?
Good fortune, then, constituted the chief part of, and most important grounds for, praise, esteem, admiration, and glory among the ancients, more [3100] so than among the moderns, and most of all among the most ancient. As, in short, it is natural to esteem good fortune above all things, so it is quite reasonable to assume that this quality should be more highly esteemed, the closer and more in accordance with nature are the customs, opinions, and lives of men, as indeed they were in remotest antiquity. Homer, then, in undertaking to exalt a Hero and nation, in taking them for the subject of his song and praise, and in making their eulogy the subject of his poem, would have been careful not to choose them or depict them as unsuccessful, and such that they were unable to fulfill the intention of that exploit of which he chose to sing. He therefore had to choose a Hero who was successful.
And all the more so because this Hero was a warrior, his heroic virtues courage and valor of soul, his undertaking a war. For if in modern times, too, there is little or no glory for the vanquished, as there is little or no praise for a war [3101] which does not end in victory, how much more was this the case among the ancients? For them, in fact, to be defeated was ignominy, and to be victorious in whatever form was glory, as no justice was considered more important than that of arms, and no law deemed more important than that of force. Furthermore, since Homer in his poem (as afterward the other epic poets) wished to propose as it were a model or a type of man who was superior to the norm, and marvelous, and in order to bring about such an effect had selected a warrior, how could he have made this warrior superior to other men, and singularly admirable for those virtues which are proper to his profession, if he did not also make him victorious? Such, indeed, that no one could resist him? How could he allow this Hero to be defeated, that is to say, surpassed by others in respect of those virtues and qualities by which he intended to show him superior to all and unique among all others, in order to generate wonder and to create [3102] that type of accomplished warrior which he proposed? War is not like many other undertakings that can go wrong or fail in their intent as a result of obstacles insurmountable to man and forces superior to those of human beings. Rather, war is man against man, and so, if the intention is to show one man as being superior to other men, and remarkable among his kind for his virtues as a warrior, it is necessary also to make that man victorious. Whoever loses in war loses to man, which these days might be excused, but seldom praised. Among the ancients, not merely was it not praised, but seldom even excused, and generally scorned as the result either of cowardice or weakness, the latter of which, albeit involuntary, was very little less despised than the former, as are weakness and so many other defects today, both external and internal, of individuals and nations, that do not depend on the will of whoever is subject to them. As I say above, war is [3103] between man and man, although Homer also involves the Gods. But this fiction was in order to embellish, not to alter, the nature of war, save in several, relatively inessential episodes. As when Achilles is seen struggling with the Xanthus.1 In this latter case, given that the battle is not man against man, but against the superior power of a God, Homer has no scruple in showing Achilles asking for help and fleeing, nor does he judge that this detracts from his superiority, for he wishes to show him to be superior to men, not to the Gods, and victorious in the combat of mortals, not Immortals. And as divine intervention, if the proper effect is to be maintained, ought not to alter the substance of human war, so indeed it does not in Homer.
Hence it was fitting that the Hero and nation chosen to be celebrated by Homer were successful and victorious, most especially, in addition to the [3104] general considerations mentioned above, for the specific reason that the Hero celebrated by Homer was Greek and the nation was Greek, that is, the nation to which he was singing and to which he himself belonged, and the war they were waging was against the Barbarians. Most fitting, this, to take for the subject of an epic poem the praises and exploits of one’s own nation, and a war against its constant natural enemies, that is, the Barbarians. This redoubled, indeed multiplied the poem’s interest; as is also the case in the Lusiads,1 in the Aeneid, etc. Hence Isocrates believes that a large part of Homer’s celebrity, and the favor his poems always enjoyed among the Greeks, derives from their patriotism, and from the battles and victories against the Barbarians celebrated in them (see Panegyricus, ed. Battie, Isocratis orationes VII et epistolae, Cambridge 1729, pp. 175–76).2 Now how could Homer conceive of, or describe, [3105] his nation and one of its Heroes as losers, and that in a war against the Barbarians? This would have been even more absurd among the ancients than it is among the moderns, and even if all the praises and interest of the poem had been in favor of the Greeks, and even if, in depicting them as unfortunate, Homer had managed to bring the Greeks to the point of tears, sobbing at the sight of their own misfortunes, nonetheless it would have proved absurd to the point of putting the poet himself in danger. Phrynichus the Athenian, long after Homer, made the taking of Miletus by Darius the subject of his tragedy, and moved his audience to pity regarding the misfortune of the Greeks, to the extent that the entire theater dissolved into tears, according to Longinus’s description (§ 24). The Athenians fined him a thousand drachmae (Plutarch, Praecepta gerendae reipublicae, S
trabo, bk. 14, Scholia on Aristophanes’s Vespae), for he had reminded them of domestic calamities and made them visible again by putting them on stage (Herodotus, bk. 6, ch. 21). [3106] They even passed a decree outlawing the tragedy from being performed (Tzetzes, Chiliades, 8 (I find somewhere else 7), historia 156). Indeed, according to Aelian (Varia historia, bk. 13, ch. 17), they wept as they ejected him from the theater where he was performing his own tragedy. (See Fabricius, Bibliotheca Graeca, in the “Notitia Tragicorum”; Meurs, Bibliotheca Attica; Bentley, Dissertation on the Epistles of Phalaris, p. 256.)1 See p. 4078.
So for all these reasons, good fortune had to be combined with virtue in the Hero selected by Homer and the nation celebrated by him. Here lies one of the sources of interest that continue uninterrupted in the Iliad throughout the entire body of the poem, an interest which consists in the admiration inspired by extraordinary and superior virtue. Such interest and admiration, that is, the full effect of such virtue as described and depicted in the poem, necessarily required good fortune and success, which in all times, but especially the most ancient, is considered to be the fulfillment of virtue, indeed the indispensable perfection [3107] of virtue, or the only indication that can show virtue to be truly perfect and supreme.
Another property of man is that, where superiority, virtue conjoined with good fortune, arouses but a weak form of interest, that is to say, admiration, misfortune, on the other hand, under any circumstances but most especially when conjoined with virtue, arouses a very keen and lasting and most pleasing form of interest. Because man delights in the sentiment of compassion, for in sacrificing nothing, he nonetheless obtains a feeling which, in all things and on all occasions, is most agreeable to him, that is, almost an awareness of a personal heroism and nobility of spirit. Naturally, misfortune is a cause for disdain and even hatred toward the unfortunate person, for man, by his very nature, hates painful ideas as much as he hates pain itself. Man, in looking despite the misfortune to the virtues of the unfortunate person, and not hating or despising him because he is unfortunate, to the point of ultimately experiencing compassion for him, that is to say, of wanting to enter into part of his [3108] distress with his own soul, in so doing feels as though he is making an effort to deal with himself, transcending his own nature, obtaining proof of his own magnanimity, fashioning an argument that he may use to persuade himself that he truly is furnished with a soul above the ordinary. This is all the more true since egoism is proper to man, and when a compassionate person takes an interest in others, he considers that through this interest, which costs him nothing, he shows himself in his own eyes to be extraordinarily magnanimous, singular, and heroic, more than a man, for he can be unselfish, and can commit himself on behalf of someone other than himself. See pp. 3291–97 and pp. 3480–82. Man, in experiencing compassion, becomes proud and takes pleasure in himself; hence, he enjoys experiencing compassion, and takes pleasure in that compassion. The act of being compassionate is an act of pride, which man performs within himself. Hence, even compassion, which appears to be the feeling furthest removed from, indeed, most opposed to self-love, and which appears not to be in any way attributable to, or to refer to, such love, [3109] in fact derives from it and from it alone (as do all other feelings), indeed, is none other than self-love, an act of egoism.1 Egoism manages to produce and fashion a form of pleasure by convincing itself that it is dead, or has at least suspended its functions by applying the individual’s interest to others. Hence egoism takes pleasure in itself, for it believes that it has ceased to exist or suspended its own essence of selfishness. See p. 3167.
Returning to the matter at hand, the first of the sources of interest in Homer, that is, wonder, derived from the fact that admiration was elicited through the superior nature, virtue, and good fortune of a national hero and army, through an undertaking performed by that nation to the detriment of its natural enemies. This made it not merely possible, but entirely natural, for this interest to be felt keenly among Greek readers and listeners (for whom Homer was writing), throughout the entire duration of the poem. Where such circumstances cease to apply, it is impossible for this interest either to be felt keenly or for any great length of time. The reader is not much interested in those in whom he sees the poet himself continually being interested. The reader’s interest (in the sense in which we conventionally understand it today) is a kind of attention he devotes [3110] to those persons in whom his interest is aroused. He thus finds it pointless to devote much thought to those he sees as having sufficient attention devoted to them by others. The poet and the fortune narrated by him accomplish on their own what the reader himself would accomplish in taking such an interest. They themselves make provision for the fortunate, so the reader has no reason to do so himself, he does not desire that which is given to him spontaneously, that which he already obtains without having to go to much trouble or effort. For these reasons, the fortunate may at times interest us only minimally, and for a limited amount of time, in epic and dramatic poems especially. And indeed, the readers of the Iliad today, as they are not Greek themselves, are either not greatly interested in the Greeks, who they know will be victorious, or very soon cease to be interested in them. See pp. 3452, end–58. But the effect that the Iliad had on the Greeks, for whom it was intended, should not be measured by the effect it has on us, nor consequently, should the art of the poet who composed it, nor the value or worth of the poem.
[3111] Homer could not introduce the other source of interest, namely compassion, to his poem so that it applied to Achilles or the Greeks; he could not do so, I stress, for the reasons I have mentioned. All he could do was to arouse compassion for the Greeks on occasion, or for one or other of them, such as characters of secondary importance, and then with less emphasis (as is the case, e.g., with Patroclus), not as the primary object of the compassion to which all the various threads of the poem would lead. Homer chose this subject in the party opposed to the Greeks, the party on which misfortune was intended to fall, if happiness were to be the lot of the Greeks. He selected or created from among their enemies an unfortunate Hero, if so we may describe him, who was to be the opposite of the fortunate Hero, interest in whom, in the mind of the reader, was constantly to balance, oppose, and accompany the interest in the other. He made this unfortunate Hero inferior in strength to Achilles, and also to Ajax and Diomedes, for superiority of strength [3112] had to be the chief attribute and glory of the Greeks (the greatest glory of all in the heroic age); but although making him stronger than all the other Greeks and Trojans, he made him equal in courage and magnanimity to Achilles himself, and, adorning him for the rest with qualities other than those of Achilles, he made him count for as much as the latter himself. Supreme piety toward the Gods, toward his nation, toward his relatives, supreme affability, youth, and manly beauty far above all others on his own side (for that of Paris was not manly); as well as accomplishment and skill in handling war and the conduct of battles, vigilance, providence, care for his friends, patience in his labors, art in speaking at public councils or addressing soldiers, scorn for all forms of danger, esteeming honor above all things, as when he refuses to withdraw into the city when he sees Achilles coming upon him,1 and after honor, his homeland; steadfastness, etc. etc. In short, as he had created in Achilles a man [3113] who was supremely admirable, so he created and desired to create in Hector a hero who could be supremely the object of love. And as Achilles’s victory over the invincible Hector brings admiration for him to its fulfillment, so too the misfortune that befalls Hector brings his being the object of love to fulfillment, and turns love into compassion, which, when it is experienced in respect of a lovable object, constitutes the fulfillment, so to speak, of the loving sentiment that gave rise to it. Many misfortunes, of both Greeks and Trojans, are narrated or represented in the Iliad, but that of Hector is the aim of the poem, and to it all threads of the poem are directed, no less than, and to the same degree as, the victory of Achilles, and always in tandem with it: in it, the poem com
es to a conclusion. When Melchiorre Cesarotti looked into these things, and judged that Hector was its main source of interest, and that his misfortune per se was the main aim and proposition of the poem, he presumptuously wished to change its title and call it The Death of Hector,1 judging that Homer had not properly understood either himself [3114] or his own intention when he expressly announced a different proposition in the opening lines of the Iliad. In this Cesarotti was greatly mistaken, because he had not examined human nature, nor the qualities of the times, nor Homer’s own circumstances (for while the only, not just the main, source of interest in the Iliad today is Hector, this was not so in ancient times, nor was Homer’s intention such in writing for the Greeks), and had not paid closer attention to modern opinions regarding the unity of interest and main subject of the poem.1 But as in Homer’s intention Achilles was not supposed to be the sole interest, nor his victory per se the poem’s sole subject and purpose, otherwise he would not have placed against him such a hero as Hector, so neither was the interest in Hector supposed to be the sole source of interest, nor his misfortune per se the sole subject and purpose of the poem. In Homer’s intention the interest, purpose, and hero of the poem was meant to be twofold [3115] for his Greek readers or listeners, and so in fact it proved to be.
And here the wonderful art of Homer should be considered. For it was not customary in the heroic age, that is, in almost savage times, for the enemy to be respected to any degree.1 The hatred which the opposing party bore toward its enemy, that hatred which meant that every soldier considered the army or opposing nation to be his own personal enemies, and fought with this sentiment, left no room for such respect. And even if there were grounds for respecting the enemy, everyone, as is the case with one’s own personal enemies, sought with all their might to humiliate the enemy both in their own imagination and in that of others, and refused to recognize any virtue in him. The notion that the glory of the one who fights powerfully and wins is all the greater the more powerful and worthy of respect the enemy and vanquished is was neither prevalent nor known at that time. But though [3116] all loved glory and sought it above all other things, considerably more so, indeed, than at the present time, no one thought to increase it at the expense of his own hatred for the enemy, no one thought he could increase the value of his victory in his own eyes, or in the eyes of others, by taking into consideration and paying tribute to the strength of the resistance; rather, all chose to hold the enemy to be base and cowardly, and to represent him as such to others, for hatred and vengeance are satisfied and enjoyed all the more when the enemy is despised and stripped of all forms of respect, rather than pressing and overcoming him, and one would almost rather choose to succumb to the enemy than to praise him. Such a disposition provided few resources, little variety, little scope for passions in the epic poem. Homer had the skill to make the Greeks willing to respect the enemy they had defeated, and he made them experience the pleasure, unknown or very rare at that time, of boasting and taking pride [3117] in a victory achieved against a noble and valorous enemy. It really was Homer who conceived of this pleasure, it was Homer who created it. It was not typical of the times, it was not born of the manner of thinking or disposition of those people, but born of the poetry of Homer. Homer was, so to speak, its creator. This gave him scope to multiply and interweave the different sources of interest, and to vary the passions and the effects created by his poem in the minds of his readers.
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