squashed asked: Do you think Homer complicates the role of the military hero somewhat in The Iliad? Achilles, despite being the greatest warrior, dies. And he had it coming. He spent the first half of the epic moping while the Greeks got thrashed. Then he flips out, slaughter's Hector, and acts fairly disgracefully with the body. We can hardly blame Hector for dying. After all, he faced Achilles. But Achilles? He gets shot in the ankle by Legolas. That's just embarrassing.

(On a side note, I'm interested in whether your book will deal with texts like Watchmen that muddy those heroic categories.)

It’s certainly true that Homer offers a more complicated battlefield hero in Achilles; after all, Achilles is well known not only for being the swiftest and best warrior but also as someone who knows and makes use of the art of healing. And, as you note, Achilles spends the majority of the Iliad sitting by the ships, urging the gods to help the Trojans make his comrades sorry for insulting him. More than that, he offers a direct challenge to the warrior ethos in Book IX, when he tells Agamemnon’s emissaries that he now believes that there are no goods for which it would be worth risking his life.

And yet I want to argue that, in the end, Homer’s epic ultimately celebrates Achilles as a warrior and confirms the warrior ethos … precisely because of the interesting way in which you have misremembered the Iliad. We all know that Achilles dies, that he’s killed by the cowardly Paris. But, of course, this famous death does not actually occur in Homer’s Iliad. Instead, the Iliad concludes with Achilles triumphant: he has defeated Hector, the greatest of the Trojans, without any trouble at all and he hosts elaborate funeral games for his friend Patroclus, whose death he has successfully avenged.

On my reading, if Homer wanted to question the warrior ethos, he would either include the death of Achilles in his epic or he would have concluded the epic with Achilles’ attempted desecration of Hector’s body. Instead, the Iliad ends with Achilles’ reconciliation with both his community and with the warrior ethos. This is accomplished in two important moments:

1. His conversation with Priam, who comes to Achilles’ tent to beg for the return of Hector’s body and reminds him of his father, Peleus;
2. His elaborate funeral for Patroclus, which includes a communal feast and games that will award trophies to the victors.

Prior to these two moments, Achilles had removed himself from the community and challenged the warrior ethos entirely: he urged the gods to harm his friends and assist his enemies; he argued that the trophies over which warriors fought were meaningless; he refused a communal meal before battle; and he acted against the gods by attempting to desecrate Hector’s body and refusing to bury both Hector and Patroclus. Now, he returns to the community and confirms the warrior ethos by killing his enemy to avenge his friend; then returning Hector’s body to Priam and allowing time for a proper burial; burying his friend, Patroclus, with all due honor; sharing in a communal meal; and handing out trophies to his comrades.

It’s only at this time that Homer ends the Iliad, after Achilles has been restored to the community, and to its sense of Justice and the Good. And, only in his restoration does Achilles achieve the everlasting glory that he sought when he sailed for Troy.

Of course, Achilles’ confirmation of the conventional opinion of his community is precisely what Plato disputes as heroic; his hero, Socrates, spends his entire life challenging the norms of his community and proclaims this behavior to be central to the best possible way of life.