Heroic Warriors

3 Pages 850 Words

Homer’s great epic poems, The Iliad and The Odyssey, tell different parts of a single epic cycle about Greek military expedition to the distant city of Troy, the war with the Trojans, and the return of the heroes to their cities and kingdoms. In this paper I will discuss the heroic masculinity in Homer. I will also answer the following questions:
• Do men make themselves by fighting with one another?
• How do women figure into these fights between men?
• Do men compete with one another by using women?
• And what kinds of power do women have in relationships between men?
Homer describes heroic masculinity by the willingness of men to fight in the war. According to Homer, you are considered a coward if you do not fight, yet you are considered honorable if you do fight in the war. In The Iliad, Paris is not considered the best of men because he is lowering himself because of the war. The reasoning of the war is because Paris was bribed by Aphrodite, who wanted to be the most

beautiful woman in the war, and promised Paris that he could have Menelaus’ wife Helen. Because Paris gave Aphrodite her wish, she gave him Helen. Paris is a coward because he isn’t fighting in the war that is considered to be his fault. Instead he is spending time with Helen. How can a soldier be heroic if he isn’t willing to fight for what he wants?
Throughout the entire poem, Homer endorses that war makes men. Yet only “warriors” such as Achilles and Agamemnon are the heroic men. It seems that soldiers are only heroic if they were predestined to become great warriors.
Many wonder if men make themselves by fighting with other men. In many ways it seems that you are only a man by killing other men. Once they enter the war and fight and kill other soldiers, it makes them have masculine honor. In some cases I feel that
isn’t true. In The Iliad two soldiers, Glaukos and Diomedes, have masculine honor between one another...