The Man Who Never Lived

The chain of conquerors who each set out to become the last one begins with a man who never existed. Before anybody could imitate Achilles, somebody had to decide what he was for.

A course on the thought of Homer.

Philosophy · Antiquity

What you will learn

• State the two ends Achilles reports at Iliad IX and what each one costs him.
• Explain why the two-fates choice is described as unique to the Embassy scene.
• Distinguish what the poem says Achilles chose from what later readers assumed he chose.
• Derive kleos from klúō and state what the etymology commits the word to.
• Explain Nagy's argument that the poet, not the hero, controls glory.
• Explain why, on this account, the gods cannot have kleos.
• Explain what a geras registered in the Homeric honour economy, and why its value lay in who awarded it.
• Distinguish timē from kleos by their source, their timescale and who can withdraw them.

Course outline

1. The Offer — In the ninth year of the war the Greeks send three men to buy Achilles back. He answers with an inventory of what money can and cannot replace, and then names a price nobody in the camp can pay.
2. That Which Is Heard — The Greek word for glory comes from the verb "to hear." It does not name a feeling or a monument. It names a sound in someone else's mouth — which means the most dangerous man alive has bought…
3. Two Hungers — The quarrel that starts the poem looks like a squabble over a captured woman. It is a dispute about a currency — and the reason it cannot be settled is that the Greeks had two, issued by different…
4. The Poem of Force — In 1940, with France occupied and her own papers uncertain, Simone Weil wrote an essay arguing that the true subject of the Iliad is not any of its men. It is force — and force does not spare the man…
5. Say Not a Word in Death's Favour — In the Odyssey, Odysseus meets Achilles in the underworld and tells him he is the most fortunate man who ever lived. Achilles cuts him off. What he says next has been read for two and a half thousand…
6. Not a Model for Imitation — The strongest objection to this entire program is one sentence in the front matter of its central text: the hero is not a model for imitation. If that is right, four courses are about to be built on…
7. The Tutor — The chain of imitation that runs through this program has a first link, and it is not a great man deciding to become Achilles. It is a mediocre employee flattering a child — and it worked so well…

Works read in this course

• Iliad — Quoted throughout from Samuel Butler's 1898 prose translation, which is public domain.
• Odyssey — Butler, 1900. Book XI carries the underworld speech that m5 turns on.

Built from

A synthesis of 5 books.

• Gregory Nagy, The Best of the Achaeans
• Caroline Alexander, The War That Killed Achilles
• Rachel Bespaloff, On the Iliad
• M. I. Finley, The World of Odysseus
• Simone Weil, The Iliad, or the Poem of Force

Terms introduced

kleos, timē, geras, nostos, thes

Part of the Simposeum course library.