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This is a guest post from my good friend, Tabitha Alloway. We both have high schoolers this year, and they’re both going to read some Homer. While I’ve read The Iliad and The Odyssey recently so that I can be in conversation with my son about what he is reading, Tabitha has gone a step further and actually written out her thoughts, which I have found both interesting and helpful! I hope you will, too. Check out Part 1 and Part 2 if you haven’t already. Here’s Tabitha with Part 3:

Unless both of your parents were gods, you could expect a rather bleak and meaningless existence
after death.

The Underworld, ruled by the god Hades, was split into three parts: Tartarus (where the evil went), Asphodel meadows (essentially purgatory for all the souls of those who were not particularly good, evil, or noteworthy—this is where Achilles descends to), and the Elysium fields (for good men and great warriors/leaders). The Greeks had a sturdy sense of their own mortality. As Achilles acknowledges, “The grave…hugs the
strongest man alive.”

Radcliffe Edmonds III writes,

“The Homeric epics present a mixed picture of what happens to an individual after death… [The] bleak
vision of death and afterlife is fundamental to the Homeric idea of the hero’s choice – only in life is
there any meaningful existence, so the hero is the one who, like Achilles, chooses to do glorious deeds.
Since death is inevitable, Sarpedon points out, the hero should not try to avoid it but go out into the front of battle and win honor and glory. Such glory is the only thing that really is imperishable, the only meaningful form of immortality, since the persistence of the soul after death is so unappealing.
“As powerful as this grim vision of the afterlife is in the Homeric epics, commentators since antiquity have noticed that this uniformly dreary life for the senseless, strengthless dead is not the only vision of
afterlife presented in the Homeric poems.”
(A Lively Afterlife and Beyond: The Soul in Plato, Homer, and the Orphica)

There are times in Homer’s works in which the dead experience feelings and emotions and have memories of their former lives. Sometimes they even interfere in the world of human affairs.

But for the most part, Homer presents an existence in the House of Hades as empty, mindless, meaningless. When Odysseus speaks to the spirit of dead Achilles in The Odyssey, Achilles moans,

“By god, I’d rather slave on earth for another man—
some dirt-poor tenant farmer who scrapes to keep alive
than rule down here over all the breathless dead.”

There was little hope of joy in the afterlife. No general resurrection of the dead. This was reserved for only a small handful of privileged individuals—perhaps a mortal whose parentage included at least one god or goddess and who had done great deeds (such as Hercules, who was promoted to immortality). Or a man or woman who was very great and good might possibly be reincarnated up to three times, after which the soul could travel to the Blessed Isles and enjoy a happy existence.

The desire for a happier ending in the afterlife led some Greeks to turn to Middle Eastern mystery
religions. The Eleusis mysteries promised that those who lived a virtuous life and performed certain
religious rituals would experience a blessed afterlife. The Orphic cult assured followers that through special rites and initiation into secret knowledge they could escape the fate of most men and find the path to a better place in the afterlife. Members were buried with esoteric inscriptions on thin gold sheets that would guide the deceased through the Underworld.

Greek culture focused on glory. Eternity would probably be bleak, but if you could win a name for yourself, you would at least be remembered and praised after your death. Feats of courage and strength were applauded; cowardice and weakness, despised. This created a highly competitive culture that, arguably, was responsible for much of the country’s rise in the world.

Leaving behind great deeds was a way of becoming immortal, in a sense: the Greeks could not be reunited with their bodies, but they could be memorialized.

Avoiding bodily decay after death was a big deal: if a warrior did not receive a proper burial, his spirit was doomed to forever wander along the riverbank Styx. It could not properly rest in the house of the dead. This is why Achilles is desperate to recover the body of his friend Patroclus and see it gets an honorable burial—and to desecrate the body of Hector, his enemy.

While the Greeks valued life—the physical body and the material world—Plato would later (about 300 years after Homer’s time) present a different conception of life and death, meaning and purpose. He saw the body as something to one day happily put off, so that one’s soul might be set free from a prison that prevents a person from reaching true knowledge, True Being—the Beatific Vision. The physical and material were inferior to the spiritual and mystical. The body was a tomb to be cast off in order that one might become “other-worldly.” Plato spurned the idea of resurrection—for anyone. The Gnostics drew from his teachings.

True immortality for the Greeks meant the body must be resurrected and eternally united with the soul. All the immortal gods engaged in physical activities—eating, drinking, sleeping, having marital relations. Unless you were of the Platonian persuasion, it was a state much to be desired, but one which few, even among their best, could ever hope to attain.

The light of the Christian resurrection would one day pierce the darkness of this fear of death—and divide the Greeks at Mars Hill…

Lauren’s Note:

In reading The Republic, it’s so interesting to me that Plato didn’t want people to read/listen to Homer (though he acknowledges that Homer was pretty much the source of philosophical education for the Greeks in his day). Plato wanted gods that were far better examples than they were in Homer’s telling. He idealized and wanted a truly just and honorable God, and the truly just man according to Plato would be just even when not recognized as such, even when treated as though he were unjust, even to the point of …wait for it… crucifixion! What Plato longed for in a God, in a just man…he didn’t find it in Homer. But he was on to something.

Plato also didn’t like poetry.  He was a “give it to me straight” kind of guy.

More in the series:

Reflections on The Iliad, Part 1: “Rage”

Reflections on The Iliad, Part 2: Humanity and Hospitality

Reflections on The Iliad, Part 4: Glory, Honor, Immortality, and the Folly of the Gospel

Other posts with Tabitha:
No Story is the Same, No Pain Ever Wasted
Introducing the Living Books Consortium

This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase through one of these links, I may make a commission at no additional cost to you. Thank you for supporting my blog!

This is a guest post from my good friend, Tabitha Alloway. We both have high schoolers this year, and they’re both going to read some Homer. While I’ve read The Iliad and The Odyssey recently so that I can be in conversation with my son about what he is reading, Tabitha has gone a step further and actually written out her thoughts, which I have found both interesting and helpful! I hope you will, too. Read Part 1 if you haven’t already. Here’s Tabitha with Part 2:

The characters of The Iliad are often arrogant, petty, and easily angered—much like their gods. The Greek
deities bicker and quarrel throughout the story, employ deception, fight one another, and alternately wreck havoc on the defenders and attackers of Troy, their only guide their own whims, unconstrained by moral considerations. Capricious and fickle, they often behave like spoiled children.

Achilles is described throughout the epic as “god-like.” But perhaps their gods were more “man-like” than anything: except for their immortality and power, the deities resembled man all too much in their thoughts and vices.

The concept of forgiveness and mercy was not really an intrinsic part of Greek culture. David J. Leigh writes,

“A study of the earliest Greek literature and philosophy indicates that the Greeks developed a strong
sense of justice and law as related to both gods and humans, but did not develop a concept of forgiveness and mercy. The closest they came to the latter concept was the practice of legal leniency and the notion of ‘pity’… Neither the gods nor human beings in early Greece were seen as ‘forgiving’ people their injustices or offenses… Because the Greeks lacked a divine or messianic example of unconditional forgiveness, they did not feel a religious compulsion to forgive other persons… At most, these hints of the rising importance of pity in the Greek world might suggest some readiness for the reception of the Christian teachings on the divine forgiveness of sins and the human need to forgive one another.” (Forgiveness, Pity, and Ultimacy in Ancient
Greek Culture)

Over time, “emergence of something beyond strict justice” did make its way into Greek thinking. And even Homer shows the characters acting, at times, with a compassion borne of pity. Homer presents these as admirable virtues, as part of what makes us truly human. He occasionally gives us a glimpse of man at his worst. And yet, woven throughout the tragedy, acts of kindness, mercy, justice, courage, friendship, loyalty, and honor are displayed.

Even by Achilles.

After killing Hector, Achilles drags the body behind his chariot, dishonoring him in one of the worst ways a man could be dishonored in the ancient world: he intends to let his corpse rot without burial.

But King Priam, Hector’s father, sneaks into the Greek camp and approaches Achilles, begging him to have pity on a grieving old man who has lost his sons. He reminds him how Achilles’s father would grieve were he to lose him. He asks to be given the body of Hector that he might bury it honorably.

It is human feeling that suddenly causes a change of heart in Achilles. Achilles the beast becomes a man again. He weeps for his own father, knowing he (Achilles) will soon die. Pity, compassion, even
gentleness overtake him.

He grants Priam his wish, even offering him food and a place to spend the night.

Another shocking turn takes place in the poem when Diomedes and Glaucus meet on the battlefield. Both men are seething with hate and ready to kill when Diomedes calls out to Glaucus, asking who he is. Glaucus proceeds to give him his family lineage. Suddenly, Diomedes plunges his spear into the ground and joyfully tells Glaucus they cannot be enemies.

“…Splendid—you are my friend,
my guest from the days of our grandfathers long ago!
Noble Oeneus hosted your brave Bellerophon once,
he held him there in his halls, twenty whole days,
and they gave each other handsome gifts of friendship.”

The two soldiers immediately make a pact of friendship, based on the fact that the ancestor of one had entertained the ancestor of the other. In one moment, hate melts into love and goodwill.

This seems strange—until one understands the significance of hospitality in the ancient Greek culture. Hospitality, or philoxenia (“loving the stranger”), was considered a sacred duty. Turning a stranger away
was an ill-advised act, for it might be a god in disguise, testing the host to see if he would practice proper hospitality. (There’s a rather interesting Christian corollary in Hebrews 13:2: “Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”)

It didn’t matter who came to your door—they must be fed, entertained, and given a parting gift. This
important ritual usually signified friendship for life. This is why, even generations removed from the
original act of hospitality, Diomedes and Glaucus instantly reconcile.

And this is the reason Paris’s treachery was so heinous to the Greeks. When Paris visited King
Menelaus’s home, he took advantage of his host’s hospitality to woo Menelaus’s wife, Helen, away.
By this act, he violated a sacred code of Greek ethics—xenia (“guest-friendship” or “ritualized friendship”), returning evil for hospitality.

Philonexia/philoxenia and philoxenos (Strong’s Greek #5381 and #5382) are found a total of five times
in the New Testament: in Hebrews 13:2 (as mentioned above), Romans 12:13 (when Paul admonishes the believers of Rome to be “given to hospitality”), 1 Timothy 3:2/Titus 1:8 (a requirement for an elder
is that he be a “lover of hospitality” and “given” to it), and 1 Peter 4:9 (“Use hospitality one to another
without grudging”).

Both the Greeks, and later the Christians, would highly value the practice of hospitality, but there are some key differences:

The Greeks practiced hospitality out of duty, fearing retribution of the gods.
The Christian practices hospitality out of love, for God’s glory and Christ’s reward.

The Greeks expected the good they did to be returned to them by their guest (if opportunity arose).
The Christian only looks to God for reward, not expecting man to pay him in kind.

The Greeks were not allowed to turn a stranger away.
Christians are actually commanded to turn some men away, and to withhold fellowship from others.
“If there come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither bid
him God speed: For he that biddeth him God speed is partaker of his evil deeds” (2 John 1:10-11).
“I wrote unto you in an epistle not to company with fornicators… But now I have written unto you not
to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner; with such an one no not to eat” (1 Corinthians 5:9, 11).

Peace was made between two soldiers because of an old act of hospitality. Sharing one’s home and table in the ancient world was a symbol of friendship and goodwill. This also carried great significance for new Jewish converts, who, prior to Christianity, physically separated themselves from the Gentiles.

“Ye know how that it is an unlawful thing for a man that is a Jew to keep company, or come unto one of
another nation,” said Peter to the Gentile Cornelius as he stood in his home. He continued, “But God hath shewed me that I should not call any man common or unclean” (Acts 10:28).

The gospel shattered the barrier walls between Jew and Gentile. Both were invited to the future marriage supper of the Lamb—and both could now practice hospitality with one another. Homes and hearts opened. Tables accepted guests previously shunned. When Peter cowardly went back on this and stopped eating with the Gentiles, Paul rebuked him to his face (see Galatians 2:11-13).

Dining together and practicing hospitality were important rituals in the ancient world. At least eighteen scenes of hospitality are said to be found in Homer’s works. To share a table was to share more than food. It was an acknowledgment of shared humanity. This kindness marked good men—virtuous men.
Paris is thus a true villain, lacking the humane instinct to gratefully return the good he has received. His
treachery brings strife and death to both Greeks and Trojans.

Lauren’s Note:

It is striking when reading Plato’s Republic, that in all of his discussion of justice and virtue, love is not really a part of the discussion. This is why Faith, Hope, and Love are called the “Christian virtues”. While the concepts existed, they were not held up as ideals by the Greeks in the way that Christians exalted them.

For a great podcast listen on the topic of Christian hospitality, check out: Cultivating Biblical Hospitality in Your Home and Life over at Thankful Homemaker. You can also get a hold of Rosaria Butterfield’s excellent book, The Gospel Comes with a Housekey.

Coming soon:

Reflections on The Iliad, Part 1: “Rage”

Reflections on The Iliad, Part 3: Some Thoughts on Greek Thought

Reflections on The Iliad, Part 4: Glory, Honor, Immortality, and the Folly of the Gospel

Other posts with Tabitha:
No Story is the Same, No Pain Ever Wasted
Introducing the Living Books Consortium