The Greeks from ATS

The Homeric Greeks were open to the world in a way that we, who
are skilled at introspection and who think of moods as private experi-
ences, can barely comprehend. Instead of understanding themselves
in terms of their inner experiences and beliefs, they saw themselves as
beings swept up into public and shareable moods. For Homer, moods
are important because they illuminate a shared situation: they mani-
fest what matters most in the moment and in doing so draw people to
perform heroic and passionate deeds. The gods are crucial to setting
these moods, and different gods illuminate different, and even incom-
patible, ways a situation can matter. The goddess to whom Helen was
most attuned was Aphrodite; she illuminates a situation’s erotic pos-
sibilities and draws one to bring these out at their best. Achilles, by
contrast, is sensitive to Ares’ mood—an aggressive mood in which op-
portunities to shine as a ferocious warrior become the most important
aspects of the situation at hand. Other gods call forth other attune-
ments. The best kind of life in Homer’s world is to be in sync with the
gods. As Martin Heidegger puts it:
[W/]e are thinking the essence of the [Homeric] Greek gods . . .
if we call them the attuning ones.5
At the center of Homer’s world, then, is the sense that what matters
is already given to us, and that the best life is the one that manages to
get in sync with it. This vision speaks eloquently to our own modern
needs. Homer’s Olympian gods give his Greeks a sense of the sacred
that underwrites the joys and sorrows of a truly meaningful existence.
To lure back these Homeric gods is a saving possibility after the death
of God: it would allow us to survive the breakdown of monotheism
-Awhile resisting the descent into a nihilistic existence.
. Homer’s epic poems brought into focus a notion of arete, or ex-
cellence in life, that was at the center of the Greek understanding
of human being.6 Many admirers of Greek culture have attempted
to define this notion, but success here requires avoiding two promi-
nent temptations. There is the temptation to patronize that we have
already mentioned. But there is also a temptation to read a modern
sensibility into Homer’s time. One standard translation of the Greek
word arete as “virtue” runs the risk of this kind of retroactive reading:
for any attempt to interpret the Homeric Greek notion of human
excellence in terms of “virtue”--especially if one hears in this word
its typical Christian or even Roman overtones—is bound to go astray.
Excellence in the Greek sense involves neither the Christian notion
of humility and love nor the Roman ideal of stoic adherence to one’s
duty. Instead, excellence in the Homeric world depends crucially on
one’s sense of gratitude and wonder.
Nietzsche was one of the first to understand that Homeric excel-
lence bears little resemblance to modern moral agency. His view
was that the Homeric world understood nobility in terms of the
overpowering strength of noble warriors. The effect of the ensu-
ing Judeo-Christian tradition, on this Nietzschean reading, was to
enfeeble the Homeric understanding of excellence by substituting
the meekness of the lamb for the strength and power of the noble
warrior.
Nietzsche was certainly right that the Homeric tradition valorizes
the strong, noble hero; and he was right, too, that in some important
sense the Homeric account of excellence is foreign to our basic moral-
izing assumptions. But there is something that the Nietzschean ac-
count leaves out. As Bernard Knox emphasizes, the Greek word arete
is etymologically related to the Greek verb “to pray” (am0maz').9 It
follows that Homer’s basic account of human excellence involves the
necessity of being in an appropriate relationship to whatever is under-
stood to be sacred in the culture. Helen’s greatness, on this interpreta-
tion, is not properly measured in terms of the degree to which she is
morally responsible for her actions.
W/hat makes Helen great in Homer’s world is her ability to live
a life that is constantly responsive to golden Aphrodite, the shining
example of the sacred erotic dimension of existence. Likewise, Achil-
les had a special kind of receptivity to Ares and his warlike way of life;
Odysseus had Athena, with her wisdom and cultural adaptability, to
look out for him. Presumably, the master craftsmen of Homer’s world
Worked in the light of Hephaestus’s shining. In order to engage with
this understanding of human excellence, we will have to think clearly
about how the Homeric Greeks understood themselves. Why would
it make sense to describe their lives in relation to the presence and
absence of the gods?
, Several questions focus this kind of approach. What is the phe-
nomenon that Homer is responding to when he says that a god
intervened or in some way took part in an action or event? Is this phe-
nomenon recognizable to us, even if only marginally? And if Homer’s
reference to the gods is something other than an attempt to pass off
moral responsibility for one’s actions, then what exactly is it? Qnly
by facing these questions head on can we understand whether it is
possible—or desirable—to lure back Homer’s polytheistic gods.
The gods are essential to the Homeric Greek understanding of
if “who try to take credit for favorable events that would properly have
what it is to be a human being at all. As Peisistratus-—the son of wise
old Nestor——says toward the beginning of the Odyssey, All 111611 Hfifid
the gods ”1° The Greeks were deeply aware of the ways in which our
successes and our failures—indeed, our very actions themselves--are
 never completely under our control. They were constantly sensitive
to, amazed by, and grateful for those actions that one cannot perform
on one’s own simply by trying harder: going to sleep, waking up, fit-
ting in, standing out, gathering crowds together, holding their atten-
tion with a speech, changing their mood, or indeed being filled with
longing, desire, courage, wisdom, and so on. Homer sees each of these
achievements as a particular god’s gift. To say that all men need‘ the
‘gods therefore is to say, in part at least, that we are the kinds of beings
-who are at our best when we find ourselves acting in ways that we can-
not—and ought not—entirely take credit for.
. There are many cautionary tales in Homer involving characters
been experienced as beyond their control. Consider the case of Ajax,
for example. After fighting valiantly for the Greeks in the Trojan War
the met with difficulty on his voyage home. In the treacherous sea his
ships were dashed against the giant rocks of Gyrae, though Ajax him-
self somehow managed to escape:
[A] nd he indeed would have evaded fate . . . had he not bragged
with blinded heart. He said that he’d escaped the sea’s abyss de-
spite the gods: Poseidon heard Ajax rave; at once he gripped his
trident in giant hands; he struck the rock of Gyrae and cracked
it. One half stayed in place, but one split and plunged down
into the sea; that part was where the maddened blustering Ajax
sat; it bore him down into the boundless tide. And there, when
he had drunk much brine, he died.“
What are we supposed to make of such a story? Not that some
theological entity named Poseidon played a genuine causal role in
Ajax’s death. That is not what We should hope to retrieve from the
Greeks. Presumably what happened to Ajax, after all, is that once his
ship had been wrecked and he had climbed onto an enormous rock,
an earthquake split the rock in two and sent him to his death. What-
ever we retrieve from the Greeks, it must be consistent with our un-
derstanding of the physical makeup of the universe.
' The Greek position becomes interesting not when it is thought of
as an alternative to our causal explanation of events, but rather when
it offers a fresh account of our particular human kind of excellence.
Indeed, eloquently articulated in the Ajax story is a view of what we
ought to aspire to as human beings. At its heart is the idea that there
is something deeply wrong about Ajax’s attitude in this situation-so
wrong that it is an affront to our self-conception, and that in some
sense it explains and justifies his death. Instead of blindly and selfishly
taking credit for his escape, in such a view, Ajax should have been
grateful that things turned out as favorably as they did. Gratitude, not
braggadocio, is the appropriate response to a happy event.
Indeed, gratitude is more than simply the appropriate response
in Homer’s world; it is essential to a well-lived life. After all, to ex-
plain Ajax’s demise in terms of his self-conceit, as Homer does, is to
insist that his reaction was an affront to everything the Greeks held
sacred. That’s what it means to say that Poseidon struck him down:
for Homer the death of Ajax made sense only in the context of Ajax’s
utter rejection of anything sacred.
So a certain kind of gratitude becomes an essential component
in the Homeric understanding of the best possible life. In one sense,
then, the gods are whatever stands beyond us that requires our grati-
tude. The demand for this kind of gratitude is rather marginal in the
modern world. But the basic phenomenon that motivates this idea is
nevertheless recognizable to us. Imagine an Ajax-like character who
survives the sinking of the Titanic: he’s the guy who sees evidence of
his own greatness in the fact that he was picked up by the rescue boat.
Something in this rankles, even now.

ALTHOUGH IT IS NOT at the center of our conception of ourselves,
the idea that we should recognize and be grateful for favorable events
when they occur is not entirely alien to us. The Greeks experienced
this phenomenon in a particular Way, however. It was not just that
they felt lucky when something they experienced to be beyond their
control turned out well for them. It was that they experienced
favorable events as meaningful for, and directed at, them.
To see this point, consider the difference between the Homeric
Greeks and the Romans living in the second and first centuries BC.
The Romans took very seriously the importance of luck in their lives,
" I ‘and they personified this force in the goddess Fortuna. Often repre-
filsented as blind—indicating that her choices are indifferent to those
iwhom they affect—Fortuna has no natural precursor in the Homeric
world. The goddess Tyche, who is typically considered the Greek
equivalent of Fortuna, doesn’t begin to play an important role in
Greek mythology until the Hellenistic age, at least five hundred years
after Homer.”
. The distinction between Fortuna and the Homeric Greek gods is
important: if Fortune shines upon a Roman citizen then the proper
sentiment is not gratitude, since Fortune didn’t have him in view at
all. Rather, to experience one’s life as ruled by Fortune is, at best, to
cultivate a kind of stoicism and reserve. The Roman Stoic stalwartly
‘endures the vicissitudes of life, inoculating himself against fortunes
and misfortunes alike. This kind of reserve, of willfully enforced de-
tachment, could not be further from the Homeric conception of ex-
cellence in a life. And yet, there is something familiar about it in our
Secular age. The notion that blind luck determines the course of our
lives leads quickly to the nihilistic idea that our lives have no mean-
ing- Roman Stoicism is grandfather to the nihilism of the secular age.
The connection between luck and meaninglessness is a theme
tailor-made for the contemporary world. Woody Allen seems to be
exploring this connection in his 2005 movie Match Point. In the film
Chris Wilton is a social-climbing tennis instructor at a high-end Lon-
don club. The opening scene of the movie shows a static image of a
tennis ball suspended just above the net, as Wilton explains his phi-
losophy of life in voice-over:
I The man who said “I’d rather be lucky than good” saw deeply
into life. People are afraid to face how great a part of life is de-
pendent on luck. It’s scary to think so much is out of one’s con-
trol. There are moments in a match when the ball hits the top
of the net, and for a split second, it can either go forward or
fall back. With a little luck, it goes forward, and you win. Or
maybe it doesn’t, and you lose.
As the movie proceeds, Wilton becomes involved in a love triangle
that he escapes by murdering the less convenient of his two girl-
friends. The question that motivates the story is whether he will be
caught. Wilton himself recognizes what is at stake:
It would be fitting if I were apprehended . . . and punished.
At least there would be some small sign of justice—some small
measure of hope for the possibility of meaning. ‘
The possibility of meaning, however, is cut short. By sheer luck—of
the sort exemplified by the chance event of a tennis ball on the top of
the net—another man is arrested for Wilton’s crime. It follows, with the
force of a syllogism, that there is no hope for the possibility of meaning
in our lives. By emphasizing life’s dependence on luck, Allen is commit-
ted to nihilism.
Being lucky and being cared for are radically different phenom-
ena. If we experience blind luck to be the source of whatever is be-
yond our control, as the Romans did, then it makes no sense to
feel grateful for the favorable things that happen; the cost, however,
is a kind of detachment from the world that makes it impossible
to experience meaning in our lives. The Greeks, by contrast, held
the world in constant wonder. They could not help but be amazed
and grateful whenever anything favorable happened in their lives.
This kind of amazement and Wonder, and the gratitude that follows
naturally from it, is the key to everything sacred in the world of the
Greeks.
To UNDERSTAND BETTER the Greek sense of the sacred, let us con-
sider an example in which it seems natural to Homer to invoke the
presence of the gods. In a representative scene toward the end of the
Odyssey, the suitors throw a host of spears at Odysseus from point-
blank range. Homer describes the event:
Again six suitors cast their shafts with force; but each shot
missed its mark~—Athena’s work.”
The idea here is that it must not have seemed merely arbitrary or
‘fortunate to Odysseus that these enemy spears missed their mark. It
must have seemed to him, rather, that there was some meaning or
purpose in this fact, that he was being cared for in the event. Homer’s
Way of expressing this is to insist that the spears missed Odysseus be-
cause Athena was protecting him from the enemy attack.
There is something one can retrieve from this description and
Something one cannot. Obviously we cannot believe that some super-
natural entity named Athena actually caused the spears to turn aside.
Even if we replace Athena with the Judeo-Christian God, our secular
age typically rebels at the thought (though some, of course, will admit
this possibility). But whatever the precise metaphysical and theologi-
cal facts, let us focus on the phenomenology of the situation. Imagine
yourself, for the moment, in Odysseus’s place. Six of your enemies
have amassed before you at close range; each picks up a spear and
together they hurl them at you all at once. You are prepared, as the
great warrior always is, to die a heroic death in the following instant.
Indeed, it looks inevitable. But instead:
One spearhead struck the sturdy hall’s doorpost, and one, the
tightly-fitted door itself; two other ash-wood shafts, tipped
with stout bronze, just struck the Wall. And though two shafts
drew close, they leveled nothing more than glancing blows.“
What relief, what amazement, what gratitude one must feel! And can
it possibly have been blind chance? By any natural measure, it must
seem to Odysseus, things should have gone the other way. One expe-
riences this—-or at least Homer’s character experienced it—not just
as mere luck or good fortune, but as an event that tells him he is well
cared for. Athena’s work indeed.
ALTHOUGH WE ARE NOT likely to attribute events like this to the
work of a god, there is nevertheless something familiar in Odysseus’s
way of experiencing the situation. Those who escape natural disas-
ters or other dangerous situations, for example, [often do feel that it
was not a mere accident that they were saved. Indeed, it is someémes
difficult—when one is the target of a statistically unlikely event- to
feel otherwise.
and:
. Take one of the simplest examples: sleep.
In the Iliad Sleep is himself a god-—at least once addressed as the “lord
of all gods and of all men” (Hom. Il. 14.230fl).16 In the Odyssey, how-
ever, as we have seen sleep is primarily a power that other gods have to
give. In the opening book of the Odyssey, Penelope weeps and weeps
‘ffor her husband Odysseus, until Athena, gray-eyed goddess, shed
sweet sleep upon her eyelids” (Hom. Od. 1.363). And later in the
poem the messenger god Hermes is revealed to carry a wand “where-
with he lulls to sleep the eyes of whom he will, while others again he
awakens even out of slumber” (Hom. Od. 5.46).
Even when the gods are not explicitly responsible for someone’s
going to sleep, however, I-Iomer’s way of describing the event is deeply
informed by his understanding of human beings as not fully in con-
trol of central aspects of their existence. We have seen already the ex-
traordinary range of ways Homer has to describe the phenomena of
being drawn into and awakened from sleep. In Homer people do not
just go to sleep, as if that was something one could do; sleep itself is a
sacred gift.
The variety of ways Homer has of describing sleep indicates what
an important role it plays in his conception of human existence. For
us sleep is the blank episode that separates our moments of activity;
when we are sleeping we are no longer quite ourselves. By contrast,
in Homer’s world sleep is an event that epitomizes the human condi-
tion. It is often in sleep that the gods visit humans, give them direc-
tion and purpose, formulate their plans for them, quell their anxieties
and refresh their desires. Sleep is a canonical human event in Homer
because it is the paradigm of an activity at which one cannot suc-
ceed by trying harder. And yet, one is not completely powerless in the
face of it either. One can prepare oneself for sleep, be grateful that it
comes, wonder at the transformation it brings about. And all these,
for Homer, are characteristic of us at our best.