Homerâs works did remind the Greeks of their societal ideals, his characters were everywhere in Greek art, literature, and culture. Iâm more horrified at the idea of comparing any comic book to works that were basically a mix of the Bible and Shakespeare to the Greeks. Ancient Greek culture is not a fit for the modern world in many respects, but they were just making a comparison to comic books being in that role, not saying they were modeling their cultural values on Homer.
The Hellenes were a bunch of little city-states that were in near constant war, so a warrior culture was part of their ideal. While I canât say Odysseusâ murder of the suitors could possibly be justified to a modern mind, Odysseus was a king who returned to see a group of armed, violent, self-centered rogue leaders stealing from his palace, damaging his kingdom, all while trying to steal his wife. His options really were to open himself up and either die at their hands or capture them, either way sparking political chaos for his family, and his kingdom, or take them out. A Greek would have seen them as leaders who showed no fitness to lead in any respect (Homer worked carefully to illustrate them violating every Greek cultural value) and not found their murders all that jarring even if itâs horrible to a modern mind. The murder of the maidservants mostly shows the horrible misogyny of ancient Greek culture.
The Iliad is in many ways a reflection on the damaging effects of pride and anger (during a war) and what it took for Achilles to finally deal with that, and is actually sort of interesting on that topic, if still not at all psychologically healthy.
Hector might have been a ânice guy,â but as the greatest warrior of the Trojans he had to die. Diomedes was the Greek ânice guyâ and didnât finish last at all. Astyanax doesnât die in a Homeric work, but he was a Trojan, so he was as doomed as they all were.
Odysseus was a villain to the Romans for a lot of reasons (his use of wits over direct violence wasnât Roman, they were always suspicious of the clever ones, and he came up with the plan that destroyed their mythological origin city of Troy), and Dante was working with that material while he never read Homer.
Totally agreed that the Greek heroes are not heroes in the comic book sense, though. Comic books arenât really a universal mythological source for a civilizationâs culture.
