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The first thing one notices is the care with which both the poet and
Nestor himself establish his right to give advice. This is a function of
his status (i.e. his honour); it derives not just from his age, but from the
wisdom and eloquence that his experience has given him. This status
gives his words authority and allows him to pronounce impartially
upon the quarrel. Nestor is upholding group values to which
Agamemnon and Achilles should subscribe, and his authority derives
from the honour in which he is held by the group, but that authority in
itself allows him the independence of mind to tell two powerful figures
what neither of them wants to hear. In honouring Nestor as a
counsellor, this independence, the willingness to speak out and
persuade others that they are wrong, is precisely what the group
wants; this is why he is valued.
Next, we notice Nestors diagnosis of the grounds of the quarrel:
behind the dispute over women-as-prizes (i.e. the relative status of
Achilles and Agamemnon as mirrored by the marks of esteem
conferred by their fellows) lies a deeper dispute over claims to
precedence of incommensurable qualities, rank versus prowess. This,
then, is a society which entertains a plurality of claims to honour, and
in refusing to reduce the competing claims of Achilles and Agamemnon to a single criterion of value, Nestor is urging each to give the
These are the final words of a speech in which Odysseus prescribes the
ceremonies, both public and private, that will finally and formally
bring an end to the estrangement of Achilles and Agamemnon. The
link between honour, rights, and morality is not something that
emerges only as the putative Western notion of honour develops; it is
right there, in the supposedly primitive honour culture of Homer.
Honour in the Iliad is not something a man can pursue without limit;
and the limit is imposed by the honour, the duty of respect, that he
owes others.
For his part, Achilles becomes embroiled in a quarrel with
Agamemnon in order to champion group values against arbitrary
manipulation by a powerful individual; he then finds the power of that
individual turned, arbitrarily, against himself. From that point on, his
strategy involves a series of interlocking negotiations of individual
claims and group standards. On one level, Achilles stance resembles
that of Nestor: he uses his status within the group in an attempt to
persuade the group to see things his way. His withdrawal from the
fighting is in one sense a demonstration of his independence, so that in
Book 9 he can say, in response to Phoenix (an older retainer who is
acting as an intermediary on Agamemnons behalf), that he does not
need the time that the Achaeans can offer him, but can rely on the
honour he derives from Zeus (9. 6078). But Phoenix has just pointed
out (6025) that the community can withhold time even from a warrior
who fights well, if that warrior does not fight on their terms; and
Achilles own appeal to Zeus is itself part of a strategy designed to
achieve public acknowledgement of the status that Agamemnon failed
to respect. Achilles view of himself is most certainly not dependent on
the view that others have of him; but he does need others to endorse
the view that he takes of himself, and this is what he attempts to coerce
the Achaeans to do. In this situation, both the individual and the group
are powerful, and there is no question either of an autonomy that
excludes all notion of others approval or a heteronomy that wholly
determines the individuals view of himself.
Like King Lear, Achilles discovers that he has taken too little care of
this with the loss of his best friend, Patroclus. When his mother, Thetis,
observes that Zeus has fulfilled his promise to honour him by
favouring the Trojans against the Achaeans, Achilles laments (Iliad
18. 7983, 88104):
My mother, all these things the Olympian brought to accomplishment.
But what pleasure is this to me, since my dear companion has perished,
Patroklos, whom I loved beyond all other companions,
as well as my own life. I have lost him, and Hektor, who killed him,
has stripped away that gigantic armour . . .
...
As it is, there must be on your heart a numberless sorrow
for your sons death, since you can never again receive him
won home again to his country; since the spirit within does not drive me
to go on living and be among men, except on condition
that Hektor first be beaten down under my spear, lose his life
and pay the price for stripping Patroklos, the son of Menoitios.
Then in turn Thetis spoke to him, letting the tears fall:
Then I must lose you soon, my child, by what you are saying,
since it is decreed your death must come soon after Hektors.
Then deeply disturbed Achilleus of the swift feet answered her:
I must die soon, then; since I was not to stand by my companion
when he was killed. And now, far away from the land of his fathers,
Hector is explicitly concerned with what people will say of his conduct,
but the imagined judgement of others wholly coincides with his own
choice his spirit will not let him contemplate any other course; he has
learned to be brave. Bravery, winning glory for himself and his father,
has become an end in itself, part of what it is to be Hector. Yet Hector
also realises that the honour he craves entails an element of shame, that
the glory of bravery is only a second best if bravery fails to protect
ones dependants, especially ones wife (6. 44165):
For I know this thing well in my heart, and my mind knows it:
there will come a day when sacred Ilion shall perish,
and Priam, and the people of Priam of the strong ash spear.
But it is not so much the pain to come of the Trojans
that troubles me, not even of Priam the king nor Hekabe,
not the thought of my brothers who in their numbers and valour
shall drop in the dust under the hands of men who hate them,
Society makes martial glory an end in itself for those who pursue it, but
inculcates that end as a means to its own protection. Hector realises
that this is something that he will ultimately fail to provide. The tension
between the simple norm that only cowards retreat and its wider social
implications is quite clearly not one between honour and something
else, but within the notion of honour itself.
A similar tension emerges in the second passage, where Hector
confronts the fact that his desire for military glory has led to a failure to
protect his people; he had been advised (in Book 18) to retreat, and as
in Book 6 had rejected the prudent course in favour of the prospect of
glory. But Hector does not just regret his failure to prevail in battle; nor
has he merely realised that the pursuit of honour can be misguided.
The shame that Hector feels focuses not (as in Book 6) on the
imputation of cowardice, but on the duties of leadership and care that
he owes his people (22. 99110):
Ah me! If I go now inside the wall and the gateway,
Poulydamas will be first to put a reproach upon me,
since he tried to make me lead the Trojans inside the city
on that accursed night when brilliant Achilleus rose up,
and I would not obey him, but that would have been far better.
Now, since by my own recklessness I have ruined my people,
I feel shame before the Trojans and the Trojan women with trailing
robes, that someone who is less of a man than I will say of me:
Hektor believed in his own strength and ruined his people.
Thus they will speak; and as for me, it would be much better
at that time, to go against Achilleus, and slay him, and come back,
or else be killed by him in glory in front of the city.
As in the first passage, it is clear that Hector cares deeply about what
people will say; but these reproaches of the fantasy audience are
hypothetical, and the pejorative construction they place on Hectors
actions is his own (since by my own recklessness I have ruined my
Notes
1
See esp. John George Peristiany (ed.), Honour and Shame: The Values of
Mediterranean Society (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1965); David D.
Gilmore (ed.), Honor and Shame and the Unity of the Mediterranean
(Washington DC: American Anthropological Association, 1987). In
classics, see Peter Walcot, Greek Peasants, Ancient and Modern (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 1970). My own work was published as
Aidos: The Psychology and Ethics of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greek
Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993). The thesis from which
that book derived was inspired and supervised by Douglas MacDowell
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5
6
7
8
9
10
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we need to demystify honor and treat it as one kind of motivation that all
are subject to.
Geoffrey Brennan and Philip Pettit, The Economy of Esteem (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2004). Cf. also (on esteem as a factor in both gift
exchange and market economies) Avner Offer, Between the Gift and the
Market: The Economy of Regard, Economic History Review, 50:3 (1997),
45076.
Brennan and Pettit, The Economy of Esteem, 66.
Ibid., 8.
Ibid., 156.
Thus, regarding honour as in other respects, people are loss-averse: they
hate a loss more than they value an equal gain (Richard Layard,
Happiness: Lessons from a New Science (London: Allen Lane, 2005), 141; cf.
Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, Nudge: Improving Decisions about
Health, Wealth, and Happiness (London: Penguin, 2009), 367).
Brennan and Pettit, The Economy of Esteem, 187.
Ibid., 2236.
For the relation between subcultures in which violence is driven by the
pursuit of respect and inequalities of esteem in society in general, cf.
Michael Marmot, Status Syndrome: How Your Social Standing Directly
Affects Your Health (London: Bloomsbury, 2004), 102; Richard Wilkinson
The Impact of Inequality (London: Routledge, 2005), 222, 226; Richard
Wilkinson and Kate E. Pickett, The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies
Almost Always Do Better (London: Allen Lane, 2009), 134, 14041.
See previous note.
For the data, cf. www.equalitytrust.org.uk/why/evidence. For UK trends
since the 1980s, see Alissa Goodman, Paul Johnson, and Steven Webb,
Inequality in the UK (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997); John Hills
and Kitty Stewart (eds), A More Equal Society: New Labour, Poverty,
Inequality, and Exclusion (Bristol: Policy Press, 2005); John Hills, Tom
Sefton, and Kitty Stewart (eds), Towards a More Equal Society? Poverty,
Inequality and Policy since 1997 (Bristol: Policy Press, 2009); and now John
Hills, An Anatomy of Economic Inequality in the UK: Report of the National
Equality Panel (January 2010, available at http://www.equalities.gov.uk/
national_equality_panel/publications.aspx). Cf. also Daniel Dorling,
Injustice: Why Social Inequality Persists (Bristol: Policy Press, 2010).
On the ways in which growing discrepancies in income lead to increased
competition for positional goods and increased dissatisfaction even
among those who may be comfortably off in material terms, see Robert
Frank, Falling Behind: How Rising Inequality Harms the Middle Class
(Berkeley and Los Angeles CA: University of California Press, 2007); cf.
Layard, Happiness, esp. 418, 15053.
See Plato, Laws 744a745b (cf. 754d755a, 756e758a); Aristotle, Politics
1265a28b23, 1266b141267b16, 1280a1125, 1282b141284a17, 1297a613,
1301a251303a13, 1308a711, 1308b101309a32, 1310a212, 1318a9
1319a4. For Solon, see esp. fragments 46, 13, 24, and 367 West, and
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