![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I had a conversation with a classmate the other day about Greek heroes vs. Roman heroes, and how the differences between them were the results of the differences in not only cultural thought patterns, but governmental systems. (Or possibly the way around: government structures arguably rise from cultures. But I suppose it's a complicated feedback system all the way around.)
She held that the striking individualism of Greek heroes was a reflection of Athenian democracy, where individuals are empowered towards making changes, and the nameless communal efforts of Roman heroes were part of what made Rome into an empire. (I'm probably not giving a clear representation of her argument here, as it was several days ago and more nuanced than this.) I held the opposite: Athenian democracy was something of an aberration, and not all that democratic in any meaningful sense, given how much of the population was disenfranchised, and it's not like Athens didn't run around conquering people, too. Greek heroes were a call back to the days when a "king" was the guy in charge of a single town, whereas the Roman heroes that Cato and the like invoke are the effects of a system that's done away with kings.
But you know, on reflection, that's not very accurate either. It's problematic at best to use Cato's examples for anything in this, because the most striking one--where he compares a nameless centurion to a king of Sparta, with their similar actions and different receptions at home afterward--is itself a comparison of his, where he's trying to make a big point of the difference between Greek and Roman character. You can't take an example that someone with a point to make picked out to make that point and go "Oh, yes, that represents what people of Rome considered the standard heroic model." (Or at least I shouldn't.) Which means I find myself trying to work out who the standard Roman heroes are, and coming up a bit empty.
I mean, there are plenty of interesting Romans in various histories, some of them held up more or less as heroic, but it's not the same as a Greek Hero, who was essentially a mythological figure. It's looking like I really need to do more study on Roman culture before it swallowed all that Greek influence--if such a thing is even really possible, and I suspect to an extent it's just not, for my purposes--to work out what the "original" Roman hero is like, if there even is such a thing, before it starts getting into the game of compare and contrast with Greece.
Guess it's a good thing I'm in a class on archaic Latin!
...pity that I really should be reading about five research books right now and really don't have time to research stuff just for fun. Maybe over the summer.
She held that the striking individualism of Greek heroes was a reflection of Athenian democracy, where individuals are empowered towards making changes, and the nameless communal efforts of Roman heroes were part of what made Rome into an empire. (I'm probably not giving a clear representation of her argument here, as it was several days ago and more nuanced than this.) I held the opposite: Athenian democracy was something of an aberration, and not all that democratic in any meaningful sense, given how much of the population was disenfranchised, and it's not like Athens didn't run around conquering people, too. Greek heroes were a call back to the days when a "king" was the guy in charge of a single town, whereas the Roman heroes that Cato and the like invoke are the effects of a system that's done away with kings.
But you know, on reflection, that's not very accurate either. It's problematic at best to use Cato's examples for anything in this, because the most striking one--where he compares a nameless centurion to a king of Sparta, with their similar actions and different receptions at home afterward--is itself a comparison of his, where he's trying to make a big point of the difference between Greek and Roman character. You can't take an example that someone with a point to make picked out to make that point and go "Oh, yes, that represents what people of Rome considered the standard heroic model." (Or at least I shouldn't.) Which means I find myself trying to work out who the standard Roman heroes are, and coming up a bit empty.
I mean, there are plenty of interesting Romans in various histories, some of them held up more or less as heroic, but it's not the same as a Greek Hero, who was essentially a mythological figure. It's looking like I really need to do more study on Roman culture before it swallowed all that Greek influence--if such a thing is even really possible, and I suspect to an extent it's just not, for my purposes--to work out what the "original" Roman hero is like, if there even is such a thing, before it starts getting into the game of compare and contrast with Greece.
Guess it's a good thing I'm in a class on archaic Latin!
...pity that I really should be reading about five research books right now and really don't have time to research stuff just for fun. Maybe over the summer.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
*pets poetry, which she never gets to study, wistfully*
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
Most Greek heroes are tragic or tricksy: they present a heroic model but the culmination of their lives and stories - unless, like Odysseus, they are not the model of a kingly warrior but rather of a clever speaker - that culmination ends in Doom, earned or unearned or sent by the gods (who do not like to be challenged, and who work out their rivalries among mortals). The Greek heroes come from a vein of oral tradition that goes back to Mycenaean society and the warband ethos of the post-Mycenaean collapse. (Look at the archaeology of the Geometric period, particularly the burials on Euboea and from the Athenian Kerameikos.)
But Roman heroes are either nicked wholesale from Greek stories or have their roots in a historical past much closer to the Roman society telling those stories - Romulus f. Mars aside: we must look to the prehistoric Etruscan and Latin societies for a reflection of the society out of which that myth and the myths of the kings arose. But Rome's traditional founding date is the 8th century, and most Roman heroes are dated within a continuous (although sometimes quasi-legendary) history whose progression is reflected datably in the fasci lists.
Whereas Greek legend does not have that datable quality, nor indeed are all the heroes ritually important, or narratively used in each city local. The playwrights of Athens take the stories of Thebes, and of the Argolid - one of the reasons given for suggesting that Greek heroic mythos originates in the Mycenaean period is the importance of the Argolid therein, where we have a high concentration of rich Mycenaean remains - and Herakles is important all over the Greek world, but he has competing stories of origin.
So. I may go on, but this is a précis.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
That is, in addition to classical texts, if you were seeking to treat of the idea of the hero in any great depth....
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject