The Hero 27
Nature endorses, and this causes an ongoing sense of dislocation.
The contemporary individual is not at home in the world. The war-
rior senses himself to be an integral part of all he sees around him,
as disturbing and even horrifying as that may be. The warrior is at
home in the world, though there is little that is kindly, generous, or
sweet about the world in which he dwells.
The scene of heavenly strife in the fi rst book of The Iliad ends
with the intervention of the blacksmith, the god Hephaestus, who
begs his mo ther Hera not to defy the king of the gods. He reminds
Hera and the assembled gods of the time that Zeus became enraged
at him and tossed him from the height of Mount Olympus—
Hephaestus fell for days and landed fi nally on an island where the
men nursed him back to health. But the quarrel between Zeus and
Hera only really ends when the smith rises to take up his task ser ving
the gods their nectar and ambrosia. He comes grunting and limping
from place to place, and the gods cannot help themselves, they are
overwhelmed with mirth. It is hilarious to watch a cripple stump
his way across a room. “Uncontrollable laughter broke from the
happy gods / as they watched the god of fi re breathing hard / And
bustling through the halls” (I. 721–723). It is not only that beauty is
a delight to the Greeks and worthy of worship, but also that ugli-
ness is appalling, a crime against Nature.
The Greeks and Trojans share the gods’ veneration for beauty.
The war is about Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world—
“the face that launched a thousand ships,” in Marlowe’s phrase. In a
moving scene, the old men of Troy, Priam’s counselors, look down
from the battlements and see Helen. They speak to each other in the
thin, reedy voices of cicadas. They are so old that they are like chil-
dren again and do not know desire. Yet Helen awakens them. And for
a moment, they can imagine that the war has been worthwhile— all
the slaughter, all the suff ering, all the mourning— because of the
sheer beauty of this woman. “Who on earth could blame them?