28 Ancient Ideals
Ah, no won der / the men of Troy and Argives under arms have
suff ered / years of agony all for her, for such a woman. / Beauty,
terrible beauty!” (III, 187–190).
Homer, the ancient author, burns through time and challenges
the contemporary reader with diffi cult questions. Do you too not
value courage and beauty above all things— just as the heroes in the
poem do? Wouldn’t you love to be an Achilles, or a Helen? (Or at
least to strive to be?) Isn’t settling for anything else a shrinking
away from human promise? “The earth has become small,” says
Nietz sche’s Zarathustra, “and on it hops the last man, who makes
everything small. His race is as ineradicable as the fl ea- beetle; the
last man lives longest” (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 17).
Achilles is surpassingly beautiful; he is among the strongest of
warriors, the swiftest of runners. Though he will not live long, he
should be enjoying his being to the hilt, living in a world where
values are clear and he embodies every form of excellence. He is the
paragon of all that the Greeks prize, but after the encounter with
Agamemnon he is cast down. How could this be? After his quarrel
with the king, the perfect harmony between his being and the world
disappears. The fi re in the stars is no longer quite identical with the
fi re in his soul. He feels cast away from his godlike being and robbed
of his proper destiny. The fullness in which he began the poem is
lost, and now he must fi nd a way to restore it. Achilles’ quest to re-
establish inner plenitude and to heal the wound of Agamemnon’s
humiliation is the central drama of The Iliad. In this quest Achilles
will lay down the pattern for heroes to come, from the time of the
Greeks to the pre sent moment.
The hero keeps his word. When Zeus nods his head, all he has
promised will come to pass. When the warrior assents to any great
commitment, he is bound to it. Achilles’ speech is dramatic, im-
passioned, and headlong— yet what ever he promises, even in his
highest moments of passion, he will try with all his might to do. He