48 Ancient Ideals
But the fi nal book also returns us to Hector and asks us to con-
sider again his status in the poem. He is a man and not a god—he
lives the way we do; he is not born to war as Achilles is. He learned
to be a warrior. In another world he would perhaps be a man of
peace, a superior minister and a just king. But in this world, the
world of Greek and Trojan strife, Hector must bring himself to the
fore and fi ght against impossible opposition. Unselfi shly, brilliantly,
most often bravely, he is compelled by duty to strive against a godly
man. By the end of the poem another version of the heroic individual
may be emerging. Here is a man not entirely unlike ourselves, who
achieves vast dignity fi ghting not primarily for glory or prizes but
to defend what he loves. Achilles fi ghts to capture the fi rst place and
to keep his word. He said he would go to Troy and fi ght for victory—
being a man of honor he will do so. His father Peleus insisted that he
be fi rst in all endeavors and he strives to be. As a warrior, at least, he
is supreme and he will set the standard not only among Greeks and
Trojans but for all time. He becomes what Shakespeare’s Cleo-
patra calls “the soldier’s pole.” Hector is the citizen soldier. He is
the man who fi ghts a defensive strug gle for what he loves, even
though the will to fi ght is probably not primary in his nature.
The Iliad seems to touch on the universal. Past cultures from all
over the world lived with values similar if not identical to those
Homer dramatizes. Men and women seem always to have stood in
awe of what Emerson, in a late life essay on courage, calls “the per-
fect will, which no terror can shake, which is attracted by frowns
or threats or hostile armies, nay, needs these to awake and fan its
reserved energies into a pure fl ame, and is never quite itself until
the hazard is extreme; then it is serene and fertile and all its powers
play well” (229). The Roman legions fought under the sign of
Achilles, as did Alexander’s Macedonians. But so much is obvious.
What is less readily perceived is that what Achilles valued and what
he achieved would be immediately comprehensible to the Viking