“Priam spoke, and in doing so aroused in Achilles a tearful longing for his own father. Taking hold
of the old man by the hand he pushed him gently away from himself, and the two of them began to
reminisce; the one, huddled before the feet of Achilles, wept copious tears for Hector the slayer of
heroes while Achilles lamented now his own father, now Patroclus. Their wailing penetrated
throughout Achilles’ quarters. But when godlike Achilles had fully indulged his grief and the longing
for tears had vanished from his heart and body, then he rose up from his seat and he lifted up the old
man by the hand, out of pity at the white hair and the white beard. Addressing him he spoke in
pointed words: ‘Poor man! Really you have taken upon yourself many sorrows. How did you bring
yourself to come alone to the ships of the Achaeans, into the very presence of the man who
slaughtered many of your fine sons?’ ” (Homer, Iliad 24.507–21)As we have seen, the Homeric poems arose out of an oral tradition that of necessity uses traditional forms
of expression that conceal, because they appropriate selectively, marks of individual poetic creativity. At
the same time, these poems celebrate the glorious accomplishments of heroes who insist on their own
personal worth and their individual identity. This situation is analogous to the circumstances surrounding
the creation of hero cults in Greek poleis. A hero was a singular individual with a unique story that set
him (or her) apart from all other members of the community, and yet the cult of the hero was a collective
enterprise that was conducive to the solidarity of all members of the polis. This tension, between the
claims of the individual and those of the community, are reflected in the Iliad and the Odyssey. Achilles is
admirable, in the eyes of Homer’s audience, both because of his excellence and because of his insistence
that his excellence be appropriately recognized. At the same time, his withdrawal from the fighting
endangers the community of Greek warriors and results in the death of his beloved Patroclus.
The Odyssey is in many ways a more sophisticated and subtle work. (For this reason, many scholars have
been convinced that it is not the work of the poet of the Iliad, but given the oral and traditional
background to both poems it is impossible to tell how much of either poem can be ascribed to an
individual poet.) The hero of the poem is himself an unusually subtle and sophisticated character.
Odysseus was one of the prominent Greek warriors who fought in the war at Troy, and the story of the
Odyssey is the story of his 10-year attempt to overcome the obstacles to his return home to the remote
island of Ithaca and the challenges to his re-establishing his position as husband, father, and basileus. His
standing and his personal identity, therefore, are central concerns of the poem. Indeed, Odysseus, no less
than Achilles, insists upon recognition of his accomplishments, even when such insistence endangers
himself and those who depend on him. So, for example, when Odysseus and the crew of his ship are
rowing furiously in their flight from the blinded Cyclops and his men urge Odysseus to keep quiet,
Odysseus persists in shouting out and telling the Cyclops that the man who blinded him was “Odysseus,
son of Laertes, who lives on Ithaca,” giving as complete an identification as possible. Yet part of the
reason Odysseus was able to deprive the giant Cyclops of his single eye and escape from his cave was
his willingness to withhold his identity until this point. In fact, he had deviously told the Cyclops earlier
that his name was Nobody, so that when the Cyclops’ neighbors responded to his calls for help by asking
if somebody was trying to kill him, he replied by saying, “Nobody is trying to kill me.”
Odysseus repeatedly conceals his identity by disguising himself and by fabricating accounts of who he is
and where he comes from. These actions, which give a most unheroic impression, are undertaken in the
service of enabling Odysseus to return to his home and his family. By the end of the poem, as a result of
extraordinary personal exertions, Odysseus is finally and fully reintegrated into the community from
which he had been separated for 20 years. This community bears little resemblance to the polis, the type