Achilles and Hector: The Homeric Hero

by Benardete, Seth; Burger, Ronna; Davis, Michael

• ISBN13: 9781587310003
• ISBN10: 1587310007
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-06-30
• Publisher: St Augustine Pr Inc

Summary

Seth Benardete's study of the Iliad, which initiated his scholarly career, bears the hallmarks of the unique turn of mind that characterized all his later work. In a brief Note written thirty years later, included in this volume, he looks back on what he sees as the limits of his original reading of the Iliad. Yet he seems to have been aware of the fundamental problems from early on that he wrestled with explicitly when he returned to Homer some forty years later: the question of the relations among gods, fate, and human choice, which lies at the core of his late "Platonic reading" of the Odyssey, is already guiding his understanding of the Iliad. And he saw, in working out that understanding, how those relations take on a very distinct form for the tragic hero in contrast with the comic hero - Achilles in contrast with Odysseus.

Table of Contents

Preface
Style	p. 1
Men and heros	p. 11
Achaeans and Trojans	p. 18
Achilles and Agamemnon	p. 29
Ancestral virtue	p. 35
The armor of Agamemnon	p. 40
Ajax	p. 44
Heroic virtue	p. 47
Achilles and Hector	p. 51
Similes	p. 54
Achilles' and Hector's similes	p. 61
Heroic ambition	p. 64
Plot	p. 69
The gods	p. 77
The plot of the Iliad	p. 85
The embassy	p. 91
The deception of Zeus	p. 103
Patroclus	p. 106
Achilles and Patroclus	p. 110
The exploits of Achilles	p. 116
Achilles and Hector	p. 121
The funeral cames	p. 125
Achilles and Priam	p. 129
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