We may also be able to assess potential sources of this morality and perhaps attempt answer the question of whether there is, as has been suggested, a "heroic code" in the Iliad.īefore we can make any sort of useful comment about these concepts and Homer`s treatment of them, we must actually define what we mean by them. Ultimately, we may hope to extract, by such examination and analysis, a series of rules or principles by which we should live (imagining ourselves as Homeric characters). We can primarily examine this by the speeches of his characters explaining their reasons for acting as they do, and especially (for the purposes of establishing the morality of war in Homer`s poem) the exhortations that captains of both sides deliver on the battlefield. His characters do not act purely in their own interests, which implies morality or ethics are in place in the poem. Morality and ethics must form a central part of any civilised society, and Homer`s epic is by no means devoid of the hallmarks of such a society.
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