Read on Twitter
Every so often we do a poll like this https://twitter.com/sentantiq/status/1385915983492272131?s=20
A few times I have asked who is likelier to "shoot a man in Reno just to watch him die"
https://sententiaeantiquae.com/2019/06/28/a-hero-shot-a-man-just-to-kill-me-achilles-and-odysseus-again/
[Spoiler: people on the internet are wrong]
https://sententiaeantiquae.com/2019/06/28/a-hero-shot-a-man-just-to-kill-me-achilles-and-odysseus-again/
[Spoiler: people on the internet are wrong]
Sometimes I pose it in terms of which epic one prefers
https://sententiaeantiquae.com/2018/05/26/iliad-vs-odyssey-an-essential-complementarity/
[again, they are inseparable in a way]
https://sententiaeantiquae.com/2018/05/26/iliad-vs-odyssey-an-essential-complementarity/
[again, they are inseparable in a way]
I also set up an entire hero bracket to see who was second best
https://sententiaeantiquae.com/2020/07/21/nanaihb-the-final-smackdown-ajax-vs-diomedes/
[Yeah, Diomedes]
https://sententiaeantiquae.com/2020/07/21/nanaihb-the-final-smackdown-ajax-vs-diomedes/
[Yeah, Diomedes]
This debate has been going on for a while, since at least Plato https://sententiaeantiquae.com/2014/12/13/plato-hippias-minor-achilles-and-odysseus/
I think that it is much older, part of the fabric of the epics themselves: a hesodic fragment makes the families of Achilles, Odysseus, and Agamemnon stand ins for brawn, brains, and wealth https://sententiaeantiquae.com/2018/07/29/which-homeric-hero-would-you-be-2/
The point is not that there is a right answer. Like the judgment of paris, this is an allegory posed by the tradition. Like good allegory, there's no simple response. What kind of a person do you want to be in the world and why?
Achilles makes huge mistakes, tries to make up for them and die young; Agamemnon is clearly a shitberg; Odysseus is a survivor.
each teaches us the costs of being human, fallible, and straining to be more, failing, and trying again
each teaches us the costs of being human, fallible, and straining to be more, failing, and trying again
The answer is not the point: these figures are deeply complex and by contemplating them, we become more ourselves
