When kings return: Homer’s lesson for divided societies

The past fewer decades person seen a increasing question to beforehand the Greco-Roman Classics successful charter schools, location schoolhouse curricula, and some collegiate institutions successful the United States. For Australian audiences who bash not cognize charter schools, simply, charter schools person important independency from standard program agreed to by the state.

In the US, charter schools are autonomous, and unlike Independent, Catholic and faith-or language-based schools successful Australia, that adhere to the rules acceptable by a state’s section of education, charter schools run extracurricular public-school rules. They person state to teach what, and however they want to.

Concerns implicit accountability, equity, and fiscal oversight and ideological foci person arisen. A charter schoolhouse whitethorn determine to dump biologic improvement for creationism or, teach that women bash not person adjacent rights with men. These are utmost examples, nevertheless, successful an progressively autocratic country, it is simply a concern.

Classics and US charter schools

The past fewer years person seen a increasing question to beforehand the Greco-Roman Classics successful charter schools, location schoolhouse curricula, and some collegiate institutions successful the United States (and elsewhere). The Homeric epics person earned a dubious spot among the calls for betterment (or, alas, return). Elon Musk has expressed admiration for the Iliad and 1 of the proponents of the Classical Learning Test, Jeremy Wayne Tate, has advocated for patterning one’s beingness aft Odysseus. Odysseus is having a infinitesimal himself. From the popularity of Emily Wilson’s translation to Christopher Nolan’s coming diagnostic film, the Odyssey is everywhere.

Despite this attention, the Odyssey’s authorities person not received a batch of attention. There’s a civic struggle astatine the epic’s extremity with a sudden, artificial solution that tin speak to divisive politics, irreconcilable differences, and the outgo of ending generational cycles of violence. There are some bully reasons for this oversight. For one, the ending struggle is confusing and Zeus’ sudden involution leaves small space for reflection, oregon elaboration. For another, the last publication seems a sudden departure from the crippled that leads to Odysseus’ homecoming. Indeed, some person recovered Odyssey 24 so jarring that they cannot accommodate it arsenic portion of the “original” poem.

But there are bully reasons that the Odyssey ends the way it does. Odysseus’ visit with his father, for example, completes the bid of reunions that corroborate Odysseus’ individuality successful afloat arsenic a son, a husband, and a begetter himself. And the assembly of the suitors’ families successful the mediate of the book, followed by the sudden divine intervention, returns us to the provides a vehicle for the epic’s last reunion: the instrumentality of a king to his people.

Let maine supply a speedy summary of the governmental situation successful Ithaca earlier the epic’s end. Twenty years prior, the king of the Ithaca went distant to war, taking with him twelve ships and leaving down a wife, a newborn son, and aged father. Seven years aft the extremity of the war, when the remainder of the kings of Greece had already returned, oregon their deaths had been confirmed, a fig of suitors arrived astatine Odysseus’ location to try to unit a determination connected the king’s presumed widow. In the 17 years since his departure, there had been neither an assembly oregon a assembly meeting. The operations of the state had simply ceased. The king’s wife promised to take 1 of them aft completing a decease shroud for her father-in-law, the ex-king, who has mysteriously retreated to a plot villa. The aristocrats who person travel vying to pb Ithaca observe that the queen has deceived them. Soon aft this, the king’s son departs for quality of his begetter and the suitors program to person him killed.

The king returns without Ithaca’s youth

None of the suitors oregon their families perceive a word astir Odysseus until helium shows up, suddenly and magically, successful the mediate of the banquet meant to supply a lucifer for his wife, where helium proceeds to execution astir of the radical successful his home. As the rumor spreads crossed the island, the radical of Ithaca and the surrounding land larn not lone that 108 of the ‘best’ men among them person been slaughtered, but that nary of the soldiers who went to Troy came location with their king. For these families, the youth of Ithaca were either butchered successful the location of the king oregon simply disappeared.

An assembly divided

When the families clasp their ain assembly, the statement has two basal sides. From one, Odysseus has murdered their household members and returned without his ships and men, so helium indispensable beryllium punished earlier helium seeks allies successful the mainland. From the different side, Odysseus has acted with the prerogatives of a king supported by the gods—accordingly, Odysseus was within his rights arsenic a king and a hubby to punish radical who transgressed the hospitality of his household and threatened the sanctity of his family.

The assembly splits successful fractional arsenic contingents either instrumentality to their homes to mourn the dormant oregon limb themselves to look Odysseus. The archetypal (and only) casualty is the person of the opposition, slain by a rejuvenated Laertes. At that moment, Athena arrives, empowered by Zeus to complaint them to “let wealth and bid beryllium enough” and to enforce the “forgetting of the slaughter of their children and kinspeople”.

The impossibility of resolution

In this moment, the Odyssey whitethorn connection a very elemental reflection connected the impossibility of resolving some conflicts. For each enactment connected Ithaca, the relationships that gave their lives meaning perpetrate them to definite actions. Odysseus cannot beryllium king without enforcing the primacy of his household implicit the state; the Ithacans cannot proceed to beryllium subjects to a king who has murdered their families. The lone λύση Zeus offers is the erasure of the individuality that disrupts the stability of this imaginary land.

Some modern readers person tried to marque consciousness of the epic’s governmental message. The story whitethorn beryllium pitched to the experiences of Greeks crossed antithetic cities successful the archaic and aboriginal classical property where we find a variety of governmental institutions, from the dual kingship and oligarchy of Sparta to the aristocratic ideology of Athens. As governmental allegory, then, the instrumentality of Odysseus could beryllium the reassertion of a monarch implicit a fractious oligarchy. The Odyssey could beryllium seen arsenic advocating for the expedience of autocracy implicit the corrupted dangers of oligarchy (or, perhaps, a proto-democracy).

Of course, the mentation could spell the different way arsenic well: the poem’s sudden ending and the jarring discordance of the erasure of representation whitethorn beryllium mounting up a paradox. Athena’s quality is equivalent to a dea ex machina from Greek tragedy, when the crippled has reached such a constituent that lone the gods tin bring the struggle (and the plot) to its end.

No paths to glory

This infinitesimal is besides akin to what we find successful the aboriginal Socratic dialogues, that aporia (ἀπορία) “pathlessness”) that prompts Socrates and his interlocutors to realise that their arguments’ conclusions are invalid and they indispensable start implicit again. Thus, the Odyssey’s extremity provides a needfully unclear connection to punctual a questioning of the basal premises of its world.

Therefore, it is besides imaginable that the extremity of the epic aims to emphasise the outgo of capitulating to the demands of autocracy. Such a speechmaking shows us some the extremes a king will spell to successful bid to support his ain privileges and the outgo his radical indispensable wage successful bid to bask the benefits of his rule: some of them will die, and those who survive will person to hide it.

No winners successful Homer’s oregon Vergil’s story

The Odyssey does not marque backing for either broadside easy. The radical of Ithaca are shown to mistreat Odysseus successful his home, disrespect his family, and crippled to execution his lone son. Their king, agelong absent while executing the subject duties of his office, returned to a state successful disrepair where his wealth and his household was astatine risk.

Because this autocracy elevates the wealth of 1 household implicit the wellness of the state—or, astatine the very slightest renders the wealth of this household equivalent to the wellness of the state—it cannot survive unless the (im)balance is restored. In this case, nary portion of the governmental situation is sustainable. To sacrifice the galore for the involvement of the 1 runs against the very structure of larger states. In vibrant, divers cities similar past Athens, the extremity of the Odyssey whitethorn person commended the prime for ideology and a continued absorption to tyranny.

I think such meaning was implicitly work successful antiquity. Vergil’s Aeneid offers a literate reception of Zeus’ last ‘solution’ astatine its conclusion. One of the superior conflicts during the Roman epic surfaces when we larn astir the hatred of Juno (Roman Hera) for the Trojans. Even aft the autumn of the city, she is not contented to fto these refugees survive and unrecorded on. She is instrumental successful harrying them crossed the Mediterranean and into Italy where she supports the autochthonal Italians against them.

Despite her opposition, the Trojans found themselves connected the Peninsula, summation allies, and enactment themselves and their traditions connected the way to survival. But adjacent the poem’s conclusion, she lone accedes to their beingness when Zeus promises her that they will assimilate with the Italian people, follow their connection and customs, and permission what was Trojan behind.

The occupation astatine the extremity of the Aeneid is akin to the Odyssey’s closure, but connected a overmuch greater scale. What does it mean to survive arsenic a people, bereft of the connection and ways that made you who you are? This is the aforesaid prime offered to the suitors’ families astatine the Odyssey’s end. The Aeneid’s imperial extremity suggests that if we cannot unrecorded with each different due to the fact that of who we are (and the histories and stories that made us), our lone enactment to unrecorded astatine each is to springiness up who we were and go someone other entirely.

The logic of violence and erasure astatine the extremity of the Odyssey operates still today. The resurgence of autocracy worldwide imposes an bid that makes erasure of past and obliteration of quality the outgo of specified survival. Refusal to assimilate oregon comply is progressively met with threats of and existent violence. Zeus promises the Ithacans wealth and bid for the betrayal of their loved ones. Today, what bash we stand to gain?

* Joel P. Christensen, Professor of Classics, Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs, CUNY Graduate Center.