Homer's Different Heroes

Homer’s epics present two conflicting images of the hero. In the Iliad and the Odyssey we see two different heroes with two different goals. Achilles in the Iliad chooses death and glory over a long happy life, whereas Odysseus chooses life instead and makes his way back home through all the perils of his odyssey.

In the Iliad, Achilles believes that without a glorious death, he will not be remembered in the far-off future.

In contrast, Odysseus lives through the war, not dying for glory, but living to (finally) make it back home. In the final two books of the Odyssey, he begins to regain his role as king and husband. He sleeps in his own bed with his wife, he reunites with his father, and he purges his house of all traces of the suitors. He begins to live the life that Achilles might have led, if he had not chosen to die for everlasting glory.

Odysseus does get fame and glory, if perhaps of a different sort. At the beginning of book 24, we see some of the dead heroes of the Trojan War, stranded in the afterlife. They are not happy; all they can do is stand in the mire of the Asphodel fields reciting their deaths to each other. After Apollo leads the suitors down to the underworld, they tell of Odysseus’s reclamation of his throne in Ithaca. Without dying, his actions are known even in the Meadow of Asphodel where his deeds are even praised by Agamemnon. Without dying in battle, Odysseus tricked the Fates and wove his own everlasting glory.

In book 11, Odysseus summons the dead and hears Achilles state he wishes that he had not chosen to die. In book 24, we hear this theme restated (which is also hinted at in other parts of the Odyssey) and expanded as we hear that Odysseus has gained the glory that Achilles sought.

Book 24 seems essential in Homer’s explanation of how glory can be achieved in a way other than death. And this theme seems essential to the Odyssey. Instead of dying a heroic death, Odysseus lives a heroic life.