A Nobler Duty

The biggest movie in the world for the three weeks since it was released has been Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. I haven’t seen it, so let’s talk about the Iliad instead.

Virtue plays a prominent role in the writings of Homer. Not only are particular characters defined by particular virtues—Achilles by honor and excellence, Odysseus by cleverness, Patroclus by compassion—but the entire order of things is defined by an overarching sense of virtue. All choices and actions are understood or assessed by the rubric of ancient virtue: various kings give tribute to Agamemnon to show their virtue, and Agamemnon rewards them to show his own; Achilles refuses to fight because he believes the honor due to him has been denied, and other characters choose to fight because their social status obliges them to prove their quality. Their entire worldview is expressed in their virtues. 

Thus, if everything revolves around virtue, to demonstrate virtue in an exceptional way is to demonstrate one’s exceptionalness as a person. Acting virtuously not only makes one greater in the eyes of those around them, it makes one greater intrinsically—they are more of a person. The word meant to capture this “ontological superiority,” in Homer and elsewhere, is “nobility”—we say that someone acts nobly when they demonstrate virtue in an exceptional way. Notice the connection between the two meanings of nobility, between those of noble or royal blood and those who act most admirably. For the ancients, these meanings were intertwined. Special people, of a special lineage, were intrinsically superior and the ones most capable of great, virtuous deeds. (If you’re more familiar with Lord of the Rings than the Iliad, think of the Dúnedain, a bloodline of kings who also happen to be especially strong and wise and brave.)

Part of the use of a word like “noble” is to signal those we ought to lift up, to acknowledge as paragons of virtue worthy of imitation. Historically, we have recognized the nobility and noble deeds of exceptional people like Nathan Hale and Harriet Tubman, of Lincoln and Cincinnatus, of Joan of Arc and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. These are our great men and women. Admittedly, I suspect that our familiarity with such nobility has faded in recent generations as virtues have disappeared from our vocabulary. (This is part of why I use the terms “courage” and “cowardice” in my classroom more than I should. It gives me great pleasure to call my students cowards when they don’t speak up in class.) But even when we lack the words, something deep inside of us is unquestionably moved by the sight of a great deed.

I, for one, am most inspired by the virtues we might describe as honor or dutifulness, virtues that take seriously one’s obligation to others. Perhaps it is because I hold such traits to be central to the virtuous life, or because I lack such virtue myself, but I have always found something about honorableness deeply moving. In movies, I’m a real sucker for the stiff upper lip. It is also why my (as well as many others’) favorite character in the Iliad is Hector. Hector, the prince of Troy, is a man of honor.

Consider the episode in which Andromache begs Hector not to return to the fighting and to stay with her and their child. She says he will surely die, and he agrees and says,

All these things are in my mind also, lady; yet I would feel deep shame
before the Trojans, and the Trojan women with trailing garments,
if like a coward I were to shrink aside from the fighting

He adds also: “the spirit will not let me, since I have learned to be valiant.” For Hector, therefore, to neglect his duty to fight for his king and for Troy runs counter to his very nature. He could not look into the eyes of the wives of those men who did their duty for their city. He has no option but to fight for his father and his brothers in arms. For he is a man of honor.

Before shifting to the main tension I have when reading Hector’s words, I want to first point out something that is both plain but I think often overlooked, that is, that the worldview of the Iliad is not our own. The virtue that permeates these Greek epics is not the same virtue of the later Christian Church or of 21st-century America. Though we know this intellectually, the reason I think we forget this truth is because it is so often portrayed otherwise in modern media. In a historical film, for instance, when the hero chooses to spare innocent women and children or looks dismayed at the bloodlust of their comrades, this is a modern imposition on the character. The heroes of the Iliad would not bat an eye at such an atrocity, for their moral vision is not like our own. Faith, hope, and love are not among the Homeric virtues, and what the Hellenists valued does not mirror the values of a Judeo-Christian world.

Yet, my anxiety with Hector’s nobility is not that it is of the wrong sort or represents a barbaric ancient morality. Hector is magnificent because he submits himself to higher claims on his own life, to the claims of family and community and honor—even today, we are right to view him as noble. Rather, my anxiety is found in how his sense of duty, a clear good, conflicts with Christ’s statement regarding duty in Matthew 10:

Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

It is obvious that Jesus does not mean for us to hate our loved ones, but he does, nonetheless, imagine that there is an ordering to our obligations—that there is at least the potential for conflict. While Hector is right that a noble life requires obligations that transcend the self, Christianity contests whether our highest obligations are to honor or community or even family. It directs our duty toward an even higher allegiance above those natural loyalties and offers up a new paragon of virtue in the fisherman who walks away from his obligations to follow a new master. The Christian may indeed leave father or mother precisely because he has become bound to a still greater Father and a still greater family.

Hector’s honor still moves me, as it should. It is genuinely noble. But it is not the highest nobility. The Christian imagination sees what is good in Hector, his willingness to forget himself for the sake of another, and what is good in all shades of earthly virtue, and asks for still more: not merely to die for one’s own people, but to love one’s enemies; not merely to preserve one’s honor, but to surrender it; not merely to fulfill the obligations of blood, but to become brother to the stranger. Christ does not abolish the way of nobility. Instead, he reveals a nobler way.