Verified Document

Iliad And Lysistrata Honor And Essay

Lysistrata stands in the foreground, guiding the men to peace, despite the fact that neither side wants to admit blame. She reminds the Spartans of Athenian assistance in the wake of the quake, and she likewise reminds the Athenians of Spartan assistance in overthrowing Hippias. "Why on fighting are your hearts so set? / For each of you is in the other's debt" (228). The Spartan and Athenian make peace, and the play ends with a song and dance by a Spartan in honor of the Athenian, for which the Athenian expresses his delight and admiration. The song, of course, is also a hymn of praise to the woman whose cunning has brought the war to a conclusion: "Pour thy grace upon oor peace; / Make the artful foxes cease; / Let guidwill and love increase / And prosperity!" (232). Honor and respect is shown to the very enemy with whom, at the beginning of the play, there is no hope of compromising. The turn is complete. Honor and respect are restored -- through comedy rather than through tragedy. Both Lysistrata and The Iliad may be viewed as odes to honor and respect in this light, but neither should be restricted to such a view. The Iliad's end is of such force and magnitude as to bring to mind more than the mysteries of transcendence -- it draws one to the brink of the mystery of life itself and pushes one over into an abyss, which Charles Ives would attempt to discuss in symphonic composition some two millennia later with his "Unanswered Question." There is a world of sorrow that no amount of honor or respect can assuage in the final line of The Iliad: "So they performed / the funeral rites of Hector, tamer of horses" (443), which speaks to the greatness of the work...

Parts of this document are hidden

View Full Document
svg-one

Gone are the days when men fought with valor, honor, and pride -- and gone most certainly are the days when respect could be shown in war. Modern warfare as the wars in the Middle East show are little more than acts of genocide: there is nothing noble or honorable about it. We would do well to find a Lysistrata among us -- but we would do just as well to rise to the heights of Homeric empathy and consider ourselves in the light of pity and fear.
The problem, of course, is far more brutal than anyone can imagine. The West has lost its sense of Beginning and End. If Homer could eloquently sum up the whole of his work in an episode between aged king and young warrior, it was only because he held it in mind from the beginning -- and the same could be said of Aristophanes' Lysistrata. Our modern world has divorced itself from the values and virtues of the old world in favor of "liberty, equality, and fraternity" -- none of which it knows how to embrace. True fraternity may be found in Homer's epic -- and true liberty and equality may be found in Aristophanes' comedy.

Works Cited

Aristophanes. Lysistrata/The Acharnians/The Clouds. (trans. Alan Sommerstein). NY:

Penguin Classics, 1973. Print.

Browning, Robert. "Andrea del Sarto." Web. 12 Nov 2011.

Homer. The Iliad. (trans. Robert Fitzgerald). UK: Oxford University…

Sources used in this document:
Works Cited

Aristophanes. Lysistrata/The Acharnians/The Clouds. (trans. Alan Sommerstein). NY:

Penguin Classics, 1973. Print.

Browning, Robert. "Andrea del Sarto." Web. 12 Nov 2011.

Homer. The Iliad. (trans. Robert Fitzgerald). UK: Oxford University Press, 2008.
Cite this Document:
Copy Bibliography Citation

Related Documents

Iliad
Words: 3614 Length: 10 Document Type: Term Paper

Iliad With our observation of God, it can, every now and then, be extremely complicated to understand the proceedings and judgments of the Greek divine beings. In modern times, it is believed that God does not tend to take such a vigorous and energetic function in the dealings of people's lives, where, in contrast, the Greeks considered and respected undeviating participation and association by the gods as an every day, unmanageable

Iliad Similes the Iliad's Monotony
Words: 1052 Length: 4 Document Type: Essay

Homer is particularly fond of the pastoral pastime of stargazing, contrasting it with Achilles' warpath: "…as he swept across the flat land in full shining, like that star which comes on in the autumn and whose conspicuous brightness far outshines the stars that are numbered in the night's darkening." He also contrasts the image of the brightest star with the image of Achilles' spear: "And as a star moves among

Iliad, by Homer Hector and
Words: 1105 Length: 3 Document Type: Essay

Hector is valiant, and can show great anger in the thick of battle when it is necessary. But behind the walls of Troy, during times of counsel, he is able to show coolness and forthrightness. He urges Paris to fight Helen's legitimate husband Menelaus alone, which would have prevented more people from dying if Paris had not acted like a coward and fought unethically in the one-on-one battle. Hector regrets

Iliad by Homer Chapter One
Words: 1190 Length: 4 Document Type: Thesis

The book also describes the foregone decision of the result of the war as decided by Hera who held a vicious grudge against the Trojans. The events in Book Four perfectly portrays how despite the truce forged and upheld after the fight between Menelaos and Alexandros, it is through the meddling of the gods and goddesses in the form of Athena's machinations to convince Pandaros to break the truce that

Iliad or Odyssey Homer's Work
Words: 694 Length: 2 Document Type: Thesis

The two lovers are trapped by Hephaestus' chains and the gods are debating their fates. They contemplate the issue of whether being trapped in the chains is sufficient punishment, to which Hermes quips "...although I might be held by chains that are three times more numerous, more tight, than these then - even if the gods should watch the sight and all the goddesses - I'd find delight in

Iliad an Example of Oral
Words: 713 Length: 2 Document Type: Term Paper

Thus repetition of characters, character epithets or tags, and events are key to oral poetry, as oral poetry usually relates familiar cultural myths. Repetition in Homer's "Iliad" is not simply evident in the poet's use of taglines to delineate his characters. For example when one hero responds to another, the poet usually uses a set phrase, such as 'then in answer again he spoke.' This is not evidence of Homer's

Sign Up for Unlimited Study Help

Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.

Get Started Now