Κλέος – Honour & Glory in Homer

Κλέος – Honour & Glory in Homer

            Gods are immortal but humans are not. Mortals, unlike gods, are forgotten over time unless they achieve great things while they are alive that cause them to be remembered long after they are gone. The ancient Greeks called the achievement of such lasting status in the minds of men Κλέος. This concept that referred to a hero’s fame and reputation was comprised of several elements:

·         Κλέος is earned through one’s brave and noble actions and most importantly, those that take place on the battlefield.

·         Κλέος is seen as a form of the very immortality that is denied to humans.

·         The great deeds accomplished by the hero and the hero himself are remembered through oral tradition and are sung about in epic works like the Iliad and the Odyssey.

·         Κλέος was such an important motivator for the ancient Greeks that a hero would choose an early death and the chance to be remembered forever over the prospect of living a long life in obscurity.

In Book IX of the Iliad, Achilles summarizes the distinct choices which face a hero when he contemplates going into battle,

“For my mother the silver-footed goddess Thetis has advised me that a double-fated death approaches me. If I stay here and fight about the city of Troy, then lost is my return home but great will be my fame. If I return home to my dearly beloved fatherland, then my glorious fame will be lost and I will live a long time and the fate of death will not soon come upon me.”

In essence, the Iliad is the story of Achilles being driven by the desire for Κλέος. Homer tells us in the first line of the epic that this is a story about the wrath of Achilles. We soon learn that the hero’s wrath is caused by the fact that he feels that his reputation has been damaged by the slight that Agamemnon inflicted upon him when he confiscated his war-prize Briseis. He chooses to sulk in his tent and to refrain from the battle as he nurses the wounds of his bruised ego and the damage done to his Κλέος. The death of his friend Patroclus brings him back to his senses and he returns to the fight, intent on achieving lasting fame. The battlefield of Troy provides the opportunity for countless heroes to achieve Κλέος, and indeed they do, for we are still singing their praises today as we read Homer.

It is a son’s responsibility to preserve and to build his father’s fame and reputation. In a nutshell, this is the story of the Odyssey. The first four books of the epic have little to do with the exploits and troubles of the wandering hero Odysseus. These opening books are mainly concerned with his son Telemachus and his fear that his father has been denied Κλέος and has suffered an ignominious death on the wine-dark sea or has been shipwrecked on some island during his ten year journey. He knows that if Odysseus had died on the battlefields of Troy, he would have been honoured and given the burial rites that would have been due to him. As a good Greek son, Telemachus has the responsibility of ensuring that the deeds of one of the main heroes of the Trojan War are celebrated forever and that his father’s fame lives on and is sung about by the generations to come. Odysseus may be dead but Telemachus must ensure that his father’s fame is immortal and that is why he travels to Pylos to make his inquiry of Nestor and to Sparta to do the same with Menelaus. He explains his plan,

“For I shall go to Sparta and to sandy Pylos to seek news of the return of my long-gone father to his home and to see if perchance any mortal man can tell me of this or if I may hear the words of Zeus which often carry messages to mortal men. If I hear that my father lives and is returning home, then even though I bear great pain, I could endure it for another year. But if I hear that he is dead and gone, then I will return to my dear fatherland, erect a funeral barrow for him and perform funeral rites for him as is his due and then give over my mother in marriage.”

            Telemachus lays out the purpose of his visit to King Nestor and makes his plea, intent on preserving the fame and reputation of his father Odysseus.

“I have come because of a wide rumour about my father, if I can hear it, about the stout-hearted godlike Odysseus, who men say fought beside you and sacked the city of the Trojans. Regarding all other men who fought at the battle of Troy, we know where each of them dies a woeful death, but for that man the son of Cronos has revealed nothing about his demise. No man can tell where he died, whether he was overcome by the enemy on land or whether he drowned on the great waves of Amphitrite. For this reason I have come to your knees to see if you can tell me about his woeful death, whether you have seen it with your own eyes or heard about his wanderings somewhere, for over and above all men did his mother bear him in sorrow. Do not go easy on me or speak soft words to me out of pity but tell me truly what you know about him. I beseech you, if ever my father the goodly Odysseus promised anything to you in word or deed in the land of the Trojans where the Achaeans suffered such misery, keep that in mind now and tell me the whole truth.”

            It is interesting to note that while Telemachus seeks news of his father’s whereabouts or his demise and is intent on establishing the reputation of the great warrior Odysseus, the hero himself achieves his own Κλέος for quite a different reason. Odysseus is not primarily known for his prowess on the battlefield and Homer does not portray him as a great fighting warrior. Odysseus is known as a cunning and wily strategist and a master of deceit and disguise. This is the man who tried to escape the war in the first place by feigning madness and who then sealed the fate of Troy with the trick of the wooden horse. This is the wily traveller called ‘Nobody’ who blinds the Cyclops Polyphemus and then escapes from the monster’s cave by clinging to the underside of his favourite ram. This is the hero who returns to Ithaca disguised as a hapless beggar, who is so good at deceit that he fools his own son and wife. His Κλέος has been earned in a very different way.

In addition to Achilles and Odysseus, there were many others who fought on both sides of the Trojan War who were intent on doing great deeds and thereby ensuring their own Κλέος. Glaucus tells Diomedes that his father told him to hold his head higher than all the others and to be careful never to disgrace the generation of his fathers. His opponent Diomedes is also seeking to establish his own reputation in battle, but the two warriors discover that there has been a tradition of guest-friendship between their two families and that the duties imposed upon them by that previous relationship preclude them from battling with each other. They trade armour and part as friends, noting that there are plenty of other Trojans and Argives waiting to be killed and to become fodder in their search for Κλέος.

            Hector seeks to be remembered for his deeds on the battlefield, but he is also motivated by his love for his family and the security of his people and his city. He tells his wife Andromache that he does not wish to leave the battle for the safety of the city and be regarded as a coward. He fights for his parents and for Troy, but his prime motivation is for her safety.

“Certainly all this matters to me my wife but greatly do I fear the shame of the Trojan men and the Trojan women with their long-trailing robes if I stand apart from the war as a coward. Neither does my spirit order me to do this since I have always learned to be good and to fight in the forefront of the Trojans and thereby attain great glory for my father and myself. For I know this well in my mind and in my heart that the day will come when sacred Ilium will fall and with it Priam and the people of Priam who are well-skilled with the ashen spear. But the woes of the Trojans are not so great a care of mine or Hecuba herself, or Priam, or my brothers, who though many and brave, will fall onto the dust beneath hostile men. Greater will be my sorrow when some one of the bronze-armoured Achaeans leads you away weeping and takes from you your days of freedom.”

            Κλέος was a driving force for the ancient Greeks and a great motivator for doing heroic deeds on the battlefield. But Κλέος could be earned in other ways, as we have seen with the examples of Hector and Odysseus. The pursuit of fame and recognition is central to the stories that Homer tells in the Iliad and the Odyssey and throughout both works, he presents many examples of heroes acting in ways that ensure that they will be remembered forever. It is worth noting that, over three millennia after the events were supposed to have taken place, the Κλέος of Homer’s heroes is still being sung to us by the bard.