Revenge and Justice in the Iliad and Second Treatise of Government

1043 Words3 Pages

Homer’s epic poem, the Iliad, and John Locke’s political philosophy essay, Second Treatise of Government, are two different types of literary works with different purposes, but they both strongly touch upon the themes of vengeance and justice. The nature of revenge is agreed upon, but its role in each of the two works is different. Locke implies absolute justice whereas Homer implies both absolute justice and subjective justice that is seen by different individual people, gods, and cultures, but they both agree that governance is the remedy to revenge. Homer and Locke also claim different exceptions for when revenge is acceptable or at least understandable.
The Iliad and Second Treatise use the topic of revenge for two different purposes: the former for a plot driver and to inspire reflective thought on human nature, the latter for making a philosophical argument. Regardless, they each make clear a shared belief about the nature of revenge. Homer states through characters (Agamemnon in particular) that desires like that of revenge are natural and inescapable. John Locke states this directly in his Second Treatise, calling it part of the “state of nature” (2TG), the state the world of man would be in without government. They both say the same thing in two different ways. “What could I do? it is God who accomplisheth all. Eldest daughter of Zeus is Ate who blindeth all, a power of bane: delicate are her feet, for not upon the earth she goeth, but walketh over the heads of men, making men fall; and entangleth this one or that.” - Agamemnon, in the Iliad.
Both the Iliad and Second Treatise teach a lesson in revenge: it causes problems when unchecked. The Iliad tells of a hero, Achilles, whom tragically causes the death and/or ...

... middle of paper ...

... we defined earlier, for his actions against them, for the sake of defending themselves from further mistreatment. He makes it clear that the mistreatment should be severe and against the people, and that revenge is not justified for one individual against the king for any misdeeds the king does against him. This is supported by his statement that everyone has the right to self-defense, and contrasted by Achilles seeking revenge against his leader for insulting him (which is proven by Homer to be an unjust and tragedy inducing decision). Homer makes the gods the exception; they can do whatever they want and as they please. He also sometimes makes his attitude for revenge unclear at some points in the Iliad with the way he glorifies the violence of the war and Achilles enraged slaughtering of thousands, but of course glorifying war and warriors is part of the culture.

Show More
Related

  • The Oresteia

    670 Words  | 2 Pages

    In Aeschylus' trilogy, the Greeks' justice system went through a transformation from old to new ways. In the beginning of the trilogy, the characters settle their matters, both personal and professional, with vengeance. Vengeance is when someone is harmed or killed, and either the victim, or someone close to them takes revenge on the criminal. This matter is proven in the trilogy numerous times. For example, Clytemnestra murders Agamemnon as revenge for his sacrifice of their daughter Iphigeneia. Along those same lines, in the second part of the trilogy, Choephoroe, Orestes, who is Agamemnon son, murders Clytemnestra and Aegisthus. He does this in order to gain revenge on them for killing his father. It was by this way that people would deal with conflict, and it was thought to be not only a justice system, but also a honorable and fair. In fact, one of the principal purposes of the first play of the trilogy is to force us to recognize that justice based on revenge creates special difficulties, which in turn cannot be solved. It does not solve the problems that it is meant to, but only causes more problems that are even larger. As the third and last part of the trilogy begins, the system begins to evolve and change from vengeance to genuine justice. Instead of getting revenge on Orestes and killing him, they decide to put him on trial and have a jury decide whether or not he sho...

    Read More

  • Revenge In The Odyssey

    683 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Greeks, as portrayed by Homer, are a very vengeful people. Throughout The Odyssey, a theme of vengeance is dominant. These displays of retribution come from different entities for fairly different reasons. So why is revenge such a factor in The Odyssey? Fear and the overwhelming feeling of payback are two answers. Homer gives numerous examples of how certain characters demonstrate their power in a fury of rage. He writes of the payback Zeus gives to those who break the rules, of Poseidon’s hatred towards Odysseus, and of Odysseus’s revenge to those who have dishonored his home.

    Read More

  • Justice Exemplified by Plato and Thucydides

    618 Words  | 2 Pages

    Plato's Book I of The Republics presents three fundamental views on justice which are exemplified in Thucydides' On Justice, Power and Human Nature. Justice is illustrated as speaking the paying one's debts, helping one's friends and harming one's enemies, and the advantage of the stronger.

    Read More

  • Oedipus at Colonus Essays: Revenge

    610 Words  | 2 Pages

    Oedipus suffered through the latter portion of his life.  Although the gods should be credited with the majority of his pain, he was wronged by mere mortals during his life.  Did he have the right to seek revenge in general?  Yes, he did.  There is more to Oedipus's vengeance than just to inflict pain upon others.  Those who intentionally harm others must face the consequences, even if they themselves will not be changed by such consequences.  If no person ever hated or sought revenge, the world might well become a paradise, especially for the thieves, liars, and other criminals.  If no one seeks punishment for the actions of any other individual, the less moral will begin to take advantage of their unchecked acti...

    Read More

  • Personal Honor In The Iliad

    1034 Words  | 3 Pages

    The notion of personal honor is prevalent throughout the Iliad. The honor of every person in Homeric culture was important, but to the hero, his honor was paramount. He could not endure insults, and he felt that he had to protect his reputation — even unto death. The hero 's duty was to fight, and the only way he had of gaining glory and immortality was through heroic action on the battlefield; thus, he continually prepared his life for the life-and-death risks of battle. The Homeric hero believed that men had to stand together in battle; men had to respect each other; and they had to refrain from excessive cruelty. This last condition was critically important for the Homeric hero. He loathed deliberate acts of cruelty and injustice. If he were ready to kill a victim, he believed that he should do it quickly; he was not to mutilate him, as Achilles does with Hektor 's body. By following this code, a hero gained a sense of dignity and a reputation for honor that would ensure his place in the social memory of his community.

    Read More

  • Glaucon's Challenge and Plato's Theory of Justice in Plato's Republic

    1807 Words  | 4 Pages

    Plato’s Republic focuses on one particular question: is it better to be just or unjust? Thrasymachus introduces this question in book I by suggesting that justice is established as an advantage to the stronger, who may act unjustly, so that the weak will “act justly” by serving in their interests. Therefore, he claims that justice is “stronger, freer, and more masterly than justice” (Plato, Republic 344c). Plato begins to argue that injustice is never more profitable to a person than justice and Thrasymachus withdraws from the argument, granting Plato’s response. Glaucon, however, is not satisfied and proposes a challenge to Plato to prove that justice is intrinsically valuable and that living a just life is always superior. This paper will explain Glaucon’s challenge to Plato regarding the value of justice, followed by Plato’s response in which he argues that his theory of justice, explained by three parts of the soul, proves the intrinsic value of justice and that a just life is preeminent. Finally, it will be shown that Plato’s response succeeds in answering Glaucon’s challenge.

    Read More

  • Rage In The Iliad

    1389 Words  | 3 Pages

    When Achilles says “don’t provoke me old man”, Achilles seems ever more violent. Why does Homer have to ensure violence upon every corner of the Iliad? Even the accord between Priam and Hector that Homers convinces the reader that they are both god-like and are of such power and honor. Even after killing man after man, the honor and the kleos remains. Violence, as seen in the movie Gladiator, is adored by the public and cheer for the death of the gladiator that cannot fight anymore whose fate is in the hands of the gladiator looking down upon them. Same goes for the gods. The gods control the fate, the destiny, the flow of all the lives under them. In Homers Iliad, humor is seen only amongst the gods. This is true because humor is seen as a weakness, or a way to make someone vulnerable and laugh. The gods and their immortality have no worries nor fear of anything. This guarantees a set tone of understanding for the reader to see why the fate of Hector or the fate of Achilles is all controlled by the

    Read More

  • Theme of Revenge in Homer's Odyssey

    868 Words  | 2 Pages

    Homer’s The Odyssey is not just a tale of a man’s struggle on his journey home from the Trojan War, but of his struggle from the consequences of revenge. The Odyssey weaves in different characters’ tales of revenge from the gods and what impact revenge actually had on those characters. Revenge is an important underlying theme in The Odyssey because, in essence, it explains why Odysseus’ journey was so prolonged and treacherous. A few examples of revenge in the poem include Orestes’ revenge on Aegisthus, Zeus’ revenge on Odysseus and his men, and Poseidon’s revenge on Odysseus. These different examples of revenge in The Odyssey show the importance of the gods’ revenge in the epic journey of Odysseus.

    Read More

  • Achilles Vs Odysseus

    3801 Words  | 8 Pages

    Homer's two central heroes, Odysseus and Achilles, are in many ways differing manifestations of the same themes. While Achilles' character is almost utterly consistent in his rage, pride, and near divinity, Odysseus' character is difficult to pin down to a single moral; though perhaps more human than Achilles, he remains more difficult to understand. Nevertheless, both heroes are defined not by their appearances, nor by the impressions they leave upon the minds of those around them, nor even so much by the words they speak, but almost entirely by their actions. Action is what drives the plot of both the Iliad and the Odyssey, and action is what holds the characters together. In this respect, the theme of humanity is revealed in both Odysseus and Achilles: man is a combination of his will, his actions, and his relationship to the divine. This blend allows Homer to divulge all that is human in his characters, and all that is a vehicle for the idyllic aspects of ancient Greek society. Accordingly, the apparent inconsistencies in the characterization of Odysseus can be accounted for by his spiritual distance from the god-like Achilles; Achilles is more coherent because he is the son of a god. This is not to say that Achilles is not at times petty or unimaginative, but that his standards of action are merely more continuous through time. Nevertheless, both of Homer's heroes embody important and admirable facets of ancient Greek culture, though they fracture in the ways they are represented.

    Read More

  • Revenge and Vengeance in Shakespeare's Hamlet - Going Beyond Revenge

    1838 Words  | 4 Pages

    The classic revenge tragedy is thus quite a simple affair: there is an offence, and it is followed in a fairly mechanical manner by revenge, preferably bloody and protracted. However, as Delville and Michel (1998) point out, this structure is undermined by Shakespeare in the person of Hamlet. Unlike even Shakespeare’s own creations, Brutus, Macbeth, and Othello, Hamlet is unpredictable. In an earlier version of the play, referred to as the Ur-Hamlet, and attributed to Thomas Kyd, the only reason for...

    Read More

  • Theme of Justice in the Odyssey and the Bible

    2498 Words  | 5 Pages

    The Greeks in the Odyssey viewed justice as only coming from the gods.  They believed the gods punished them because they have fallen out of their favor, and not because they had really done anything wrong by human standards.  As Socrates later stated in the Euthyphro, what is holy, and perhaps then just, is what is “approved by the gods.”  Although Socrates proved this to be wrong, it still shows the view of most Greeks.  Zeus in the opening book of the Odyssey stated, “Upon my word, just see how mortal men always put the blame on us gods!  We are the source of evil, so they say- when they have only their own madness to thank if their miseries are worse than they ought to be.”   This shows that the Greeks feared justice; they felt it was negative and often undeserved.  However, each Greek deserved his punishment because he has a hand in its reason.  For example, when Odysseus’s troops killed the cattle of Helios, they deserved Zeus destroying their ships because he had warned Odysseus beforehand not to let the men eat the cattle. When the Greeks disobeyed the gods, they disrupted the right order of things, and when the gods punished them, they made the other Greeks respect them once again, and thus fixed the balance of the world.

    Read More

  • Revenge

    1798 Words  | 4 Pages

    Revenge in The Iliad it the main theme and drives men to do things that they would not normally do. The main example of this is Achilles wanting revenge on Agamemnon. The first book of the Iliad explains that Achilles wants revenge because Agamemnon is forced to return Chryseis, his war bride, to her father, and he decides to take Achilles war bride from him. According to “Some Thoughts about the Origins of ‘Greek Ethics’”, by Nicholas D. Smith, “Agamemnon’s unjust affront to Achilles leads to and extraordinarily deadly retaliation, the ultimate outcome of which is that multitudes of these men’s innocent allies are killed unnecessarily”(smith 10). This is out of character for Achilles, who would normally be the first man into battle, not sitting one out. By “rejecting even the most earnest and impressive entreaties Agamemnon offers, and increasingly making decisions which are rationally indefensible”, he shows how much his wanting of revenge has turned him into a madman (smith 10). His only desire is to get revenge for his loss. It takes the death of Patroclus, his dear friend, to bring him back to the war, which he has left.

    Read More

  • The Theme of Revenge in "Hamlet"

    929 Words  | 2 Pages

    Revenge is a recurring theme in Hamlet. Although Hamlet wants to avenge his father’s death, he is afraid of what would result from this. In the play Hamlet, Hamlet’s unwillingness to revenge appears throughout the text; Shakespeare exhibits this through Hamlet’s realization that revenge is not the right option, Hamlet‘s realization that revenge is the same as the crime which was already committed, and his understanding that to revenge is to become a “beast” and to not revenge is as well (Kastan 1).

    Read More

  • Hamlet Revenge Essay

    720 Words  | 2 Pages

    Throughout Hamlet, each character’s course of revenge surrounds them with corruption, obsession, and fatality. Shakespeare shows that revenge proves to be extremely problematic. Revenge causes corruption by changing an individual’s persona and nature. Obsession to revenge brings forth difficulties such as destroyed relationships. Finally, revenge can be the foundation to the ultimate sacrifice of fatality. Hamlet goes to show that revenge is never the correct route to follow, and it is always the route with a dead

    Read More

  • The Theme Of Revenge In Shakespeare's Hamlet

    1045 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the play, Hamlet, William Shakespeare explores the theme of revenge. Throughout the work, Hamlet acquires a moral dilemma; he cannot decide how to carry out revenge without condemning himself. Thus, although the play promotes the idea of revenge at the beginning, the cultivation of dialogue, relationships, and complications provide evidence of the detrimental consequences and limitations of the theme.

    Read More

More about Revenge and Justice in the Iliad and Second Treatise of Government

Open Document