The Nature of the Warrior in Homer’s Iliad, Book VI

Welcome to BOOK VI, today we will be speaking about two methods of warfare practiced by the Greks in this book that would be heavily looked down upon by Western nations. You want to believe yourself free in your favorite Western democracy, but I believe you don’t know what freedom is and the Greks and Trojans will show you what it means to truly be free in Book VI. I don’t mean to be cryptic in what I say, but we are all slaves until proven otherwise. Do you want to know what real freedom is, anon? I will repost, for perhaps the thousandth time, my favorite quote from Friedrich Nietzsche. It’s the best definition of freedom and what it means to be a man that I’ve ever read.

“My Concept of Freedom.—Sometimes the value of a thing does not lie in that which it helps us to achieve, but in the amount we have to pay for it,—what it costs us. Regarded more closely, it is war which produces these results, war in favour of liberal institutions, which, as war, allows the illiberal instincts to subsist. For war trains men to be free. What in sooth is freedom? Freedom is the will to be responsible for ourselves. It is to preserve the distance which separates us from other men. To grow more indifferent to hardship, to severity, to privation, and even to life itself. To be ready to sacrifice men for one's cause, one's self included. Freedom denotes that the virile instincts which rejoice in war and in victory, prevail over other instincts; for instance, over the instincts of ‘happiness.’ The man who has won his freedom, and how much more so, therefore, the spirit that has won its freedom, tramples ruthlessly upon that contemptible kind of comfort which tea-grocers, Christians, cows, women, Englishmen and other democrats worship in their dreams. The free man is a warrior.—” -Nietzsche

Yes, the Greks and Trojans in the Trojan War were warriors. You see this in how they act on and off the battlefield. They are not “serving their country” as you’re expected to do today. They have multiple interests. It’s why Achilles can sit out the war and not be “court-martialed.” You would be better off comparing these warriors to private military contractors or mercenaries than modern soldiers. But they are actually a step above these. A caste of their own. Our modern PMCs can just as easily be screwed over by the state they operate under. The Grek and Trojan don’t need the state. They are self-contained. If they were forced out of their state, they would find somewhere else to thrive.

The first example we must consider is something that would be considered a war crime by Geneva Convention. Menelaus is about to finish off a Trojan when the warrior starts asking for mercy and claims his father will pay a great ransom for his safe return. Maybe it was weakness, maybe it was greed, but Menelaus begins to buy into this idea. But before he can agree to it, Agamemnon and Nestor come to steel his heart against such weakness. How do you like this war crime?

“Stern Agamemnon swift to vengeance flies,

And furious thus: ‘ O impotent of mind !

Shall these, shall these, Atrides' mercy find ?

Well hast thou known proud Troy's perfidious land,

And well her natives merit at thy hand!

Not one of all the race, nor sex, nor age,

Shall save a Trojan from our boundless rage:

Ilion shall perish whole, and bury all;

Her babes, her infants at the breast, shall fall.

A dreadful lesson of exampled fate;

To warn the nations, and to curb the great.’

The monarch spoke; the words, with warmth addressed,

To rigid justice steeled his brother's breast.

Fierce from his knees the hapless chief he thrust;

The monarch's javelin stretched him in the dust.

Then, pressing with his foot his panting heart,

Forth from the slain he tugged the reeking dart.

Old Nestor saw, and roused the warriors' rage;

‘Thus, heroes! thus the vigorous combat wage!

No son of Mars descend, for servile gains,

To touch the booty, while a foe remains.’” -Homer

That’s RIGHT. “Rigid Justice steeled his brother’s breast.” He threw off the supplicant and ran him through with his javelin. No mercy to the Trojans. All must die. And the women, and the children. All Trojans must die. They are oath-breakers! Agamemnon would have been dragged before United Nations as war criminal for this.

THIS is point my book, BARBARIC VITALISM, is making. Nature doesn’t care so long as you win. Morality that goes against nature is utterly worthless and irrelevant if you don’t win. You have to live in accordance with nature’s cruel holiness. Failure to do so puts you at the mercy of the men who will. The Constitution, as you see already, does not keep you safe. Your enemies are slowly peeling it away. Men who try to use the same system to stop it just become speed bumps along the way. What we see next falls on the opposite end of the spectrum, but still the actions of free men.

“He spoke, and transport filled Tydides' heart;

In earth the generous warrior fixed his dart,

Then friendly, thus, the Lycian prince addressed ;

‘ Welcome, my brave hereditary guest ! addressed;

Thus ever let us meet with kind embrace,

Nor stain the sacred friendship of our race.

Know, chief, our grandsires have been guests of old,

Œneus the strong, Bellerophon the bold ;

Our ancient seat his honoured presence graced,

Where twenty days in genial rites he passed.

The parting heroes mutual presents left ;

A golden goblet was thy grandsire's gift ;

Œneus a belt of matchless work bestowed,

That rich with Tyrian dye refulgent glowed.

This from his pledge I learned, which, safely stored

Among my treasures, still adorns my board :

For Tydeus left me young, when Thebe's wall

Beheld the sons of Greece untimely fall.

Mindful of this, in friendship let us join;

If heaven our steps to foreign lands incline,

My guest in Argos thou, and I in Lycia thine.

Enough of Trojans to this lance shall yield

In the full harvest of yon ample field ;

Enough of Greeks shall dye thy spear with gore;

But thou and Diomed be foes no more.

Now change we arms, and prove to either host

We guard the friendship of the line we boast.’

Thus having said, the gallant chiefs alight,

Their hands they join, their mutual faith they plight;” -Homer

On the one hand, you gave Agamemnon and Menelaus committing war crime, on the other, you have Diomedes realizing he and the Trojan he was about to fight have a “guest frenship” between their two fathers who met in the past and exchanged gifts. Diomedes then proceeds to spare him and exchange gifts with the Trojan. Imagine this happening in World War II and coming to light today. American boomer being prosecuted for exchanging gifts with Nazi fren on the battlefield. The veteran would become a Nazi overnight and likely be imprisoned like that 90-year-old Nazi prison guard from a while back. These are the actions of free men, foreign to modern eyes. Incomprehensible. How do these make you feel?

How much freedom does our military relinquish to cockroach politicians? Ancient armies weren’t armies “of service.” They were out for their own gain. They wanted to plunder. Now, many would argue that today’s armed forces are nobler because of this. They have more of the Christian virtues such as selfless service. But it also makes you wonder if we weren’t all DECEIVED by Christianity. Deceived by the worms to serve their ends and not our own.

With that in mind, we get to Hector, who is NOT an exception to the warrior castes I describe above. I see many people portraying Hector as this dutiful son of Troy. He’s there to protect his country. His reasons are supposedly pure. But before we get into Hector, I want to show passage concerning his father, Priam, who is underrated in our sphere.

“And now to Priam's stately courts he came,

Raised on arched columns of stupendous frame;

O'er these a range of marble structure runs ;

The rich pavilions of his fifty sons,

In fifty chambers lodged: and rooms of state

Opposed to those, where Priam's daughters sat :

Twelve domes for them and their loved spouses shone,

Of equal beauty, and of polished stone.” -Homer

Hector returns to the palace to tell his mother to perform rites to get Athena on their side and stay Diomedes’ wrath, but pay careful attention to PRIAM. He had fifty sons and twelve daughters. THIS is how you achieve ethnogenesis and found a new race. I did not point it out in the previous books, but two of his sons I believe have already died in this battle. We will take one more detour to remind the audience what Hector and the Trojans feel about Paris, who caused the war.

“And wives, our infants, and our city spare,

And far avert Tydides’ wasteful ire,

Who mows whole troops, and makes all Troy retire.

Be this, O mother, your religious care ;

I go to rouse soft Paris to the war;

If yet, not lost to all the sense of shame,

The recreant warrior hear the voice of fame.

Oh would kind earth the hateful wretch embrace,

That pest of Troy, that ruin of our race!

Deep to the dark abyss might he descend,

Troy yet should flourish, and my sorrows end." -Hector, Troy

Before returning to the fight, Hector goes to his wife and young son, Astyanax. This is a “wholesome” scene to most normie readers of the Iliad. His boy is scared of his father in full armor. His wife doesn’t want him to return to the battle. He kisses the wife and child goodbye before going back into the fight. But how many know what happens to Andromache, his wife, and Astyanax? Achilles is killed before the sacking of Troy, but when the city is sacked, the two come under Neoptolemus, the son of Achilles.

This is very interesting because Achilles is seen as this powerful, young, and beautiful warrior. The best of the Greks, but he is not that young. He’s old enough to have a full-grown son fighting with him at Troy. There is some controversy surrounding Neoptolemus. He kills Priam before an alter. A sort of religious sacrilege to the Greks. But that is not all he does.

If you’re a Rome enjoyer, you may have heard the myth surrounding Astyanax. She tried to hide her son after the fall of Troy but was discovered by the Greks. They debated what to do with the child. It was determined if they let him live, he might try to avenge his father and so, he was sentenced to death. I may be misremembering the tale, but in one story, his mother fought up and down to save him. It was then that Astyanax embodied TRUE Roman honor. He showed himself to have the Roman animus.

You see, Americans love the underdog. They want to see the underdog come out on top, against all odds. This is what moves the American animus. But the Romans weren’t moved by this. They had a different itch. What moved the Roman soul was the redemption of lost honor. Lucretia killing herself after being raped. The legion of survivors who served under Scipio Africanus regaining their honor by defeating Carthage. This is what moved the Romans.

The story that caught the Roman’s attention during the sacking of Troy was Astyanax. With no hope of making it out, he bravely, stoically, marches to the edge of the wall where he is thrown off by Neopolemus or Odysseus depending on who told the tale. He chose how his life would end like the defeated gladiator presenting his neck at the very end or Mucius thrusting his right hand into the fire to show his resolve.

“Attaint the lustre of my former name,

Should Hector basely quit the field of fame?

My early youth was bred to martial pains;

My soul impels me to the embattled plains;

Let me be foremost to defend the throne,

And guard my father's glories and my own.

Yet come it will, the day decreed by fates—

How my heart trembles while my tongue relates—

The day when thou, imperial Troy! must bend,

And see thy warriors fall, thy glories end.” -Hector, Homer

“‘There guide the spindle, and direct the loom :

Me glory summons to the martial scene,

The field of combat is the sphere for men.

Where heroes war, the foremost place I claim,

The first in danger as the first in fame.’” -Hector, Homer

I also wanted to include passage from Andromache where she begs Hector not to go, how Achilles killed her father and all her seven brothers, set Thebes ablaze, but this one has gone on long. The two passages above are spoken by Hector. I haven’t been kind to Hector, mostly because I want to dispel how he is perceived by moderns, especially after the Troy movie. He very much too is a part of the warrior caste I described at the beginning of this poast and NOT the modern idea of a selfless service soldier. He wants to go back for FAME and to protect the bloodline of his father(avoid shame). The only difference between Hector and the Grek heroes is that they are fighting at Troy and not a Grek city, in which case the “roles would be reversed.”

He openly blames Paris for all of this. Paris is cutting his opportunities for immortal fame short. He could be raiding some city, but instead, he must defend his home because his brother decided to swipe some other man’s wife.