May
01
/ 2018
By Van Bryan/ Classical Wisdom It was the great philosopher, Woody Allen, who said, “I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying. I don’t want to live on in the hearts of my countrymen; I want to live on in my apartment.” While this might get a chuckle from a modern reader, such a sentiment would have been unthinkable to a classical age hero. In The Iliad, the classical hero Achilles is motivated to abstain from battle, and subsequently re-engage, in order to achieve his kleos aphthiton (eternal glory). To understand the Greek hero and, more importantly, kleos, we must first understand the Greek song culture and the role that lyrical
