Heroes of Greecian Literature

The Greek Literature
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January 9, 2020
The Ancient Greeks are known to possess great art the lies within their literature. For centuries, Greek Literature has been widely studied by many people including scholars and laymen. This made them influential in terms of ideologies and practice.
The characters in Greek Literature continued to be alive in the memory of the world up to the present. The world remembers the astounding story through the protagonists. Frequently, the protagonists in these pieces of art are the heroes. These heroes can be epic or tragic.
Epic heroes are the protagonists of epic poetry. In an epic, the heroes are offered plenty of time to triumph fame and magnificence. People adore and build monuments for these heroes to praise and glorify their names. Its ending is climactic, with an increasing trajectory (Dinter, 2005). On the other hand, tragic heroes are the protagonists in a tragedy. Aristotle described a tragic hero’s attributes. A tragic hero must experience and/or have at least one of the following: great suffering, full of weaknesses and imperfections, ability to instill terror and empathy, and intelligence (Reeves, 1952). The following are examples of epic and tragic heroes.
First, Homer’s The Iliad is admired for its legendary tale. It served as the foundation of the Greek civilization. The Iliad is a narrative about the Trojan War that fired up because of King Agamemnon’s decision not to return Chryseis, a Trojan captive. The war forced Achilles, the greatest warrior, and hero of all time, to fight against Troy. Achilles is the son of Thetis, a sea-goddess, and a mortal. Achilles inherited his father’s mortality—the reason for his implicated death (Jones, 1996).
Second, in Aeneid by Virgil, Aeneas, a mortal Trojan warrior. He is the son of Anchises, a Trojan prince, and Venus, the goddess of love. He was portrayed as a great leader and a religious servant of the gods and goddesses. He exemplifies immense dedication to the realm, respecting every mission assigned to him. He became a hero by giving the Trojans protection and a new shelter, which instituted order and prosperity in his countrymen’s lives (Dinter, 2005).
Third, Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex depicted Oedipus as a tragic hero who met his ultimate suffering after killing his father, Laius, while he was being controlled by a curse. Then, he wedded his mother and exiled himself from the kingdom afterward (MacKinnon, 2013).
Fourth, Agamemnon became a prominent character in Aeschylus’ The Oresteia. He focused immensely on winning the Trojan war. In ancient times, it is traditional to offer sacrifices to the gods and goddesses to win the war. Agamemnon did the same to her daughter, Iphigenia, to gain the blessing of Artemis, the Greek goddess of Hunt, Forests and Hills, the Moon, and Archery. This action led to Agamemnon’s ultimate demise by suffering from his wife’s wrath. Clytemnestra, his wife, plotted his murder to avenge her daughter’s death (Goldhill, 2004).
Last, Plato, who wrote The Dialogues of Socrates, gave Socrates a finishing upper hand. The dialogues are presented as a direct conversation between...