Aren't Homeric heroes like Odysseus basically just gangsters and criminals?

Aren't Homeric heroes like Odysseus basically just gangsters and criminals?

Why are they so revered?

This is actually an interesting point, because you could extend this observation to include every martial incorporation fiction and non-- from the knights of the round table to the Nazis, or back to the Homeric warlords, and forward to the Bloods and Crips. When society goes to seed, or even pockets of society, this is what emerges, always has, always will-- replete with territories, protection fees, scrip, insigniae, coded talk, secret handshakes, the works. But to answer the question: yes.

In what way are the two similar?

Odysseus was white

Actually he was Greek. And to the Greeks every non Greek was semen slurping barbarian.

yah he wasn't a shitskin tho and he wasn't degenerate so I dont see how he could have been a criminal

Well Odysseus is a pirate by trade, meaning he's a professional thief with his own crew.

He's actually a king.

Well since gangsters and criminals operate of their own accord, no.

Homeric heroes submit to some governmental order, the gods, or Fate. Their tasks are reinforced by what is 'right' in that particular framework.

King, kingpin, same thing.

Cultural differences. The Greeks revered raw amoral power and cunning. The Romans, who valued martial honor and severity, disliked Odysseus whom they considered a mere hustler. You can see this in the way how Hector was much more popular during the medieval era than Achilles was.

No, they were men who lived during a time when war was the default state of humanity.

It's actually because the Romans WUZ TROJANS AND SHIT.

That too but the morality also played a part on it

Christian hero = good person doing the right thing

Homeric hero = powerful person reking shit (with some justification, usually)
Protecting the innocent n shiiet was a huge part of Hektor's medieval husbandoism.

No

Also, this shitty view is nothing new, in fact, it was canon for more than 1000 years. See Sophocles and Euripides referencing him as "the son of sisyphus (the most tricky and despictable man) in their plays and also Dante's Divine Comedy.

Virtus.

>raw amoral power and cunning
Nope. That's just a basic interpretation of the world presented in Homer. If anything, the Greeks were considered to be too interested in limiting their power with all the polis' having a strict balanced of power in them and were unwilling to go to war unless it was imminent in the eyes of the Roman. Homeric society and values were different in many ways than what the Greeks later practiced and valued. Odysseus wasn't well accepted by them either, and he only gets shit on by the Romans when the topic of Aeneas is brought up or is relevant in the particular work; elsewhere, many Italic cities and lands resumed tracing their founding to myths of him.

Take for example, how the Greeks depicted Ares to how Romans revered Mars. Ares was practically never depicted as a benevolent deity, but at best, just a practical embodiment of nature. Only barbarians are ascribed to be descended from him. And the honorable aspects of his domain (like soldiers fighting for a noble cause) is even sometimes just directed for revering at Enyalius as a separate deity. He's grouping in the restriction of the 12 Olympians (which is a somewhat modern categorization) seems just to be infer from his mentioning in the Iliad and Odyssey and the fact he was apart of meetings among other chief deities in them. Mars on the otherhand, is ascribed numerous virtues that the Roman held--masculinity, just war, and helper of farmers.

There's no way to describe the differences between Romans and Greeks in brevity. Simply put: Romans just emphasized on the necessity of war in a existing brutal world and didn't value the humanities as much as the Greeks.

>a time when war was the default state of humanity.
so, very unlike today

Aren't modern literary heroes just neurotic suburban cuckolds?

The Trojan War was a bunch of dudes who just wanted to sack Troy. All the woman drama was just an excuse.

That said, why do you think gangsters and criminals can't be heroic or have honor?

> how the Greeks depicted Ares to how Romans revered Mars

This is interesting. Ares was not only feared and hated, he was many times humiliated and the butt of jokes in myths featuring him. The Greeks were much more suspicious of war than other aspects of their culture would tell you.

It's easy to overstate this. Ares seems to represent the wilder energies of war, hence he always switches sides, and people seem to be overfond of him. But Athena was highly revered as a goddess of war, and plenty of the local gods had some association with war/defense.

I wouldn't characterize the archaic Greeks as suspicious of war so much as experienced in war.

>people seem to be overfond

Missing a "don't"

I bet you thought that was really clever, didn't you?

Because he links honor and heroism to a form of morality (which is prevalent in Western culture). The law is understood as concentrated morality of a society. Gangsters and criminals defy it.

The Romans were no strangers to war either, but they had a much more positive outlook on it.

John Dillinger did nothing wrong.

you fucking retard

Yes, basically.

The Homeric world is one where at any time a bunch of raiders could come out of nowhere and kill all your men, enslave all your women and children and burn your village to the ground. The only way to prevent this was to pledge fealty to a brutal killing machine of your own who knew how to fight and would defend your village from other brutal killing machines if they tried to muscle in on his turf.

One is feudal, the other is urban. One is pious, the other is atheistic. One is mannered, the other is crude.

your sarcasm notwithstanding, yes, very unlike today

Yeah you're right of course, I'm just saying it's not correct to read the Iliad as an antiwar poem. Really it's a poem that romanticizes war.