Iliad and Lysistrata Honor and Essay

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Lysistrata stands in the foreground, guiding the men to peace, despite the fact that neither side wants to admit blame. She reminds the Spartans of Athenian assistance in the wake of the quake, and she likewise reminds the Athenians of Spartan assistance in overthrowing Hippias. "Why on fighting are your hearts so set? / For each of you is in the other's debt" (228). The Spartan and Athenian make peace, and the play ends with a song and dance by a Spartan in honor of the Athenian, for which the Athenian expresses his delight and admiration. The song, of course, is also a hymn of praise to the woman whose cunning has brought the war to a conclusion: "Pour thy grace upon oor peace; / Make the artful foxes cease; / Let guidwill and love increase / And prosperity!" (232). Honor and respect is shown to the very enemy with whom, at the beginning of the play, there is no hope of compromising. The turn is complete. Honor and respect are restored -- through comedy rather than through tragedy.

Both Lysistrata and The Iliad may be viewed as odes to honor and respect in this light, but neither should be restricted to such a view. The Iliad's end is of such force and magnitude as to bring to mind more than the mysteries of transcendence -- it draws one to the brink of the mystery of life itself and pushes one over into an abyss, which Charles Ives would attempt to discuss in symphonic composition some two millennia later with his "Unanswered Question." There is a world of sorrow that no amount of honor or respect can assuage in the final line of The Iliad: "So they performed / the funeral rites of Hector, tamer of horses" (443), which speaks to the greatness of the work -- a monument to humanity and humanity's suffering losses.

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That same humanity is what is at stake today in our own lives, as our own nations enter more deeply into wars that have not only become a drain on our economy but also on our moral compass. Gone are the days when men fought with valor, honor, and pride -- and gone most certainly are the days when respect could be shown in war. Modern warfare as the wars in the Middle East show are little more than acts of genocide: there is nothing noble or honorable about it. We would do well to find a Lysistrata among us -- but we would do just as well to rise to the heights of Homeric empathy and consider ourselves in the light of pity and fear.

The problem, of course, is far more brutal than anyone can imagine. The West has lost its sense of Beginning and End. If Homer could eloquently sum up the whole of his work in an episode between aged king and young warrior, it was only because he held it in mind from the beginning -- and the same could be said of Aristophanes' Lysistrata. Our modern world has divorced itself from the values and virtues of the old world in favor of "liberty, equality, and fraternity" -- none of which it knows how to embrace. True fraternity may be found in Homer's epic -- and true liberty and equality may be found in Aristophanes' comedy.

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