Philoctetes

Although Neoptolemus’ trajectory in Philoctetes is often described as a rite of passage, this chapter argues that it is better understood in terms of a different topos, the Biou Hairesis, or Choice of Life. Having received a conventional heroic upbringing, Neoptolemus comes under the influence of two additional instructors, Odysseus and Philoctetes. Odysseus urges the young man to join him in duping and victimizing Philoctetes, while Philoctetes appeals to the noble nature Neoptolemus presumably inherited from his father Achilles. At first repelled but then persuaded by Odysseus’ sophistic argumentation, Neoptolemus ultimately defies the older man and refuses him his cooperation. While empathy for Philoctetes plays a role in his change of mind, his decisive concern is for his own reputation. The end of the play, however, raises the disquieting possibility that Neoptolemus has not made a lasting ethical choice.

Odyssey

In the Odyssey the educational theme (whose prominence was already recognized in antiquity) takes a distinctive turn, probably because Odysseus’ son Telemachus has grown up without a father’s guidance and advice. The chapter begins by considering the childhood and youth of Odysseus, which share elements with the normative heroic education adumbrated in the Iliad. It then turns to Telemachus who, raised by his mother, Penelope, in his father’s absence, is adept at offering xenia (guest-friendship) but otherwise uncertain of his heroic identity. Assuming the disguise of the first Mentor in Western literature, the goddess Athena undertakes to remedy Telemachus’ educational deficits by sending him on a tour of the Peloponnese. When Telemachus returns home and reunites with his father, the two must quickly forge a productive relationship and learn to function as a pair.

Coda

THE EDUCATION OF Achilles enjoyed a long afterlife in the Western literary tradition. In the first book of Matthew Arnold’s dramatic poem Empedocles on Etna, published in 1852, the philosopher Empedocles, who has climbed the slopes of Mount Etna in Sicily with the intention of ending his life there, overhears a young harpist named Callicles singing of another mountain and another sage:...

Ajax

As critics both ancient and modern have recognized, Sophocles’ Ajax is profoundly indebted to Homer. This chapter argues that the protagonist tracks the Iliadic Achilles’ developmental path in significant respects, but that Sophocles provides his own explanation of Ajax’s character: he anchors the hero’s so-called megalomania in the harsh upbringing Ajax has received from his father, Telamon, and passes on to his own son, Eurysaces. Defeated by Odysseus in the contest for Achilles’ arms, Ajax experiences a crisis of disillusionment that takes a savage and self-destructive form. Although Ajax, like the Homeric Achilles, subsequently experiences a crisis of empathy, the impulse is both tardy and partial. It is Odysseus who matches and even exceeds the Iliadic Achilles’ compassion, thereby defeating Ajax a second time in a different contest.

Iphigenia in Aulis

Because Homer’s Nausicaa sheds light on Euripides’ Iphigenia, this chapter begins by discussing her representation in the Odyssey. Both young women have been raised to regard marriage as the culminating event of female existence, an attitude that Agamemnon exploits to lure his daughter to Aulis for a fictitious marriage with Achilles. After reviewing the internal and external chronology of Iphigenia in Aulis and the state of its text, this chapter discusses two aspects that have attracted critical attention—the play’s contemporary political resonance and its pattern of changes of mind—and then reads it as tracing a dual, reciprocal process of education. Iphigenia and Achilles both follow the pattern of the Homeric Achilles in experiencing first a crisis of disillusionment, then a crisis of empathy. Their idealism forms a contrast to the duplicity and corruption that surrounds them and the ordeals they have yet to face.

Hippolytus

Hippolytus’ fundamental mistake (hamartia) has been variously described as devotion to chastity (symbolized by his worship of Artemis), as life-denying puritanism or excessive arrogance (symbolized by his hostility to Aphrodite), and as a failure to progress to maturity via the normative rites of passage. This chapter explains Hippolytus’ failure in educational rather than initiatory terms. The play’s repeated references to Hippolytus’ youthfulness, its focus on the connotations of sōphrosunē (good sense, modesty), its depiction of Hippolytus’ failings, and its reliance on the vocabulary of teaching and learning all point in that direction. Comparison with Ion in his Euripidean name play further clarifies where Hippolytus’ education has fallen short. The empathy that Hippolytus manifests toward the end of the play for his stepmother, Phaedra, and his father, Theseus, is both tardy and partial; his suffering offers a salutary lesson for others, but not himself.

Iliad, Part 2

While restricting its main narrative to the tenth year of the siege of Troy, the Iliad broadens its temporal horizon by alluding to themes more at home either earlier or later in the war. Similarly, Achilles is portrayed simultaneously as a youthful hero and as an experienced warrior. Achilles’ childhood instructors included both Cheiron the centaur, whose role is downplayed in the poem, and his father’s retainer Phoenix, who serves to normalize the hero’s educational experience. In the course of the Iliad Achilles progresses from a naive, impetuous hero who experiences a crisis of disillusionment with a value system that has let him down, to a withdrawn warrior who rethinks the assumptions that governed his education, to a mature figure who experiences a crisis of empathy for King Priam of Troy, and who becomes an instructional figure in his turn as he offers his aged adversary consolation and advice.

Cheiron the Centaur

The first teacher attested in the Greek literary tradition is Cheiron the centaur, who from his cave on Mount Pelion in Thessaly dispensed an elite, one-on-one education to some of mythology’s greatest heroes. Because the centaur has left few traces in epic and tragedy, it is necessary to assemble his pedagogic persona from disparate sources. After defining Cheiron as an anti-centaur who differs from his fellows in lineage as well as character, this chapter discusses the centaur’s position vis-à-vis the human community; the Precepts of Cheiron, a collection of injunctions attributed to Hesiod; and Cheiron’s relationship with his pupils Achilles, Jason, Asclepius, and Actaeon, as well as with his daughter Hippo. In his failures as well as his successes, the centaur sets the pattern for subsequent teachers in the ancient Greek literary tradition.

Introduction

Representations of education in epic and tragedy unfold against a backdrop of cultural concepts that go stated or unstated, challenged or assumed. The introduction explores the most significant of these concepts. They include the assumption that definitive boundaries demarcate the life stages, with youth considered appropriate for learning and old age for instruction; a surprisingly elusive concept of youth as the occasion for rites of maturation; representations of the ideal instructor as a real or surrogate father whose methods include injunctions (hupothēkai), general reflections (gnōmai), and exemplary tales (paradeigmata); an understanding of education as complemented, enhanced, or frustrated by natural endowment; and variations on the theme of learning through suffering.

Iliad, Part 1

The Iliad concerns not only heroic war but also heroic education. This chapter begins by considering the poem’s treatment of the relationship between natural aptitudes and acquired skills and discusses the lengthy scene of instruction (Iliad 23) in which Nestor coaches his son Antilochus on winning a chariot race. It describes the normative heroic curriculum, which includes training in public speaking, warfare, and the value system underpinning warrior culture: fathers repeatedly drive home to their sons the importance of enhancing familial glory and avoiding the shame that is associated with cowardice on the battlefield. The chapter also considers the motives underlying parental tenderness, including the project of inculcating habitus (Pierre Bourdieu’s term), and analyzes Iliadic instances of instruction via injunctions (hupothēkai), general reflections (gnōmai), and exemplary tales (paradeigmata).