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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
This 3 page paper contrasts Achilles in “The Iliad” with Socrates as he is presented in Plato’s “Apology.” Bibliography lists 3 sources.
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3 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_HVachsoc.rtf
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contrasts the two with particular emphasis on how they view the concept of the "good life" and how they are influenced by the circumstances of their deaths, and their view
of the afterlife. Discussion The Iliad is one of the most terrifying poems ever written about war, because Homer doesnt gloss over its ugly realities. For instance, when Achilles lunges
at Demoleon, "he stabled his temple and cleft his helmets cheekpiece, / None of the bronze plate could hold it-boring through / the metal and skull the bronze spearpoint pounded.
/ Demoleons brains splattered all inside his casque ... (20.450-54). This is the world in which Achilles is most at home: a world of violence and slaughter, which holds out
no hope of redemption or a glorious afterlife. For the heroes in this poem, "...death is the end. Homer offers no comforting vision of life beyond the grave" (Knox 26).
When there is a suggestion of something beyond, its not a vision of paradise, but a suggestion that the soul is going to the "House of Hades, lord of the
dead" (Knox 26). Achilles suggests that there is survival, but minimal: "So even in Deaths strong house there is something left, / a ghost, a phantom-true, but no real breath
of life" (23.122-23). This minimal survival apparently depends on the appropriate funerary rites being done on the body, which is why so many of the episodes in the poem center
on someone trying to retrieve-or desecrate-a corpse (Knox). With no heavenly reward promised, it seems that Achilles idea of the good life is embodied in his concept of honor
and his valor as a soldier. The violence of the poem is "Achilles native element: only in violence are his full powers exerted, his talents fully employed" (Knox 35). In
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