HOMERIC VALUES

The quality most highly regarded in Bronze Age Greece is areté, which is translated as "good" but meant far more. A man with areté was recognized for his success alone, with the means of his success counting for very little. Since the balance between existence and annihilation was precarious, competitive abilities were more highly valued than cooperative virtues.

The social organization and value system of the Homeric poems were based on the oikos, or the noble household--the highest form of political and economic as well as social organization. These oikoi were spread throughout the countryside with no "government" to promote their growth or to prevent their annihilation. Some sense of community existed among fellow Greeks, but in crises the claims of the oikos were always primary.

Command of the oikos was the responsibility of the local warrior-chief, who was commended by the adjective agathos, meaning the "good." Preserving the autonomy of the oikos required, first of all, the martial abilities of the chief or agathos, whose qualities were commended by the noun areté (whose superlative is aristos from whence comes "aristocracy"). Areté was the power or ability to succeed in some action, and it is clear, especially from Iliad (12.310-21) that the agathoi came to value and even need war as a means of maintaining their privileged status.

Another important concept closely associated with areté is timé, usually rendered as "honor" or "compensation." While often denoting possession of material goods, timé was not equivalent to these goods. A man's timé marked his position on a scale that ranks gods at the top and the homeless beggar (such as the disguised Odysseus) at the bottom. To honor a man was to move him up on this scale. Thus timé denoted and commended all that distinguished the life of the prosperous agathos from that of a beggar--property, rights, and status. But, importantly, timé was a relative quality since it was available in limited quantity. Timé awarded to one man must be timé withdrawn from another: in the Iliad, the sack of Troy was a punishment to get timé back from them in the form of Helen; in the Odyssey, Alkinoös suggests to his counselors that each give up treasure of their own to replenish Odysseus's timé.

Another key concept: since no one has any rights except those that could be defended by force, the agathos and his family, retainers, and servants (i.e., the oikos) were tightly bound into a mutual support system, distinguished from the rest of the world by the word philos. When an agathos traveled away from his oikos, there was no real way for his rights and safety to be protected. Thus he supplicated another agathos who headed an oikos in the hopes of being received as a philos. Such a dependent relationship was denoted by the word xeinos, usually rendered as "guest-friend." These relationships were sacred and reciprocal, signified by an exchange of gifts. Thus a travelling stranger who became a "guest-friend" had an effective substitute for a kinsman--a substitute who would defend him as a member of his oikos and who would react to a loss of his timé as a loss of his own.

Source: M. I. Finley, The World of Odysseus.