Why did Homer fill the Odyssey and the Illiad with heroes? Simon Goldhill thinks this:
Homer portrays a heroic world in which men were stronger, more beautiful and in closer contact with the gods than they were in his own society. Homer’s heroes went on to provide a model for the heroes of a later age: Alexander the Great in his search for glory, we are told, never travelled without a copy of the Illiad beneath his pillow. But the heroic age provided examples to live up to, not a lost world to hanker after. No Greek ever said: I could only be really at home in Homer. When the Parthenon was decorated with scenes of mythic battles, the temple was not designed to create a longing to return to a world where men and centaurs mixed, but to project a lesson of moral order for contemporary society.
(Quoted from “Look back with danger: Why nostalgia is not what it used to be,” by Simon Goldhill. Page 15 in the May 5, 2017, issue of the Times Literary Supplement.)
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