Christopher Rush

Preface

Of the essays in the collection, I found eight to be useful to varying degrees in addition to Mr. Commager’s introduction.  I will briefly highlight the content of each of these eight essays as well as each author’s perspective together (as they are too short to treat well separately), and conclude with a critical evaluation of the essays.  Many of the essays are either abridgements from their original lengths or reductions of chapters from entire books by the authors.  Since I read only what was made available in the collections, I must refer to the essays by the titles given to them by the editor.

Content Summary and Author’s Perspective

Steele Commager’s brief introduction to the collection of essays, unlike Harold Bloom’s introductions to the Modern Critical Interpretations series, is not a précis of what the following essays concern (ironically, what I am doing now), but mostly a brief treatment of Aeneas as an epic hero, and how he through Virgil distinguished himself from Homer’s heroes.

C.M. Bowra’s essay “Some Characteristics of Literary Epic” does exactly what its title implies: he briefly discusses the nature of oral epic, its purposes and forms, and its heroes and representation of a heroic world.  He distinguishes briefly between Homer’s heroic world and Virgil’s heroic world, one key difference being Homer’s heroes live and die for their own glory, while Virgil’s heroes have a higher calling for a social ideal (61).  Bowra’s guiding perspective on the epic is the different purposes for the heroes: whether it be self-centered or others-centered.

C.S. Lewis’s essay “Virgil and the Subject of Secondary Epic” is extracted from his Preface to Paradise Lost.  While the extract does not make much sense by itself — atypical of the Twentieth Century Views series, since most chapters re-forged into short essays make sense as presented — Lewis’s chapter/essay offered some helpful ideas on Virgil’s presentation of the epic, as distinguished from earlier author-less epics.  His fuller discussion on the difference between “primary” and “secondary” epics, while quite trenchant, was not included in this selection, which is odd since it was Lewis’s main purpose in addressing Virgil in a work more devoted to Milton.  Fortunately, that difference is not relevant to our purposes here.

“Odysseus and Aeneas” by Theodore Haecker was a short (roughly the first eight essays in the collection were generally fewer than twelve pages long; the final four were much longer) contrast of the two heroes, though his insights treat Aeneas more than Odysseus.  He, like most of the authors of these early shorter essays, did not have any overt “perspective” in the sense of approaching the poem from psychology, archetypes, feminism, or the like, but instead was more formalist, addressing primarily what was in the poem, not external to it.  At least, that is the impression I got from the essay originally.

Wendell Clausen’s “An Interpretation of the Aeneid” acknowledges the prerequisite of knowing Homer before understanding Virgil: “any response to the Aeneid will depend in good part on an intimate knowledge of the Iliad and the Odyssey” (75).  Most critics of Virgil (that I’ve read recently) reference the connection of the two authors in what ways such knowledge suits their particular foci, but Clausen’s general admission seemed unique, not saying Virgil is a copy or modifier of Homer, but just the idea that the reader’s success with Virgil is in some way determined by the reader’s prior success with Homer.  After that, Clausen focuses mostly on the character of Aeneas, highlighting his burdens and the tragic circumstances he surmounts in his poem.  Clausen’s emphasis on the emotional states of Aeneas borders on psychological interpretation but does not give the reader any overt references to it.

Brooks Otis’s “The Odyssean Aeneid and the Iliadic Aeneid” begins the final third of essays much longer than the previous grouping.  Otis begins with a structural approach to the Aeneid, offering a kind of map with a two-fold purpose: first it lists the general content of each book of the poem in a brief three- or four-word phrase, labeling books one through six as “Odyssean” and books seven through twelve as “Iliadic”; second it draws (literally) connections from one book to another, indicating its mostly chiastic pattern — similar to Cedric H. Whitman’s structural diagram of the Iliad referenced by Peter Leithart in Heroes of the City of Man.  The rest of his essay elaborates on the pattern, how the first half (Aeneas’ Odyssey) is preparation for the “Iliadic Fulfillment” of his quest in the second half of the poem.

The title of Adam Parry’s essay “The Two Voices of Virgil’s Aeneid” is at times akin to J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Two Towers, in that the reader is not always sure to which voices/towers the author is specifically referring.  For Parry, sometimes the two voices are those of Aeneas and his rival Turnus; at times it is what Otis called the two halves of the poem, the Odyssean and Iliadic halves; at other points in the essay Parry seems to be referring to two different moods of the poem itself: the tragedy of Aeneas’ personal losses contrasted with the empowering hope for the future surety of the Roman Empire.  Regardless of the oft-times ambiguous title, the content of the essay provides a distinctive approach to Aeneas’ character in light of Virgil’s authorship and audience: sometimes Aeneas is a Roman version of Homer’s Greek Achilles and Odysseus, sometimes he is a model of his supposed successor Octavius-Augustus; Parry also suggests the possibility that Virgil temporarily casted Aeneas as Octavius’ enemy Mark Antony, when Aeneas entangles himself with Dido, Queen of Carthage (who becomes a type of Cleopatra, in that Egypt and Carthage are both enemies of Rome).  Parry spends much time analyzing Aeneas as a servant of History/Fate/Destiny; because he serves an “impersonal power,” he cannot be a hero (123) — an interesting conclusion.  For Parry, though, Aeneas is saved “as a man” because he is so unrelentingly self-sacrificial and suffers through so much for others.

Bernard M.W. Knox (who, along with Mortimer Adler, would undoubtedly be on the Mt. Rushmore of Influential 20^th-century Classicists — using “classicist” as an encomium) contributed “The Serpent and the Flame: The Imagery of the Second Book of the Aeneid” to this collection.  While interesting and excellent, as Knox usually is, it was limited in focus, as its title makes clear.  Unlike other classicists, such as Gilbert Murray, Knox does not assume the reading audience is familiar with Greek and limits his use of it while thoroughly analyzing an intentionally narrow component of Virgil’s epic.

Finally, Viktor Pösch’s “Basic Themes” concludes the collection.  One of the major themes for Pösch is the sea, which for him is “an overture” to the other motifs in the poem (165).  Other themes (at times Pösch seems to use “theme,” “symbol,” and “metaphor” interchangeably, as I am, unfortunately, wont to do in my classroom) include love as the “motivating force in all that Aeneas does” (166), the Aeneid as a “poem of humanity” (173), and Aeneas’ journey to the underworld as a symbol of “a trial of the hero” (176), this last quite aligned with Joseph Campbell’s journey of the hero.

Critical Response and Evaluation

Though my elongated summary connotes some of my responses to the essays, some final evaluations are appropriate here.  On the whole, I have found the older Twentieth Century Views series of essays far superior to Harold Bloom’s Modern Critical Interpretations series.  That is not an attack on Professor Bloom, nor an overt diatribe against recent scholarship contrasted to earlier scholarship (I am a much younger, poorer, and unpublished scholar than those published in either series); it is merely a generalized reaction.  I prefer (and trust) the Twentieth Century Views series so much that I will purchase one whenever I can find one in a used book store, even if I have never read the author in question (such as Proust, though he is on my “someday soon” list).  The series also does not, in my acknowledged limited experience with it, include derisive or vituperative essays on the author or subject, unlike what Bloom’s Modern Critical Interpretations essays occasionally do.  Bloom’s series does offer great essays, certainly, especially the occasional erudite contributions by latter-twentieth-century scholars, so they are not entirely shoddy — I simply prefer the Twentieth Century Views series.

Commager’s introduction, as I mentioned before, aids in the superiority of the series, in that his introduction is a thoughtful contribution to the subject, unlike Bloom’s “introductions” which are synopses of the essays in the collection (I often find Harold Bloom a helpful albeit limited scholar, though in his own books).  Commager sets the tone of analytical appreciation for Virgil and his poems, giving insights I found helpful, such as his remark “… in the Aeneid, duty and inclination are constantly opposed” (11).

C.M. Bowra’s essay provided good generalized descriptions of epic poetry.  His precise comments help introduce the nature of epic poetry before focusing on epic heroes, more so than the typical high school definition of an epic poem as “a long, narrative poem usually focusing on one hero.”  Bowra’s essay emphasizes the differences in values of Homer’s epic and Virgil’s epic, an invaluable insight in the distinction of the heroes.

I knew about C.S. Lewis’s essay (unlike the other “essays” transplanted from their original sources) because I have read Preface to Paradise Lost.  As mentioned above, the extraction of this one chapter does not make too much sense, though I did find some useful comments from Lewis (not a third face with Adler and Knox, since Lewis was more of a medievalist than a classicist).  With the profundity of useful ideas from the other essays in this collection (and other sources), one needs not revisit Lewis’ book, even for his distinction between “primary” and “secondary” epics — unless one wants to read a good work about an even more important work, and thus gain a better understanding of Western Civilization.

A title like “Odysseus and Aeneas” offered great promise, in that comparatively so few of the critical works I’ve read had anything to say about the participants in the content of the Iliad, Odyssey, and Aeneid.  So many other critics want to talk about the poems’ origins or historicity or animal and nature symbology — which is wonderful, but not all there is.  Unfortunately, Haecker’s essay (at least the version presented in this collection) did not provide as much analysis as I had hoped.  I gleaned three tidbits from him — helpful tidbits, but brief tidbits: “How full of paradox, how dialectical is the inner life of Aeneas!  Does he in this resemble any of Homer’s heroes?” (70)  “Like all reticent men, he (Aeneas) can speak only the truth that is in him, and that only occasionally and darkly.  And again, like all reticent men, be they so from necessity or of their own free will, he makes no such brave figure as Achilles or Odysseus” (Ibid.).  And “the true leader is not he who makes himself leader, but he who is called and dedicated to that end by Fate” (74).  I appreciate Haecker’s perspective that Aeneas might be inferior in some ways to Odysseus and Achilles (unlike most other critics who usually see Aeneas as a better-rounded consummation of “the hero” Homer was trying to create), especially his stress on Aeneas as a “reticent hero” out of necessity — I just wished Haecker had more useful things to say (a thoroughly selfish comment, though it is a well-meant selfishness, unlike Achilles’).

Wendell Clausen’s “An Interpretation of the Aeneid” is similar to other essays in the collection in that he highlights the tragedy and suffering Aeneas endures — genuine loss, unlike Odysseus’ temporary abstinence from happiness and contentment or Achilles’ egotistic honor besmirchment (his loss of Patroclus is genuine, though Gilbert Murray cautions us against believing Achilles is completely selfless even in missing/feeling loss at the death of Patroclus).  Of the many helpful ideas from Clausen, two stand out: “Aeneas enters the poem wishing he were dead, the only epic hero to do so” (77); “Aeneas is more burdened by memory than any other ancient hero” (Ibid.).

Certainly Brooks Otis’s structural diagram of the Aeneid’s thematic and chiastic pattern is invaluable.  His explication of that pattern is similarly useful.  Even his summary of the poem is remarkable: “the Aeneid is … the story of death and rebirth by which unworthy love and destructive furor are overcome by the moral activity of a divinized and resurrected hero” (92) — a bit of archetypal criticism added to his structural criticism.  Like other critics, Otis notes Aeneas’ psychological component of his heroic character, though Otis always relates his ideas to the structure of the poem, in that it (Aeneas’ psychology) changes in connection with the structural plot changes: plot and character are intertwined.

I commented above on the elasticity, if not ambiguity, of Adam Parry’s title, “The Two Voices of Virgil’s Aeneid,” though the title was not as important to me as his other insights.  I especially enjoyed his connections to Virgil and Augustus — certainly that is a necessary component to accurately understanding and interpreting this epic poem.  His comparisons of Aeneas to Octavian/Augustus and Mark Antony are enlightening and unique, while completely plausible.  Similarly, his conclusion that Aeneas can’t truly be a “hero” because he is guided/forced/in the service of an impersonal power, but that he is a more complete “man” than the Homeric heroes, offers an interesting perspective.  Yet, Parry’s conclusions are odd, in that he maintains that Aeneas is a fuller man than either Achilles or Odysseus even though he does not have the free will that they have — Aeneas is the plaything of History, which he cannot escape: how does this make him more of a man?  For Parry, the answer is that Aeneas “is man himself; not man as the brilliant free agent of Homer’s world, but man of a later stage in civilization, man in a metropolitan and imperial world, man in a world where the state is supreme.  He cannot resist the forces of history, or even deny them; but he can be capable of human suffering, and this is where the personal voice asserts itself” (121-122).  Possibly: I need to keep pondering these conclusions until I can more readily agree with him.

Obviously I have great respect and admiration for Bernard Knox if I am willing to place him on the Mt. Rushmore of Classicists (along with Mortimer Adler after a fashion, certainly A.E. Housman, and possibly Gilbert Murray — Maynard Mack might be up there, especially if we changed the title to Influential Popularizers of Classics in the 20th century).  Even so, his narrow essay, while stunning in its thoroughness and wealth of knowledge, was mostly extraneous to my personal focus on the heroes of the poems.  He did make some indirectly useful comments on Menelaus and Agamemnon (calling them twins, which no other commentator highlighted — except Gilbert Murray, though also indirectly) as together a force of “merciless destruction” (127), and another interesting comparison of Pyrrhus (Achilles’ son?) to the serpents killing Laocoön as he kills Priam (136).

Victor Pösch’s “Basic Themes” was, like Knox’s essay, interesting, but mostly unsuited for my needs when researching for my Master’s thesis.  His themes quoted above were the themes I found most useful of the many he addressed.  In order to incorporate his dominant sea theme, though, I’d would have had to insert much of his argument, which on the whole is irrelevant to my thesis, so I couldn’t really do that.  However, if one simply wanted to improve one’s ability to understand (and potentially teach) such classical literature, then one of his almost superfluous comments is extraordinarily helpful: “The essence of a symbolic relationship is that the correspondence between the symbol and the thing symbolized is not precise, but flexible, opening up an infinite perspective” (166).  Certainly Pösch’s concise definition is extraordinarily helpful beyond the confines of this article.

As only one example of the many in the history of classical scholarship and inquiry into Virgil’s Aeneid, Commager’s Twentieth Century Views collection is a challenging introduction to one of the most important works in Western Civilization.  The Twentieth Century Views series as a whole is undoubtedly a worthwhile series to investigate, own, and enjoy forever, especially in light of the general and decided decline of scholarship (especially classical scholarship) today — despite the fact my postmodern Master’s professors encouraged me to ignore the older works in favor of the more recent writings on the subject.

Christopher Rush

Content Summary

In what was once a landmark exploration of Homer and the Iliad (I say that not derogatorily), Gilbert Murray analyzes a vast amount of material related to ancient Greece, the nature of ancient stories and books, the construction and minutiae of the Iliad, and its reception and place in history.  In the four prefaces, one for each edition, Murray has different things to say, mainly about the changing nature of Homeric interpretation during the first half of the twentieth century, when his book was being re-edited and re-released.  Despite the changing nature of the then-current geo-political world, however, Murray’s book did not seem to undergo many revisions.  At best, he seems to have added only some footnotes regarding newer critical works and some appendices.

Murray’s introduction attempts to situate the reader into the nature of the Greece of the Iliad as well as its poetry, commenting on differences in the known Greece with its portrayal in the Iliad, as well as cultural differences between the poem and the world of Murray’s present reader.  His next major section is on “The People,” first the people who became the Greeks (the Achaeans of Homer’s poem and the Greeks of Homer and his followers), secondly some of the major beliefs of the people in the poem and the disintegration caused by wars and migrations.  His second, and longer, major section is “The Literature,” first providing for the reader an understanding of what a book was in Homer’s day and how it is completely unlike what present readers think of as a book.  Next he begins to address the Iliad more specifically (almost one-third of his way into his exploration), highlighting how it fits his earlier definition of a “traditional book,” evidencing it with expurgations, peculiarities, and almost minutiae to support his points.  He then addresses the historical content of the Iliad before assessing whether or not it is a “great poem.”  To close his work, Murray returns to more peripheral arguments such as Homer’s connection to Ionia and Attica, and final comments on what is known and unknown about Homer, the poem, its place, and reception in antiquity.  His appendices are like extended footnotes regarding various issues he addresses throughout the body of his exploration, and he refers the reader to them as needed.

Author’s Perspective and Purpose

Though I referred to “Homer” when summarizing the content of The Rise of the Greek Epic, one of Gilbert Murray’s major points which he makes several times (at least in the first half of the work), is that he believes “Homer” to be almost as fictional as Zeus or Apollo.  Murray believes the Iliad and the Odyssey (though his evidence is mostly concerning the Iliad) to be the work of composite poets and emendators over many years, if not centuries.  That is the essence of his argument in the “nature of the traditional book” section — a traditional book or story was not created to be read, but was kept hidden until the poet could recite it; also, Murray cites several examples of line inconsistencies throughout the Iliad, such as different kinds of armor, to point to multi-generational editorship on the base poem.  The Iliad is too long to be recited as well and must be a composite of different poets/editors over time to produce what we now know as the Iliad.  Much of his support is given in Greek, so those who are not familiar with the language must take his word for it.

Murray’s title is almost the opposite of what his intention seems to be: for most of the work, Murray details what the Iliad is not, almost to the point at which his title should be the fall of the Greek epic — at times it seems he comes to bury Homer, not to praise him.  Murray focuses on many details and incidents whose connection to the poem does not seem readily apparent until much further on, and even then, his purpose is not always clear.  It is evident overall that he wants to accurately ground his audience in what he perceives to be an accurate historical understanding of the nature of the events and culture of the peoples depicted in the Iliad, and the nature and times of the people writing, emending, and receiving the poem — since there are many according to Murray.  Unfortunately for Murray, as he himself must admit toward the end of his exploration, “the argument has rested chiefly on analogies and general considerations, not on documents: it has had to be very cautious, aiming at probability, not certainty, constantly suggesting, not professing to demonstrate” (282): hardly the most persuasive kind of argument, but necessary when dealing with an ill-documented antiquity.

Critical Response and Evaluation

I very much wanted to enjoy Murray’s book more than I did.  His analytic introduction appeared to offer a profundity of Homeric scholarship untouched by the fads and fancies of twentieth-century theory.  Frustratingly, The Rise of the Greek Epic was, for the most part, unsuited to my main purpose for reading them while composing my Master’s thesis in examining the Iliad, Odyssey, and Aeneid: the nature of epic heroes.  Among the issues Murray addresses, the actual characters in the poem are given very little attention.  As mentioned above, Murray spends much more time dissecting apparent historical inconsistencies such as bronze armor, the nature of shields, and what is not in the poem.  Much of Murray’s comments on Homeric expurgations are, as the above quotation admits, mere arguments from absence: because something is not in the copies that exist today, they must have been elided by some editor after the first poets had it in their versions of the poems.  This sort of argumentation was, as I said, frustrating at times, though it was nice to read Murray’s almost-apologetic admission that he was dealing with mostly speculation.

Another disappointing component to Murray’s analysis, similar to my disappointment with Joseph Campbell, is his almost preposterous treatment of various Biblical passages for no useful or accurate reason.  I am not arguing against the possibility that the Bible has had various scribes and translators and editors over the centuries, but Murray’s “analysis” of the Old Testament on pages 107-119, supposedly in an effort to prove what was the nature of “traditional books” — i.e., editors come along and change things to suit the fancies of the day, whether or not they create conflicts with other passages of the text — seemed to be substandard scholarship.  Not only was he not proving his point about traditional books and their connection to the Iliad, but he more readily demonstrated his ignorance about them.  Obviously this is a reaction from my particular worldview, but I am baffled by so many scholars who can argue well when it comes to what they know but then resort to Biblical derision when they want to mask their own ignorance about whatever topic they know they must address but cannot do so well.

With such pervasive reactions against Gilbert Murray’s book, it might seem odd that I am including it in this journal.  I am including it because, more than any other scholarly work on the Iliad I have read recently, it has made me want to be a better Homeric scholar.  As I mentioned above, Murray writes with the supposition that his reading audience is fluent in Greek.  That may have been true a century ago, but I did not have that opportunity growing up in American public schooling in the later-half of the twentieth century.  For years, as I have tried to understand these classical works better, I have had the nagging feeling that the only way I can truly improve in classical scholarship is to understand (read at least, if not write or speak) the classical languages.  The same is true for my Biblical interpretation skills: I can only get so far reading John Nelson Darby or a New American Standard version of what was originally in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek.  Perhaps Murray was not writing for the average reader for The Rise of the Greek Epic, but his linguistic challenge was effective for me.

That is not the only reason I include it, however.  Murray has several good insights into the poems throughout his work, though “throughout” is a generous concision of “scattered throughout.”  It was not exactly “hit and miss” with Murray, but his good offerings were somewhat sporadic — though, once I found them, they were very helpful.  I do not personally agree with his assessment of a multiplicity of Homers, but that might be my classical scholarship nascence (i.e. utter ignorance) talking.  My own argument in my thesis focuses on what the poems say about heroes, not whether or not the poems are a hodge-podge of multiple insertions, deletions, and revisions.  Even so, Murray’s work provides helpful ideas and a challenge that more recent Homeric criticism does not.

Christopher Rush

Content Summary

Heroes of the City of Man addresses eight works of classical Greece, four epics and four dramas: Hesiod’s Theogony, Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, and Virgil’s Aeneid; Aeschylus’ Eumenides, Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus, Euripides’ Bacchae, and Aristophanes’ Clouds.  Peter Leithart gives about equal time to all works, since his overarching premise is not to praise one literary form above the other.  Leithart gives each a working subtitle, each designed to highlight what Leithart supposes is that work’s major theme: the Theogony is the “Pagan Genesis,” Iliad is “Fighters Killing, Fighters Killed, Odysseus is the “Son of Pain,” and the Aeneid is “Patria and Pietas.”  Of the dramas, the Eumenides is a tale of “Blessings of Terror,” Sophocles’ first play in the Oedipus trilogy is “Riddles of One and Many,” the Bacchae is “The Contest of Fetters and Thyrsus,” and Aristophanes’ Clouds is about the “Sophist in the City.”

As a college professor, Peter Leithart always has higher and continued education in mind, in not only this but his other works I’ve read and own.  He divides each work into sections, usually along thematic lines that fit with his overarching subtitle for the work, and after each section gives “review questions” and “thought questions,” to help the reader remember and analyze what he or she has just read.  At the end of the book, Leithart has an “Additional Reading” section, a bibliography (not annotated) of recommended works to continue the reader’s analysis of the classical Greek epics and plays.

Author’s Perspective and Purpose

The subtitle is a clear indicator of Leithart’s religious and philosophical perspective in approaching the works he analyzes in his book.  For the better read reader, however, his very title is an initial indicator of his approach: the “city of man” epithet is obviously taken from Augustine’s City of God, a classic work of Christian thought that categorizes much of life as either part of the city of God or the city of Man — Leithart clearly associates the works of ancient Greece as distinct from the “city of God.”  This is not surprising since Homer, Hesiod, and the rest do not claim to know or associate their stories with the monotheistic God of Augustine.  Unlike other critics, however, (and by “other” my experience so far means “almost all”) Leithart does not treat the members outside his particular religious and philosophical framework as deficient, unworthy, or haphazard.  Instead, Leithart has great respect for the originality, skill, tragedy, humanity, and beauty found within the works of the classical pagan Greeks.  Most (for lack of a better word) secular critics I’ve read in my years of study who approach the works of Homer or Virgil seem to find ways to bring up the Bible (usually for no justifiable reason) as a “straw man” to knock down and disparage in an attempt to distract readers from flaws or perceived shortcomings in the hoped-to-be superior non-Biblical works.

Leithart, however, has no problems in approaching and analyzing the ancient works for what they are, not what he hopes them to be.  Certainly his perspective is “biased,” in that he is approaching them from a Christian worldview — not one in which they were constructed; but this does not mean that critics who approach Homer or Hesiod or Aristophanes from a “secular” worldview are not biased — on the contrary, they have their own secular biases, not the least of which is not being a contemporary of the authors, bringing nineteenth, twentieth, or twenty-first century hermeneutical penchants to the ancient texts.  With the freedom to make no apologies for either what the texts say (or appear to say) or his personal interpretational framework, Leithart does not hesitate to discuss what other critics might timorously deem controversial or ambiguous, such as the moral issues involved with Odysseus’s affairs while claiming to be faithful to his wife.

Critical Response and Evaluation

Leithart’s work has been very influential to me, since, as you know, our classes together often (“always” would be overly generous) focus our analyses of ancient literature from a Christian perspective (which has myriad definitions and sub-interpretations, but a precise designation of what that entails at least at our school is peripheral to the main argument here).  Part of what makes Leithart’s work so useful is that he treats his subjects with overt respect, both analytically and aesthetically.  He is a Christian scholar (not an oxymoron) who noticeably enjoys the works from the “city of man” almost as much as he does from the “city of God.”

It is no accident, either, that Leithart and I appreciate the works from the “city of man,” while approaching them from a Christian perspective.  We both teach at classical schools, which is more than just different curriculum compared to government-mandated knowledge.  He finds great value in the works and ideas of those who believe differently than he does, completely unlike the secular critics I have read who trot in the Bible (or, more accurately, their masqueraded versions of what is supposedly the Bible) to deride and ridicule.  Leithart does none of this, even with passages he does not personally enjoy.  He does not scorn Homer for creating a poem centering on a selfish hero, though he does not hesitate to call Achilles a selfish hero: these are not contradictory statements.

In his introduction, Leithart formulates his reasoning behind his analysis of these classic works in the guise of a response to Tertullian’s question, “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?”  As the renaissance of Classical Christian schooling can attest, quite a lot.  Fortunately, though, unlike many lesser-skilled critics regarding recent pop culture fads (such as Harry Potter or the Lord of the Rings movie adaptations), Leithart does not blindly embrace everything about these classics as “close enough to Christian” — Odysseus is not a type of Christ (nor are Harry Potter and Gandalf, despite the claims of recent pseudo-intellectuals) to Leithart.  Even with his admiration and appreciation for the classics, Leithart maintains an appropriate distance from them, as he makes clear in the following paragraph:

Heroes of the City of Man is a book about Athens by an author who resides contentedly in Jerusalem.  One of the foundational assumptions of this study is that there is a profound antithesis, a conflict, a chasm, between Christian faith and all other forms of thought and life.  Though I appreciate the sheer aesthetic attraction of classical poetry and drama, I have no interest in helping construct Athrusalem or Jerens; these hybrids are monstrosities whose walls the church should breach rather than build.  Instead, I have attempted to view Athens from a point securely within the walls of Jerusalem (14).

Part of the utility of Leithart’s work is his synthesis of and expounding upon other key critics.  His analysis of Cedric Whitman’s understanding of the Iliad’s chiastic structure has been helpful to me for years, even before I first read Whitman for myself.  Likewise, Leithart’s analysis of Odysseus’s process of revelation at the close of the Odyssey has been a helpful way to maintain the interest of students as we wrap up the great story.

Some critics might conceive of Leithart’s analysis and categorizing of these classical works as too much Christian revisionism, but they would be mistaken.  I have read other authors who try to imprint Christianity too much onto other works (like Tolkien and Harry Potter as mentioned above), but Leithart does not do that.  He unabashedly analyses these classical works from a Christian perspective, but he does not make of them what they are not.  Instead, he provides an excellent companion to these ancient works for anyone, whether he or she resides in either the city of Man or the city of God.