Arthur W. H. Adkins

Homeric values and Homeric society

Dr Longs interest in my work (JHS xc [1970] 121–39; hereafter referred to as ‘Long’) is naturally very welcome; but it seems to me to require further comment in its turn. In order to advance the discussion, I shall be compelled to refer on a number of occasions to what I have written elsewhere in articles, and indeed on other pages of Merit and Responsibility. I shall begin with some very general points, some concerned with philosophy, some with interpretation.First, can ‘an historical reference for Homeric society’ be found ‘in the individual oikos, such that Homeric values can be seen to derive consistently from its needs’? The ‘facts of Homeric life’ to which I endeavour to relate my analysis of Homeric values are those contained in Professor M. I. Finleys admirable The World of Odysseus. My very occasional disagreements are concerned with interpretations within an agreed framework: Professor Finleys framework. I shall turn to the historicity of the society in a moment; but there seems in any case to be no prima facie absurdity in employing the tools of the social anthropologist on an overtly fictional society, say Mores Utopia, with the intention, perhaps, of displaying incongruities and discrepancies: however fictional it might be, there would still be a society and values to discuss.

The Greek polis

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