What's a home for, anyway? (What the pagans said.)

Can the bloody field of battle teach us anything about the purpose of our homes?

"Who are you, my fine friend?-another born to die?”

With this stark greeting, the Ancient Greek warrior Diomedes meets his adversary on the field of battle. His words resound with the despair that lies beneath so much of the brilliance of the ancient pagan world. For Diomedes and others on the battlefield of Troy, the only immortality one can hope for is fame—a lasting reputation purchased by glorious deeds.

Death awaits us all, Diomedes says to his opponent, so why not meet that fate in a way that gives folks something to talk about after we’re gone?

I’ve never been a huge fan of battle-tales, perhaps because, as a child, I could never imagine myself plunging into a sword-wielding melee, even for such noble causes as those I found in the tales of Narnia or Middle Earth. So I was not especially excited to learn, in my first year as a full-time professor, that I’d be teaching the Iliad as part of the freshman composition course. All I remembered from my high school encounter with the epic was a great deal of blood and boasting.

Reading as an adult, I was burdened not by the tedium of the decade-long war, but the tragedy of it. Homer compares the bloody, drooping heads of the young warriors to red flowers in a meadow, and it occurred to me that the 18-year-old boys in my classes were probably just at the age to head off to war in the world of the Iliad.

As I continued to read, however, it turned out that one of the warriors had a surprise in store for me. Diomedes, quoted above, wants to know his enemy’s name so that, when he defeats him, he can boast and win more fame for his conquest. (He also wants to make sure that his enemy isn’t a god in disguise, which seems prudent). The young man facing him replies that his name is Glaucus, grandson of “brave Bellerophon, / a man without a fault.”

When Diomedes hears this, he does something very strange: instead of hurling his spear at Glaucus, he drives the weapon into the ground, “planting it deep down in the earth that feeds us all.” He then calls out “to Glaucus, / the young captain, "Splendid-you are my friend, / my guest from the days of our grandfathers long ago!”

It turns out that years before the war, Diomedes’ grandfather welcomed Bellerophon into his home, after Bellerophon had been unjustly driven from his own home. Diomedes knows all the details of this visit, from the length of the stay to the “handsome gifts of friendship” their grandfathers exchanged.

The witness of their grandfathers’ friendship is so powerful that Diomedes no longer has any interest in fighting Glaucus: he insists that they should stay far apart while the battle continues, so they do not risk killing one another. They are “sworn friends from our fathers' days till now!" Glaucus agrees, and they exchange their armor as a sign of their friendship.

This encounter shines like a beacon from the dark, blood-stained battlefield of the Iliad, but what exactly is going on, and why should we care?

It’s something like this: among men far from home, locked in brutal combat, Homer is telling us something about what a home is for. If that seems like a leap, hear me out.

Had Glaucus begged for mercy, Diomedes would have cut him down without a thought. But Glaucus’ lineage reminds Diomedes of a reality beyond the battlefield. He remembers his grandfather’s home: a place of security, abundance, and, most significantly, a place of welcome.

To the Greek imagination, hospitality was one of the only ways besides battle that a man could win lasting fame. Stories of welcome would praise the generosity of the host, the good order of his household, the skill of his wife, and these stories would travel from one generation to another, preserving the names and reputations of the dead.

But why? It seems counterintuitive that the two best ways to win fame would be either to kill someone in battle or to welcome him for a long stay in your home. The tension is instructive. The fame of the battlefield was a concession the world as men found it: fraught with political and commercial conflict, violent in both instinct and art. “If we must fight,” the pagan warrior seems to say, “let us do so with might and skill.” But the fame of hospitality looks beyond, to the world that could be. As Diomedes so poignantly reveals, hosts receive guests and give gifts not merely to secure reputation, but because the exchange of hospitality creates a bond among men, a kind of friendship that does not depend on blood or race, but rather on the mysterious experience of welcome.

For the pagan Greeks, home was a place that manifested order in the midst of chaos. As such, to find welcome in another person’s home was the only hope of a traveller far from his own land and kin. Whether you were a wealthy nobleman or a hut-dwelling shepherd, you saw your home not only as a place for your own comfort, but as an outpost of life along wild and dangerous roads.

Here’s something to ponder: if your grandchild were to meet the grandchild of a guest you once hosted, would their conversation sound anything like that between Diomedes and Glaucus? Have you ever offered welcome in a way that might make a difference two generations from now?

The pagans can’t teach us all we need to know about what how to answer these questions, but as is so often the case, when they do shine a light, it pierces the darkness with a blaze of glory. Now, when I think about the Iliad, the first image I see is Diomedes driving his spear into the ground so that it stands like a young tree. It’s not quite a sword beaten into a ploughshare, but it is something that longs for that holy transformation.

Have you ever experienced some form of hospitality so significant you’ll be telling your grandchildren the tale? Why does hospitality not carry the same weight it did for the ancient Greeks? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Note: All the quotes I have used from the Iliad in this piece come from Book VI, and because I couldn’t find my copy of Robert Fagles translation, I used this excellent online text.