Sacrifice In The Odyssey

Throughout the texts it is clear that the duty of man is deeply valued by these ancient cultures, that duty being to serve. Yet who does man serve? Characters are seen to serve the gods, their communities, their family and themselves, but it remains inconclusive which is noblest to serve. Gilgamesh served the gods, Achilles and Oedipus their countries, Hector his family, and Medea herself; the fate of each of these characters was either or death or exile (which may be worse than death). Conversely, Odysseus (in the Odyssey) serves the gods, Odysseus (in the Iliad) serves his nation, the women of Lysistrata serve their community, and Helen (all the time) serves herself, and everybody fares well. Because a character's fate is not distinct based

on who they serve, determining the ideal service of man becomes a difficult task. Through examining the service and resulting fate of characters in Gilgamesh, Euripides's Medea, The Iliad, The Odyssey, and Lysistrata, the relationships between virtue and fate will be revealed, conveying the cultural values of the ancient Greek and Roman civilizations.
What can be said inexorably of Greek and Roman values is that the gods, community, family, and self were all very much of value.

Conflict most typically ensues when one or more of these values are disrupted. In The Iliad, for example, Agamemnon's refusal to surrender Chryseis back to her father dishonors the gods, as Chryseis is the daughter of an oracle of Apollo, which brings a plague to his people, thus his continued refusal dishonors his nation(/community), and greater conflict results as Achilles refuses to fight for the Achaeans as long as the pattern continues. Achilles is needed, of course, because this conflict occurs within the greater conflict of the Trojan War, which has resulted from family being dishonored when Helen was taken from her Achaean husband, Menelaus, for the Trojan warrior,

Paris.

Two common relationships appear between objects of service in these texts: characters who serve themselves also serve the gods, and characters who serve their family also serve their community. These relationships appear to exist for systematic purposes in such that each benefits the other. They additionally exhibit two opposing Greco-Roman virtues: pride, in serving self and the gods, and piety, in serving family and nation. Granted, pride and piety are not mutually exclusive character traits, the texts regularly demonstrate the antipathetic relationship between the two.
Though characters are often portrayed as being very concerned for the satisfaction of the gods, the motivation is often rooted in a prearranged transaction between the character and the god in question.

Such was the case between Paris and Aphrodite; if Paris were to declare Aphrodite the most beautiful (because the gods need human affirmation, for some reason), she would give him the affections of the most beautiful woman. Similarly, those characters who consider the best interest of their country do so because the country serves their family; such were the facilities for the women of Lysistrata to seize control of the Acropolis and for Telemakos to pursue his rite as successor of Ithaka's throne. Kreon defined this relationship rather simply when he told Medea, "I love my country too, --next after my children." (pg. 702, line 326) The obligation is first to one's home, then to his homeland. In Gilgamesh, the people of Uruk juxtapose Gilgamesh's actions with that of a true king, "the shepherd of the city", saying that he takes all the young men "even the children" from their families and that he has every bride before her husband may (pg. 13). The values presented throughout our texts lead us to believe that the people are disgruntled because Gilgamesh is disrupting families and thus doing his people a great

disservice.