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Between Lions And Men The Hero In The Iliad Summary

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The article in titled Between Lions and Men, Images of the Hero in the Iliad by Michael Clarke is a very innovate piece of work. In the article, Clarke puts forward the idea of how the referencing of wild animals in the Iliad is symbolic and highly significant to the ethical and psychological problems of heroism within Homer’s Iliad. The focus that Clarke is placing in relation to the animal similes within the Iliad is the lion similes. As the Iliad is focused on Achilles and his death, it is no wonder that the lion similes are associated with this so called hero. Achilles and how he associates himself with the wolf and particularly the lion is the focal point of this article. In this essay I will analyse and comment on the argument put forward by Clarke in his article Between Lions and Men, Images of the Hero in the Iliad. Firstly, in agreement with Clarke, the lion similes are the similes that are the focal point in the Iliad. As Clarke states, there are other kinds of similes that feature in the epic such as wolves, leopards, boars and even cows, but these do not hold as much importance as the lion simile does. In relation to all the other beasts and animals mentioned, the lion is the one that is at the top of the food chain, the one that is the most ferocious, strong and powerful.

Secondly, Clarke discusses in his article that there are distinctions between an isolated simile and one that does belong within the system. To demonstrate this point, he uses the

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