Athens Ascends: From the Odyssey to Plato’s Republic

The ancient Greek concept of arete has changed over time. Originally coming from the Greek arenai–to pray or to gain favor–the notion of arete embodies qualities of inner nobility, courage, and the pursuit of excellence. 

In the Homeric epics, arete is strongly linked to martial prowess, courage on the battlefield and an uncompromising pursuit of glory (kleos). This is seen most clearly in the tale of Achilles, whose wrath, born from wounded honor, becomes the driving force of the Iliad and reveals how deeply arete depends on recognition, pride, and reputation. One may contrast this with the story of Odysseus, whose earnest desire to return home to Ithaca results in a journey melding endurance, cunning and wisdom as he avoids snares, pitfalls, and chthonic temptations.

 In Hesiod, arete shifts away from the battlefield and the exodus to encompass the notion of justice (dike) and the maintenance of cosmic balance and the moral alignment of the universe. While Hesiod’s Works and Days emphasizes the importance of patience, humility and ethical labour, the tale of Hercules in the Theogony depicts the eternal struggle with chaos and the need to establish divine order, a reflection later alluded to in Plato's concept of the ‘good.’ 

Thucydides, most famous for his History of the Peloponnesian War, offers a stark contrast to Homeric concepts of honour through a realist engagement with political exigencies. For Thucydides, morality is not fixed but fragile, contingent, and often exploited, while the greatest virtue is often restraint, practical wisdom, and sacrifice for the polis. Pericles’ Funerary Oration virtuously extolls Athenian democracy and the love of freedom and public service. This occurs at a time when Athens faced her greatest crisis amid the corrosive influence of fear, ambition and factionalism in the context of war. The oration thus stands as both a celebration of civic virtue and a haunting prelude to its unraveling — a vision of democratic arete poised on the edge of decline.

In the wake of Athens’ decline, the moral ambiguities and civic failures chronicled by Thucydides find a profound philosophical response in Plato’s Republic. Where Thucydides presents virtue as contingent and often tragic, Plato seeks to rebuild the very foundation of arete — not on shifting political sands, but on the eternal ground of truth, reason, and the Good. Disillusioned by the failure of democratic Athens, Plato imagines a city ruled not by warriors or rhetoricians, but by philosopher-kings: rulers whose souls are ordered by reason and oriented toward justice. If Homer’s heroes seek glory and Hesiod’s toilers seek divine order, Plato’s guardians seek wisdom, self-mastery, and a vision of the ideal polis, structured in harmony with the soul. The ascent now is inward — away from the cave of illusion and toward the intelligible realm, where the highest form of arete is not power, but philosophical clarity and moral unity.

Through Homer, Hesiod, Thucydides, and Plato, the concept of arete evolves from physical courage and fame to ethical labor, civic duty, and finally to philosophical vision, forming a dialectic between the world of action and the soul’s ascent toward truth.

Homer and the Heroic Roots of Arete

The Homeric epics offer the earliest and most vivid expressions of arete in Greek literature, rooted in martial valor, honor, and personal glory. Achilles, the central figure of The Iliad, embodies this ideal in its most unrelenting form. His excellence lies not just in his unmatched prowess on the battlefield, but in his fierce commitment to personal honor (timē) and the immortality of fame (kleos). When Agamemnon dishonors him, Achilles withdraws from the war, asserting that virtue without recognition is meaningless. His eventual return — driven by the death of Patroclus — is not only an act of vengeance but a tragic fulfillment of his heroic destiny: to die young but remembered forever.

In contrast, Odysseus in The Odyssey presents a more versatile and cunning form of arete, one grounded in mental agility, endurance, and moral navigation. His journey home to Ithaca is marked not by open battle, but by trials that demand psychological resilience and spiritual restraint. In the land of the Lotus-Eaters, Odysseus resists the seductive oblivion of forgetfulness, forcibly dragging his men back to the ship, demonstrating a leadership shaped by foresight rather than impulse. In the episode with Circe, he avoids destruction by following divine instruction (Hermes’ advice), confronting the goddess without succumbing to her enchantments. Later, with Calypso, he endures years of isolation but refuses her offer of immortality, holding fast to his mortal identity and marital loyalty. In each case, Odysseus overcomes what might be called chthonic temptations — forces of dissolution, timelessness, and moral fog — not by brute force, but by reason, memory, and the stubborn will to return. His arete is thus heroic not in bloodshed, but in spiritual resistance and the restoration of order through cunning and perseverance.

Odysseus removes his men from the Isle of the Lotus-Eaters-Theodoor van Thulden (engraving-1633). Odysseus’ resolve of strength and firm decision-making saves his men from indolence and descent into the chthonic depths.

Hesiod and the Moral Recalibration of Arete

In Hesiod’s works, the heroic ideal undergoes a significant moral recalibration. No longer tethered to battlefield valor or personal glory, arete becomes an ethical alignment with the rhythms of cosmic justice and the dignity of daily labor. In Works and Days, Hesiod presents a world where virtue is not achieved through conquest but through humility, patience, and toil. Speaking to his brother Perses, he warns against laziness and injustice, insisting that hard work is not a curse but a divine ordinance: "Work, Perses, work — for work is no disgrace; idleness is." For Hesiod, arete emerges in the farmer who respects the seasons, in the man who acts justly even when no one watches, and in the citizen who honors both divine law and neighborly obligations. The virtues of justice (dike), piety, and resilience reflect a cosmos governed by balance — a sharp contrast to the chaos and rage that so often animate Homeric heroism.

This shift is vividly embodied in The Shield of Herakles, a Hesiodic epic that mirrors Homer’s martial grandeur but infuses it with deeper symbolic purpose. Herakles, though still a warrior, is not merely a slayer of beasts but a champion of cosmic order. His confrontation with Kyknos — the son of Ares who desecrates sacred paths — is a defense not just of personal honor but of religious and moral law. His shield, described in elaborate detail, bears images of the entire cosmos: strife and peace, the just city and the wicked one, the dance of men and women, stars, rivers, and gods. This is not a mere instrument of war, but a microcosm of divine harmony, suggesting that true arete lies in defending — and embodying — that order. Herakles’ victory is not simply a feat of strength, but a mythic reaffirmation that chaos must always be confronted and held in balance by wisdom, courage, and obedience to the will of Zeus. In Hesiod, then, arete is no longer the pursuit of personal greatness, but a deeper moral participation in the maintenance of a just and sacred world.

The Choice of Hercules-Annibale Carracci (1596)

Hercules finds himself between the two allegories of vice and virtue. While vice (right) leads down the flat road replete with theatrical masks and assorted pleasures, virtue (left) points to glory and to heaven as represented by Pegasus, a winged steed that waits upon the steep path.

Thucydides and the Realist Reshaping of Arete

With Thucydides, the concept of arete descends from the mythic and moral spheres into the realm of political exigency and historical contingency. In The History of the Peloponnesian War, virtue is no longer fixed in heroic archetypes or divine justice, but becomes fragile, unstable, and often tragically compromised. Leaders must navigate a world driven by power, fear, and necessity — where decisions are made not according to ideal forms, but according to what can be preserved amid uncertainty. This is a world in which even the best intentions are susceptible to factionalism and human error, and where prudence (phronesis) often replaces the more radiant forms of traditional virtue.

Amid this bleak landscape, Thucydides presents Pericles’ Funeral Oration as both a high point of civic arete and a foreboding eulogy for its decline. Delivered in the first winter of the war, the speech praises Athens not merely for its military might, but for its unique civic structure — a city where law, freedom, cultural openness, and meritocracy coexist. Pericles honors those who have died, not as isolated heroes, but as citizens who gave their lives for a common good, saying: “The admiration of the present and succeeding ages will be theirs, because with daring courage they dared to die.” Here, arete is redefined not as glory-seeking, but as sacrifice for the polis, a courageous merging of private virtue with public duty. Yet Thucydides’ placement of the oration — just before the onset of plague, political instability, and Pericles’ own death — casts a tragic shadow over its idealism. The very democracy Pericles extols will soon fracture under the pressures of war, fear, and ambition. Thus, arete in Thucydides becomes tragic and conditional, a fragile excellence that must constantly struggle against the darker currents of human nature and historical fate.

Pericles's Funeral Oration (Perikles hält die Leichenrede)-Philipp Foltz (1852). Here, the Greek stateman extolls the virtues of duty, valour, and honour amid the depredations of the Peloponesian War.

Plato and the Philosophical Rebirth of Arete

In the wake of Athens’ political disintegration, Plato offers a profound rebirth of arete — one that moves beyond the battlefield, beyond civic duty, and into the domain of metaphysical truth. In The Republic, Plato does not merely revise the concept of virtue; he reconstructs it from the ground up, grounding it not in external recognition or historical necessity, but in the inner harmony of the soul and the soul’s orientation toward the Good. For Plato, arete becomes the achievement of justice within the individual, where reason rules the spirited and appetitive parts of the psyche. This harmony mirrors the structure of the ideal polis, which must be governed not by warriors or demagogues, but by philosopher-kings — those rare souls who have ascended beyond illusion to perceive the eternal forms.

Central to this reimagining is Plato’s doctrine of the Good, described as the highest form of knowledge, beyond even truth and being: “Now that which imparts truth to the known and the power of knowing to the knower is what I would have you term the idea of the Good… beautiful though truth and knowledge are, the Good is more beautiful still.” Just as the sun enables vision in the visible world, the Good illuminates understanding in the intelligible realm. The philosopher, having turned his soul away from shadows and toward the light, does not rule for ambition, but from duty: “They must toil at politics and ruling for the public good, not as though they were performing some heroic action, but simply as a matter of duty.”

In contrast to the fluid and precarious virtue of Thucydides’ political world, Plato envisions an arete that is eternal, intelligible, and ordered. Through education, music, and dialectic, the soul is gradually prepared for this ascent: “The instrument of knowledge can only by the movement of the whole soul be turned from the world of becoming into that of being, and learn by degrees to endure the sight of being — and of the brightest and best of being, the Good.” This is the culmination of the Greek moral arc: a transformation of heroism from glory to wisdom, from victory over others to harmony within oneself, and from public acclaim to philosophical illumination. In Plato, arete is no longer a response to the world’s chaos — it is the ordering principle that restores the world to itself.

The School of Athens-Raphael (1511)

“Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, and political greatness and wisdom meet in one, and those commoner natures who pursue either to the exclusion of the other are compelled to stand aside, cities will never have rest from their evils” (Plato’s The Republic)

The Ascent and Its Echoes in Modern Ruins

The arc of arete traced from Homer to Plato reveals not only the moral development of a civilization, but a pattern of ascent — from physical courage to cosmic justice, civic duty, and finally to inner harmony and metaphysical truth. In Homer, we see the glory of the hero who dies remembered; in Hesiod, the laborer who endures according to divine order; in Thucydides, the citizen who resists collapse with realism and restraint; and in Plato, the philosopher who turns his soul toward the Good and orders the polis from within. This is not merely a historical sequence — it is a moral trajectory that still speaks to us, especially in an age when the traditional structures of meaning appear fractured, and the pursuit of virtue has been replaced by distraction, alienation, and acceleration.

The philosopher-king’s inner ascent — away from illusion, toward truth — becomes, in this light, an image of spiritual resistance. As Julius Evola wrote in Ride the Tiger, in times of dissolution the task is not to save society but to stand firm amid its collapse, to remain “in the world but not of it,” preserving inner order against outer chaos. The Greek journey toward arete reminds us that true excellence is never merely social or external — it is rooted in the soul’s ability to endure, to discern, and to remain oriented toward the eternal even as the world changes or falls apart. In this way, the legacy of Athens is not a museum piece, but a living challenge: to recover the meaning of virtue not in imitation of the past, but in the formation of the soul — as warrior, citizen, and philosopher.

IMAGES:

Odysseus removes his men from the Lotus-Eaters

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/26/Lotus-eaters.png

The Choice of Hercules

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Pericles’s Funerary Oration

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The School of Athens (Raphael)

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/49/"The_School_of_Athens"_by_Raffaello_Sanzio_da_Urbino.jpg