Abstract

The ancient critics are well known—some might say notorious—for their readiness to read literature, and particularly Homer, through moral spectacles. Their interpretations of Homeric epic are philosophical, not only in the more limited sense that they identified specific doctrines in the speeches of Homer's characters, making the poet or his heroes spokesmen for the views of Plato or Epicurus, but also in a wider sense: the critics demand from Homer not merely entertainment but enlightenment on moral and religious questions, on good and evil, on this life and the after-life. When they fail to find what they seek, they follow Plato and find him wanting.