Heroes Ridiculed

Painters enjoyed mocking heroes. Heroes have grandeur, and are stronger, far more courageous,noble, and beautiful than common men. They are looked up to as models of virtue and often have theirown cult in the form of heroa. However much heroes were revered, the democraticatmosphere of Athens tended to bring everyone to the same level. Maybe this was a consequence oftheir fear of hybris, or maybe this was brought about by a more healthy need forbalance within the city following the old precept of the golden mean, the ‘nothing toomuch’ (meden agan). Maybe it was the sheer pleasure of a socially lowlyartisan in bringing down a superior being, be he superior politically, in wealth, in nobility, orvirtue.

Peleus

‘No city is so barbarous or so strange in its speech that it does not know the fame of thehero Peleus’ writes Pindar (Isth. Od. 6.25). Not only was he the celebratedfather of the great Achilles, but he was a famed hero in his own right, a great one among the firstgeneration of heroes. While a guest at Iolcus in Thessaly, the king’s wife fell in love withhim. He refused her advances, and, as in many other similar stories, Astydamia told her husbandAcastus that Peleus had tried to seduce her. He decided to take Peleus on a hunt on Mount Pelion.During the night, he hid Peleus’s sword and abandoned the hero fast asleep. According to thetextual tradition, Peleus was about to be massacred by the vicious beasts roaming the Thessalianwilderness or even by the wild Centaurs. But Chiron, the wisest of Centaurs, brought the hero hissword and thus saved him from certain death.