Agamemnon’s Empire

According to Synesius, the peasants of North Africa thought that Agamemnon ruled the Roman empire. This was a strangely wise mistake. For just as the values of Greeks and Romans of the empire recalled in many ways the values of the warlike aristocracies from which they arose, so too did rulership always have a Homeric strain to it. Honour defined the Homeric king’s position: a king might say, ‘Be king equally with me, take half my honour.’The king was distinguished by his right to receive the greatest honour.And of mortal men he had the greatest power over the distribution of honours and disgraces. When Achilles withdraws from the fighting, he cries out to the High King Agamemnon, ‘You will tear apart your heart in self-reproach, that you did no honour to the best of the Achaeans.’In Caesar Augustus there was a great deal of Mussolini, but there was something of Agamemnon as well.

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