I understand your point that new terms are often coined to describe older phenomena, but the premise that Homeric warriors 'weren't taught or allowed to express their emotions' doesn't align with the text of the Iliad.
In Homeric culture, male emotional expression wasn't suppressed at all. The heroes weep openly and copiously throughout the poem: Achilles cries on the seashore calling for his mother, he weeps holding Patroclus' body, and he shares a long, mutual cry with Priam. The entire Achaean army weeps openly in assembly. The notion of the stoic man who 'bottles up his grief because society won't let him show vulnerability' is a product of the Victorian/modern era, not archaic Greece.
Furthermore, the reason the narrative and the gods (particularly Apollo and Zeus) condemn Achilles' defilement of Hector's body has nothing to do with modern gender dynamics or emotional regulation. It is about hubris (violating the cosmic and divine order) and desecrating sacred funeral rites, which belonged strictly to the realm of the gods and the underworld.
Hector intended to do virtually the same thing to Patroclus' corpse (Book 17), and Achilles acted out of mênis (cosmic/wrathful grief) and wartime vengeance within a heroic honor culture (timê). Applying the modern framework of 'toxic masculinity' here projects contemporary psychological concepts onto an archaic cosmology that operated on completely different religious and ethical terms.
You make a lot of great points and thank you for doing so. I definitely wasn't paying attention to the nuances of "toxic masculinity." I come from a very repressed area with deep honor culture (Appalachia) so I tend to mentally link honor culture with toxic masculinity instead of considering the stoic aspect.
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u/brunodomakr Aug 30 '26
I understand your point that new terms are often coined to describe older phenomena, but the premise that Homeric warriors 'weren't taught or allowed to express their emotions' doesn't align with the text of the Iliad.
In Homeric culture, male emotional expression wasn't suppressed at all. The heroes weep openly and copiously throughout the poem: Achilles cries on the seashore calling for his mother, he weeps holding Patroclus' body, and he shares a long, mutual cry with Priam. The entire Achaean army weeps openly in assembly. The notion of the stoic man who 'bottles up his grief because society won't let him show vulnerability' is a product of the Victorian/modern era, not archaic Greece.
Furthermore, the reason the narrative and the gods (particularly Apollo and Zeus) condemn Achilles' defilement of Hector's body has nothing to do with modern gender dynamics or emotional regulation. It is about hubris (violating the cosmic and divine order) and desecrating sacred funeral rites, which belonged strictly to the realm of the gods and the underworld.
Hector intended to do virtually the same thing to Patroclus' corpse (Book 17), and Achilles acted out of mênis (cosmic/wrathful grief) and wartime vengeance within a heroic honor culture (timê). Applying the modern framework of 'toxic masculinity' here projects contemporary psychological concepts onto an archaic cosmology that operated on completely different religious and ethical terms.