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Hello, on the fields of Troy, a fallen soldier pleaded with Achilles, the great hero of all the

Greeks, to spare his life.

According to Homer, Achilles replied, Do you not see what a man I am, how huge, how splendid,

and born of a great father and the mother who bore me immortal?

Yet even I have also my death and strong destiny, and there shall be a dawn, or an afternoon,

or a noontide, when some man in the fighting will take the life from me also, either with

a spear cast or an arrow flown from the bowstring.

With that, Achilles killed him.

Heroes have special attributes, but not necessarily humility or compassion.

How did the Greeks define their heroes?

What place did the hero have in classical society,

in Renaissance and in romantic times?

And what do the modern ideas of heroism owe to the heroes of the golden age.

With me to discuss heroism in Western culture is Angie Hobbs, lecturer in philosophy at the

University of Warwick and author of Plato and the Hero,

A.C. Graling, reader in philosophy at Birkbeck College University of London,

and Paul Cartilage, professor of Greek history at the University of Cambridge.

Angie Hobbs.

Nearly missed my first question there. Where does the word

hero come from and when does the notion of the hero first appear? Well we first

...