Aeneid and Antigone

The principles of leadership in the Greek Society involved a concept known as arte, which served as a basic depiction of Masculinity in back then. Given the profoundly gender defined Society that existed in Greece, it is not surprising that the qualities of a strong leader mirror those of an upstanding male. Ar'te basically contains four parts--courage, honor, virtue, and manliness. The first of these qualities, courage, deals with a person's ability to stand up to danger or trying circumstances. While courage finds its most prominent display on the battlefield, facing up to difficult leadership decisions can also be a method of showing courage. Honor, a key part of ar'te, can be obtained by honoring the gods, thus staying on their favorable side. By serving one's community and state, one may also earn honor through either humble or glorified service. Virtue, perhaps the most interesting of the ar'te qualifications, has nothing to do with the modern definition of virtue which one might compare to morality, but rather involves looking out for the best interest of one's state. Finally, manliness served as a key qualification of leadership in Greek Society. In the very patriarchal Greek Society, it is not surprising that manliness would be found as a qualification for an effective leader.

Honor, as the second aspect of ar'te, can best be seen by observing how the characters honor the gods. Clearly, Aeneas and Antigone prove honorable before the gods as they give up personal comforts or pleasures for the desires of the gods. Aeneas shows himself to be more honorable than Antigone, however, as his sacrifice lives purely in the desire to follow his destiny set forth by the gods. Despite his great love for Dido, he almost immediately surrenders his every desire for her in order to follow his destiny to Rome. In his defense for leaving to Dido, Aeneas says, 'Apollo orders, and his oracles Call me to Italy. There is my love, There is my countr y' I follow Italy not because I want to Aeneas' loyalty to his destiny despite his wanting to stay with Dido shows his honor. Antigone displays almost equal honor as she follows what she knows to be the will of the gods in providing burial for Polynices.

Tiresias confirms her honoring of the gods as he proclaims their judgment over the actions of Creon. Her motives, however, lack in purity, as she finds herself somewhat driven by the selfish desire to be united with her dead relatives. Though her primary purpose seems to be pleasing the gods, her secondary motive makes her honor slightly less impressive than that of Aeneas. In contrast with Aeneas and Antigone, Creon seems at least on the surface to fail miserably in honoring the gods as they leave him in torment with his wife and son dead as a result of his misdeeds, but he salvages some honor though his initial desire to please the gods of the city. He believes that the polis gods would never have a traitor honored i n the same respect as a hero, and though his belief is incorrect, he gains honor from doing his best to look out for what he believes to be in the best interest of the polis. As to Dido, the edict of the gods that she fall madly in love with Aeneas skews Dido's honoring of the gods because their command alters her life most dramatically. Her position of honoring the gods becomes somewhat confusing as she follows their will by loving Aeneas, yet in loving Aeneas, she wishes the destiny set forth by the gods for him altered. Her torn state leaves her lacking in the essential leadership honor displayed by the other three characters.

Throughout both the Aeneid and Antigone, the characters of Aeneas, Dido, Antigone, and Creon step forth as true leaders in their various contexts, but in accordance with both Greek and Roman standards of leadership, Aeneas rises above the rest as the strongest, most effective leader. While Antigone emerges from the pack as an almost equal rival by Greek standards, Aeneas' qualities of courage, honor, virtue, and manliness make him an incredible Greek leader, while his excellent portrayal of the stoic Roman leader, in harmony with his own nature places him clearly ahead of the other characters in Roman leadership effectiveness. Gender clearly plays a prominent role in the characterizing of a strong leader, thus Aeneas shines forth as the most effective leader while Antigone remains constrained by Society's gender bias.

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Author:: Mary Anne Winslow
Keywords:: Greek, Society, Masculinity, Aeneid
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