A person is insulted when the treatment he receives is worse than the treatment his worth entitles him to receive. It is, in Aristotle’s definition, ‘a desire, accompanied by pain, to take apparent revenge for apparent insult’.Īnger is triggered by insult, then, and so is connected to worth ( aretê) and to honour ( timê). It is not a somatic feeling, as nausea and giddiness are, though it is usually accompanied by such feelings – trembling and blushing, for example, and the sense of seeing red. Plato was well aware of the problem these opposing demands create, both in the soul of the warrior and in the society he inhabits: ‘Where,’ he asks, ‘are we to find a character that is both gentle and big-tempered at the same time? After all, a gentle nature is the opposite of an angry one.’ When, in the opening line of the Iliad, Homer asks the goddess to sing ‘the anger of Peleus’ son Achilles’, a large part of what he is asking her to do is to explore this opposition, its sources and effects.Īnger or rage ( mênis, thumos, orgê) is an emotion, a mixture of belief and desire. At the same time, he must be gentle to his friends and allies, and able to join with them in group activities both military and peaceful. He must be brutal and ready to risk brutality. He must be able, physically and psychologically, to plunge a sword into the body of another human being, and to risk having a sword plunged into his own.
A warrior hero such as Ajax, Hector or Achilles must be willing to fight in hand-to-hand combat day after day.