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One of the earliest Greek philosophers, Xenophanes, explains that he criticizes Homer because 'from the beginning everyone has learnt according to Homer'.  He is right to suggest that Homer (? c. 750 BC) acquired a unique authority. For the Greeks had no Scripture corresponding to the Bible or the Koran; but they had the Iliad and the Odyssey, the two long poems ascribed to Homer. These were not an authoritative text, protected from criticism or expounded by authorized interpreters; and they did not constitute the formal doctrinal standard of any religious system. Still, they were similar to the Bible in so far as many Greeks with some education learnt the Homeric poems; over a millennium after the time of Homer, Augustine still learnt the poems. The Athenians heard them recited in public. An orator, appealing to Homer as a moral authority, remarks:

Your fathers took him to be such an excellent poet that they passed a law that every four years he, alone of all poets, should have his works performed by reciters at the All-Athenian festival.

From Homer many Greeks drew central and influential, not always conscious, elements of their conception of the gods and the relation of gods to human beings, and they drew a moral outlook and ideal that remained influential long after it had been thoroughly criticized.

It is not surprising, then, that later philosophers regularly quote and allude to Homer. He is not always an authority; indeed, he is sometimes a target, since thoughtful Greeks attack and challenge his views on morality and religion. To see what they thought they should challenge, we too should begin with Homer.

Homer may have lived in the middle of the seventh century, perhaps 150 years before the beginning of Greek philosophical thinking; he may have lived in Ionia, where Greek philosophy began, in one of the Greek communities of western Asia. He presents his views (or the views expressed in his poems) in narrative verse, not in philosophical argument; but the views are neither primitive nor unreasonable. If we see why they might reasonably appeal to common sense and experience, we will see why the earliest philosophers found it necessary to challenge common sense and experience as sources of reasonable beliefs.

The Homeric moral outlook is most easily understood from its conception of the ideal person. The leading characters of the Iliad are heroes of a past age; their goodness, excellence, or virtue were unequalled in Homer's own time. But what Homer counts as goodness is not the sort of thing that we might most readily think of as such.

Some of a person's goodness is outside his control. A good person must have been born into a good family, and must himself be rich and strong; Homer suggests that a person loses half his goodness on the day he becomes a slave. Though Homer does not consider those who win wealth without being nobly born, those who share his outlook refuse to recognize such people as genuinely good. The hereditary, social, and material components of a person's goodness are so important that, if you have them, you remain a good person, even if you behave badly. Paris fails to perform the actions of a good man, but remains a good man because he meets the other conditions for being good. To this extent a person's goodness is not in his control.

Some aspects of it, however, are in his control, and he is expected to display his excellence in his actions, characteristically and ideally the actions of a warrior and leader. A good man excels in battle, and his characteristic virtues are strength, skill, and courage. He is born into a leading place in society with a large share of its resources, and he has the virtues he needs to defend his place against attack. Hence he is expected to excel. Achilles' father sent him to Troy 'always to be best and to excel the others'; and, like the other main characters, Achilles tries to achieve pre-eminence in the qualities and actions that make a person's excellence. Achilles is the 'best of the Achaeans', above all because he is pre-eminent in these virtues; and these are the virtues his father had in mind when he wanted Achilles to excel the others. Self-defence also requires the intelligence to form plans, and the skill to persuade others to co-operate in carrying them out. But these virtues are secondary to those of the warrior.

The character of the excellent person is clearer from the sorts of goals he aims at. Achilles and Agamemnon quarrel, in the incident that begins the main action of the Iliad, because Agamemnon takes Briseis, who is Achilles' prize, and so slights Achilles' honor. Honor, as Homer conceives it, includes, primarily, other people's good opinion, and, secondarily, the material and social 'honors' that are both causes and effects of this good opinion. The hero is individualistic, in so far as he is concerned primarily with his own success and reputation; he does not aim primarily at some collective goal that includes the good of other people, or of a whole society. On the other hand, he is also other-directed, in so far as he must attend to the good opinion of the people who control the goods he aims at. Moreover, as Aristotle remarks, the hero must respect, not merely manipulate their opinion, since it defines the values that make his own aims worthwhile for him. . .

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