Poetic Justice and Its Inconsistencies Poetry As Tool for Moral Education in Ancient Greece

DOI

10.2991/assehr.k.210609.020How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Ancient Greek Poetry, Moral Education, Works and Days, Republic

Abstract

By examining Hesiod’s didactic poem, Works And Days and Homer’s epic, the Iliad and the Odyssey, this essay argues that although poets in ancient Greece encourage people to live a just life, this moral education has its limitations because of its inconsistency of its attitude towards gods’ judgments. On the one hand, in Works And Days, the Iliad, the Odyssey and the elegies the poets educate people to live a just life because gods such as Zeus judges people’s behaviors, awarding just people and cities while punishing those who do unjust ones. But on the other hand, the poems do not always stick to this pattern of divine justice and sometimes say either that misfortune can go to good people and bad people indiscriminately under gods’ arbitrary will or that unjust people can get away from punishments by manipulating gods’ judgments. This inconsistency in the poems makes a just life less desirable in the mind of young people and potentially gives way to unjust deeds.

Copyright

© 2021, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

Download article (PDF)

TY  - CONF
AU  - Shiyi Zhu
PY  - 2021
DA  - 2021/06/10
TI  - Poetic Justice and Its Inconsistencies Poetry As Tool for Moral Education in Ancient Greece
BT  - Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Language, Art and Cultural Exchange (ICLACE 2021)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 100
EP  - 103
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.210609.020
DO  - 10.2991/assehr.k.210609.020
ID  - Zhu2021
ER  -