Like the ancient myth of Achilles, much of the Gilgamesh tradition promotes this ethos of the warrior, with it's accompanying ideal of an individual, heroic, tragic death, similar to the death of Patroclus in the Iliad. Near the end of the 12th tablet version, Gilgamesh asks. The 12th tablet version is the full version of, the Gilgamesh Epic. He, Gilgamesh, ask, near the end of this version, have you seen the one who fell in battle? And Enkidu who, his friend, responds, I have seen him. His father and his mother hold him in high honor. They lift up, literally lift up his head. And his wife mourns his death. This is something that is, that a warrior would probably look forward to and like to hear. To this scene, one may compare the death of Enkidu, as a consequence of his battle with Humbaba. Gilgamesh commands, not only the artisans to construct the monument, but also the inhabitants of Uruk, the city, together with all nature, to mourn his death, and sing sweet songs in his honor. The various Sumerian versions of the death of Gilgamesh that are older, contain many such praises, and laments for the fallen hero, and were probably used to bewail the death of other warriors, and it, they may be the oldest part of the Gilgamesh tradition. Now such glorification, of individual heroic death, has to be sure a long legacy. Within Europe, it's found within the Greco-Roman, warrior tradition. Thus in addition to Homer, which I just mentioned, the Spartan poet Tyrtaeus, from about 625 B.C.E., he expressed, in his so called Code of the Citizens Soldier, who dies for the immortal glory awarded him by the polis, his parents, and his posterity. He expresses the ideals of this soldier, and it goes as thus. And he who so falls among the champions, and loses his sweet life, so blessing with honors, polis, his father, and all his people, why such a man is lamented, alike by the young and the elders, and all his polis, all the city, goes into mourning and grieves for his loss. His tomb is painted out with pride, and so are his children, and his children's children, afterward, all the race this is his. His shining glory is never forgotten, his name is remembered, and he becomes an immortal, though he lies under the ground. So, here, in this poem, from Tyrtaeus, we have a warrior who dies and leaves children, and has family, and his mother and father. But really what gives him his immortality is, is not his, his children, which are mentioned in the, piece. But rather, the fact that he died for his polis, he died an honorable death. And now honorable death, predestines him, to an eternal name, eternal life. In her book, the Invention of Athens. Nicole Loraux, shows how the death of the individual citizen's solider, became in Athens, an occasion to praise the city, and thereby to articulate a collective identity and values to which a citizen should aspire. And it's called the epitaphios logos, of the fifth and the fourth centuries. These are funeral orations, delivered by an elected orator. To celebrate the war dead of that year. And the best known example, perhaps many of you know it already, is attributed to Pericles, after the first year of the Peloponnesian war. And we find it in Thucydides, in his histories, Pericles' oration, is an extended glorification of Athens. As the city for which these citizens died. And it urges the living to keep up the good fight. Quote, so died these men as became Athenians. You, their survivors, must determine to have as unfaltering a resolution in the field, though you may pray that it may have an happier issue. For this offering of their lives, made in common by them all, they each of them individually received that renown, that name, which never grows old. And for a sepulchre, not so much that in which their bones have been deposited, but that noblest of shrines wherein their glory is laid up to be eternally remembered upon every occasion on which the deed, story shall fall for its commemoration. The translation is by R Crawley. Commemoration of the war dead occupies such a central place in public ritual and space, ceme, cemeteries and monuments, and what have you, that it may be said that glorification of sacrifice on the battlefield, of the willingness of men to die and now women to die, but in the past, men to die and women to send their men to die, on the behalf of the country, is one of the chief expressions of statehood throughout history. This willingness to die. In as much as states must demand of their subjects, a readiness to die, it is not surprising that bravery and courage are often elevated to the highest civic virtues. In periods when the fighting was performed by an elite few, or the aristocracy, courage and manliness were seen as the mark of nobility. And what nobility meant was that, they had access to more land and had more wealth because they're the ones who protected the country. And as participation, embattled broad into the modern period. And in some places as citizen armies emerged, courage and manliness were democratized, so that all, it was incumbent upon all male citizens to be manly, and to serve, and to fight, and it was not something that was just confined to the nobility. The glorification of marital valor, and the cult of the war dead, have pro, provoked the scent and antipathy. In modern society, as well as in ancient society, thus Pericles' funeral oration, which I just asided, appears to be satirized in Plato's menexenus. Various streams of the Gilgamesh tradition which I've been mentioning a lot in, in the previous segments various streams of this tradition, challenged the ethos of the hero, seeking to make an enduring name for himself through marshall valor. An old Babylonian text, depicting the encounter between Gilgamesh, who was still mourning for his fallen warrior companion Enkidu, and the divine inn tavern keeper, Siduri. She's a divine she's a deity, and she's a tavern keeper, and has a long story we won't get into. And so, this divine tavern keeper, Siduri, responds to the ethos, the warrior ethos that Gilgamesh represents, the ethos of going out, and seeking an opportunity to die in battle, so that one can have an enduring name, that one, an everlasting name immortality. And, as an alternative to the restlessness of this warrior. Whose desire for an enduring name is match by his non-reproductive sexual exploits. He's involved in all kinds of activities, that really do not produce children. Siduri sets forth the enjoyment of a non-heroic life. One that seeks pleasure in food, wife and child. And, let me just read, that episode, tho, those lines for, for you. Gilgamesh, whither do you rove? The life you pursue you shall not find. When the gods created mankind, mortality they appointed for mankind, im, immortality, in their own hands they kept. You, Gilgamesh, let your stomach be full. Day and night, enjoy your meal. Day and night, keep on being festive. Daily make a festival. Party everyday. Day and night dance and play. Let your clothes be clean, let your head be washed. Don't be mourning. In water you may be bathe. Look down at the little one who holds your hand, your son, your child. Let a wife be ever festive in your lap. Probably a reference to sexuality. This is the lot of humans. That's from tablet three. Tzvi Abusch, a famous interpreter of the Gilgamesh Epic, and great [INAUDIBLE] who taught for many years at Brandeis University, offers a compelling interpretation of this text. Quote, the sexual act, is now also a procreative act, which brings into being the posterity. And future signaled by the child, the child in one's hand. That Siduri mentions. Progeny implies death, but a child is also a form of immortality. And in our passage, this is the only kind of immortality that Gilgamesh can hope for, unquote. An enduring name is to be made not in the death of the warrior, but rather in the birth of a namesake, of a name to carry on the warrior who dies. This text may not be an explicit critique of the glorification of death on behalf of the state, as in the Egyptian parody of professions that I just discussed. Yet rulers who depended on the willingness of their subjects to fight to the death, and who promised them an immo immortal name, in return for such sacrifice, will cer, certainly not have been very appreciative of its sentiments.
