Homer: That Timmy is a real hero! Lisa: How do you mean, Dad? Homer: Well, he fell down a well, and… he can’t get out. Lisa: How does that make him a hero? Homer: Well, that’s more than you did!
Hero inflation is not just for the dead or the military.
I don’t think this would have been true, at least in that time and place. Warfare in Archaic Greece—i.e. when Homer was writing—was dominated by hoplites, expensively equipped heavy infantry drawn from the citizen classes. Later on, peltasts and other light infantry became more common, and were sometimes recruited from unfree classes (especially in Sparta, which fielded large numbers of helot auxiliaries), but also came as mercenaries or from the lower free classes.
Homer, about 2800 years ago :
Homer, about 20 years ago:
Hero inflation is not just for the dead or the military.
Even the fact that he was probably only fighting because he’d been enslaved.
I don’t think this would have been true, at least in that time and place. Warfare in Archaic Greece—i.e. when Homer was writing—was dominated by hoplites, expensively equipped heavy infantry drawn from the citizen classes. Later on, peltasts and other light infantry became more common, and were sometimes recruited from unfree classes (especially in Sparta, which fielded large numbers of helot auxiliaries), but also came as mercenaries or from the lower free classes.