What does the celebration of heroes reveal about attitudes to the past?

Authors Avatar by gregapage (student)

On What the Celebration of Heroes Reveals About Attitudes to The Past

The historical figures of Ludwig van Beethoven, Captain Scott and Genghis Khan, would not be a grouping one would typically consider, but they do have something critical in common, they all, to differing degrees, have a fan base and are considered heroes to some people.  Seldom has the annals of history recorded the lives of regular people, instead prefers to look at specific notable individuals.  Throughout human history there has been an apparent urge to revere certain people.  Though the original definition meant bold, heroic has come to encompass a myriad of criteria; perhaps a set of moral standards people like such as Jesus’ preaching of “love thy neighbour” or Oscar Schindler’s selfless acts, perhaps martyrs like Joan of Arc or Martin Luther King, perhaps militaristic leaders like Lord Nelson and General Custer - it is clear the term heroic can mean a vast array of positive attributes to a historical figure.  Great difficulty arises when using a hero as a model of his or her time because as much myth can surround individuals as fact.  As such, the hero is a deeply problematic entity in historiography, as they are not a realistic insight into the life of regular people (social history).  Instead, hero celebration is a valuable historical tool for assessing the mind-set at the time and since.  Using a vast multitude of examples, historiography and even psychology, this essay will explore the great deal that hero veneration reveals about the attitudes to and perceptions of the past.

During the Neolithic period of prehistory, hero celebration took the form of ancestor worship.  For the first time people became connected to the land that they farmed and felt an intrinsic attachment to it.  This is because of dropping nomadic hunter-gather to agrarianism due to environmental at the end of the Mesolithic.  Dedicated to the dead and akin to churches burial chambers, megaliths and stone circles were immense feats of engineering, that took an immense effort to construct for something immensely important (Pryor 2003).  The Neolithic practise of ancestor worship reveals much about their attitudes to the past.  They took solace in their ancestors and felt connected them, who unlike history which records the lives of individuals, prehistoric man celebrated their heroes in a rather a generic way of all those who lived before them.  Neolithic man took great solace from their hero worship, from their ancestral landscapes (Pryor 2003).  The fact that hero celebration has existed for as long as humans have farmed shows the great universality of hero celebration, it is not limited to culture nor historical period but an integral feature of the psyche.  

From the 8th Century BC Ancient Greece, heroes played a critical role to their culture and theology.  Grandiose mythic stories surround the heroes of this time.  Often portrayed with a super human attributes, such as strength or courage or superhero-like abilities, indeed the orthodox definition of the word ‘heroic’ is that of bravery.   Once again, the heroes of the antiquity show incredible parallels to the heroes of today.  The story of Hercules is remarkably similar to that of the Batman story, popular from the 1940s.  Both characters are bold, have clear a nemesis and try to do good, to serve their contemporises, Greece and Gotham respectively.  From the 4th Century BC the concept broadened and Aristotle considered heroes to be the opposite of barbarism, as such, role models for Greeks.  Cicero took this idea further in the 1st Century AD by claiming heroic sacrifice to be the highest duty of one’s fatherland.  That is to say that to die for the Empire was a heroic achievement, a notion prevalent in the ancient world until the Fall of Rome.  Indeed, the dwindling of the cult of death for the Empire, after Constantine’s Christian conversion, is cited as a key reason for the fall of Rome - so necessary and prevalent it was.  Heroes in antiquity were subject to change because of stories being told by word-of-mouth but from this period on with the records of history, these stories could become more ridged, though, of course, still subject to change and manipulation.

Join now!

Perhaps one of the most revealing heroes to affect attitudes to the past is King Alfred the Great who has had a interesting effect on historiography, during the Victorian era in particular.  Championed by historian Edward Freeman as “the most perfect character in history” (Yorke 2003), King Alfred undoubtedly achieved much during his reign.  Considered to be the ‘Father of England’ Alfred resisted the Viking hoards and formally organised the military as well as being a model king.  He is perceived as being very wise and learned in addition to being a great fighter despite having a debilitating illness, thought ...

This is a preview of the whole essay