Aristos

Aristos (ἄριστος) — “best” — is the superlative around which the archaic Greek hero is built. The title aristos Achaiôn, “best of the Achaeans,” is not a compliment but a structural position, contested across the Iliad among Achilles, Ajax, Diomedes, and Odysseus. To be aristos is to occupy the function the poem reserves for a single figure: the one whose death or whose deeds the song is for.

Nagy demonstrates that the title moves. At Iliad XVII 687–690, in the aftermath of Patroklos’s death, Menelaos says: “pephatai d’ ôristos Achaiôn, / Patroklos” — “the best [aristos] of the Achaeans has been killed, Patroklos, that is” (Nagy 1979). Patroklos had not overtly competed for the title. “Rather, he became the actual surrogate of Achilles, his alter ego… The death of Patroklos is a function of his being the therapôn of Achilles” (Nagy 1979). The aristos is occupied structurally: by ritual substitution, the surrogate dies for the principal, and the title migrates with the death.

The concept is load-bearing because it exposes the ritual substrate of the Iliad. The aristos is not the strongest fighter in a realistic war-narrative; he is the figure whose death the hero-cult needed. Achilles’ kleos is secured by Patroklos’s death; Achilles’ own death, foretold but outside the Iliad, secures the kleos of the epic tradition itself. The vocabulary of aristos is where the epic remembers that it began as cult.

Relationships

• nagy-best-of-achaeans
• kleos-aphthiton
• hero-cult
• gregory-nagy
• iliad

Primary sources

• nagy-best-of-achaeans (Nagy 1979)
• iliad (Homer, XVII 687–690)