Examples Of Kaloi Agathoi In The Iliad

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Taking even further, the phrase “kaloi kai agathoi” shows the aristocracy’s attitude towards themselves versus the have-nots as it means “the beautiful and the just”, implicitly connotating that everyone else is physically and morally twisted. This pushes the economic gap into dangerous levels—if the phrase hadn’t formed into words at Athens’ democratic peak after 474 B.C. Homer shows the manifestation of the thought in book two of Iliad when he describes Thersites’ appearance and personality in the same breath, “vain and without decency, to quarrel with princes with any word…was the ugliest man who came beneath Ilion. He was bandy legged and went lame of one foot, with shoulders stooped and drawn together over his chest, and above this his