that he has in mind "the aristocracy of Rome, Arabia, Germany, and Japan, the Homeric heroes, the Scandinavian vikings."
It is chiefly the Homeric heroes that we must bear in mind in order to understand what Nietzsche wished to make clear to his contemporaries. We must remember that he had been professor of Greek at the University of Bâle, and that his reputation began with a book devoted to the glorification of the Hellenic genius (Origin of Tragedy). He notices that, even at the period of their highest culture, the Greeks still preserved a memory of their former character of masters. "Our daring," said Pericles, "has traced a path over earth and sea, raising everywhere imperishable monuments both of good and evil." It Was of the heroes of Greek legend and history that he was thinking when he speaks of "that audacity of noble races, that mad, absurd, and spontaneous audacity, their indifference and contempt for all security of the body, for life, for comfort." Does not "the terrible gaiety and the profound joy which the heroes tasted in destruction, in all the pleasures of victory and of cruelty," apply particularly to Achilles?[1]
It was certainly to the type of classic Greek that Nietzsche alluded when he wrote "the moral judgments of the warrior aristocracy are founded on a powerful bodily constitution, a flourishing health without forgetfulness of what was necessary to the maintenance of that overflowing vigour—war, adventure, hunting, dancing, games, and physical exercises, in short, everything implied by a robust, free, and joyful activity."[2]
That very ancient type, the Achaean type celebrated by Homer, is not simply a memory; it has several times reappeared in the world. "During the Renaissance there was a superb reawakening of the classic ideal of the
- ↑ Nietzsche, Généalogie de la moral, trad, franç., pp. 57–59.
- ↑ Nietzsche, op. cit. p. 43.
