The Iliad and the Odyssey is a sort of scripture, but not religious. It is a touchstone for Greek tradition, something Greeks refer to as if everyone knows it by heart and use for all sorts of purposes in discussion and writing.

• The 'hero' (a Greek word) is a central figure-an individual, not a state/city
• a hero:
• of good birth
• rich
• strong
• can behave as badly as he wants-still a hero
• excellent in actions of warrior and leader
• born into leadership position
• this is sort of like 'nobility': if you are born to it, you are noble.
• goals of hero
• to get honor. Honor is other people's opinion and signs thereof, including possessions, including slaves
• The hero and others
• concerned with his own success and reputation
• does not aim at a collective goal
• there are, however, inevitably some collective goals‹preserving a city, that one's army win, etc.
• only other-directed insofar as he must attain others' good opinion (honor depends on others)
  
• a hero has inferiors
• they depend on him and expect his aid
• his aid garners their good opinion (i.e. it is part of his honor)
• it's important that the hero have good relations and good feelings and exhibit good behavior towards others, but they are not a primary component of his hero status, his goodness.
• the hero must take into account other people's interests, but helping them is merely instrumental to maintaining his own honor, power, and status and protecting himself and his inferiors.
• a hero is no less a hero and good for being callous.
• but being captured would diminish his goodness considerably: actually it might destroy it.
• the hero is never required to sacrifice any of his honor power or status for other-regarding concerns.
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• even Hector, who is the most other-regarding of heroes, holds the interests of others secondary to his own power and status.
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• possible problems with such an ethic:
  
• the hero values honor, which has as its chief component others' opinion of the hero. if the others do not value what the hero values, then he cannot rationally choose to follow what he values.
• furthermore, when everyone follows this system and pursues his own honor, power, and status, that may be bad for all the heroes as a whole, and is worse for their inferiors.
• The inferiors get the short end of justice: in a court case, for example, if there is a choice between deciding for an inferior and deciding for a social equal who will give me greater honor, I will screw my inferior. (bribe-eating kings in Hesiod).
• very socially conservative
  
• in the only case in the Iliad where an inferior stands up to superiors with a better argument (that the kings are wasting the communal resources), the superiors meet that threat with brute force and the other inferiors agree with it. Socially conservative superiors are the norm, and inferiors are conservative too.

• So what is good about this system for the society?
• unstable society exposed to external attack‹they need strong leaders and protectors!
• But that the heroes fulfill a positive social function is not enough: are they better than alternatives?
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• There is a catch-22 choice: the Homeric individual can choose honor, but that comes at the price of insecurity, for honor is contingent on others and is unstable. OR he can choose security without honor, but that is to abandon his societies values.
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• BUT the Homeric hero aims at clear and desirable and realistic goals. Honor, status, and power are within his reach.
• Each person has an interest in preserving a system that on the whole harms everyone. Heroes cannot trust one another and non-heroes cannot trust heroes.

• There were, of course, other value systems: women had a value system, as did youth, elderly, etc. But the Iliad and the Odyssey are primarily concerned with the value system of the top dogs, the males or good birth.
• What about nations? There were none.
• City-states, like the later Greek polises? Yes, there were urban-ish centers with their surrounding territory, but it seems that one noble could hold sway over more than one entity that would later be a polis. Also, it seems that all these communities were basically governed the same way: there is one person who is referred to as a king, and there are a group of nobles around them. Not empires, but also not quite like city states later.
• Laws? None that we could call laws.
• There was no writing!
• Courts? it seems that the king and the nobles held assemblies and decided things. Nothing like prosecutor and defense and a judge. Rather, there are the accused and the aggrieved and the nobles who decide. That's a bit vague, because we don't see much that really fits the description of what we are looking for.
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