Which option would you choose, in Achilles place?

I don’t happen to feel that dying in battle is heroic. For a soldier on active duty during a war, it is quotidian. It is also somewhat random. Some die, some don’t. Some may die because they are inept. Some, like Pat Tillman, are killed in disgraceful ways which their superiors then try to capitalize on by making them into artificial heroes (they tried the same thing with Jessica Lynch) All in all, this wartime “heroism” is a sordid business.

old age please.
dying in combat = lack of skill

give me old age, as dying a hero (especially in a war) means you are simply a tool for the powers that be. Of course, dying a hero by smothering a hand grenade by lying on it to protect your buddies lives is a whole nuther ball game, but give me old age anyday.

Old age, hands down. I wouldn’t even want to be in a battle if I were guaranteed to survive.

I’ll take old age. Death = death, heroic or not. Besides living a good life one can be proud of is pretty heroic.

I’m a coward lover, not a fighter. I want to swill the Geritol®.

Old age, please. Life is so good, I’m not ready yet.

I don’t want to be remembered for being good at killing people.

Old age and a comfortable life. What good is being honored for generations? It is nice to be remembered, but it doesn’t do the actual person a lot of good during their lifetime.

We’re still talking about Achilles now. Would we even know his name if he had opted to stay at home and grow old gracefully?

Good point, @cwilbur. Not that I agree that it matters, but I’m glad you said it. GA.

@cwilbur – Would we even know his name: perhaps we would have remembered him as a great scholar or poet or something like that. You can achieve a lot in a long life.

As pdworking said, you don’t really have a choice. I know the question is theoretical and says “what if”, but I think the fact that you don’t have a choice overshadows everything else in this debate. Heroes are normal people in extraordinary circumstances. And most die because they were not lucky enough to survive these very circumstances. But I don’t think anybody except fools sets out trying to become a hero (not even Achilles). It sort of just happens.

Today this sounds like the choice between cake or death but in a warrior society it would be no choice at all, since Achilles embodied the highest ideals of manhood.

Odysseus, who succeeded by intelligence and guile and died at home in old age (of a spear wound), was considered second best, by far. So, we are all prisoners of our times; and in this instance, I am glad of it.

@Zuma I just spent the last half hour watching Eddie Izzard clips on youtube! LOL4RL!!

Thank you all for your answers. The consensus seems to be with old age; not surprisingly. I’ll briefly explain where I’m coming from though.

Achilles choice affected others. In ancient society there was no social welfare system. Much of the family, and many servants, relied on the warrior to bring home treasures from war to retain their affluence. A servant in a good house was often treated better than a small business owner. There was no middle class, so without wealth and/or a famous name, a family would have a constant struggle to survive.

If he died an old man Achilles would have made no great contribution to the Greeks. Although by today’s standards the Battle of Troy was not over an issue worth a ten year war and thousands of deaths, in the culture of the time an insult to a king as powerful as Menelaus had to be punished, or surrounding nations would see them as being weak and quickly work to bring down the kingdom. Once this challenge was thrown down, again it could not be retracted or surrounding kingdoms would quickly attack the depleted army. The Greek army was on the edge of slaughter, and Achilles contribution to the battle essentially maintained peace in his homeland.

The rest really depends on what you want from life. @cwilbur had a good point, that we wouldn’t have heard of him if he chose the other option, but the significance of that depends on whether or not you want to be remembered.

For the record I am not sure what I would choose, there are too many angles to consider. I am quite sure I would never be offered this choice though, seeing as I would make a hopeless warrior.

@FireMadeFlesh Maybe if your mother dipped you in the river Styx…

Mighty Achilles is still remembered, though he died young. We also remember his comrade Ulysses. He died an old man, and lived through the same war.
Tennyson wrote of the choice “to rust unburnished, not to shine in use!”
I would pick the glorious death. Being old isn’t as pleasant.

@filmfann – speak for yourself. Being old has compensations: few, I grant you, but they do exist.

@bea2345 I always only speak for myself.

I am old, and in the way.

@pdworkin – maybe that is why humans live as long as we do: elders are supposed to be in the way.