Predestination and the Ancient Hero

A common theme runs through ancient epic literature in the form of fated destiny by the will of the supernatural. These stories often tell of venerated heroes who inevitably travel the paths set out by the gods. The vital component of predestination in epic literature is witnessed in the writings of Virgil, Homer and the ancient poets of Gilgamesh and Beowulf. Pre-willed fate is synonymous with ancient heroism and has been a major contributor to the transcending success of these epics.

The earliest example of the predestined hero is evidenced in the Epic of Gilgamesh (c 2500-1300 BC). Maynard Mack, Yale Professor of Literature, refers to the Epic of Gilgamesh as the first poetical heroic narrative in history (10). In this tale, Gilgamesh, the ruler of an ancient Mesopotamian city is willed by the gods to become a great king. Gilgamesh is united with Enkidu, his counterpart in the epic and also fated character. Shamash, the sun god, appoints the two to slay Humbaba: a great being of nature that dwells in the Cedar Forest. Gilgamesh's mother, Ninsun, clearly exposes his divine appointment in the prayer she offers up to Shamash: "You have moved him and now he sets out on a long journey to the Land of Humbaba to travel an unknown road and fight a strange battle" (Gilgamesh 20). In this text of The Archetypal Significance of Gilgamesh, Rivkah Kluger portrays the control Shamash holds over Gilgamesh's destiny. Ninsun understands that her son has been "touched by something greater, and there is nothing to do Gilgamesh 29). In her study of the epic, Kluger goes on to examine the importance of such an attribute of fate in literature. "This immediacy of being touched by fate, by destiny, is very impressive, showing the reality of being caught by something inner and greater, which forms our lives" (90). The impressiveness of fate is a quality Kluger examines as attractive to human nature.

Another ancient literary representative of this theme of divine control is Homer's The Odyssey. In The Odyssey, Odysseus the Trojan War hero takes an epic journey home to Ithaca after Troy has been burned. "[Odysseus] was destined to spend ten years wandering in unknown seas before he returned to his rocky kingdom" (Mack 97). Odysseus faces trial after trial in his seemingly unending journey home. Odysseus encounters Circe, a witch and femme fatal with whom he spends a year during his return to Ithaca. Circe eventually foreshadows what Odysseus must do when he leaves her island in order to return to Ithaca: "home you may not go unless you take a strange way round and come to the cold homes of Death and pale Persephone" (Homer 163). Odysseus is fated to travel to the underworld and seek the advice of Teiresias, the blind prophet. When Odysseus arrives and speaks to Teiresias, he is granted the specific knowledge needed in order for him to successfully travel home. Odysseus, like Gilgamesh, is left with no options but to follow the fate that has been laid out for him.

This same fatalism is evidenced in the Oedipus series as composed by the dramatist Sophocles in the late fifth century B.C. The story of Oedipus is about the fated son of the king and queen of Thebes who has been prophesied by an oracle to wed his mother and murder his father. R.P. Winnington-Ingram is a critical essayist who attributes the fate of Oedipus "to a malign superhuman power which had attended him from birth" (82). In effort to avoid such a doom, Oedipus' biological parents send him away to be murdered as a newborn. Oedipus is given to a messenger who preemptively gives the innocent baby to another ruling family of a neighboring city-state instead of killing him. Once older and aware of his prophesied doom, Oedipus flees his adopted parents only to unknowingly fulfill his destiny in Thebes. Once he understands the fulfillment of his destiny, Oedipus cries out in agony "Apollo, friends, Apollo, he ordained my agonies [...this grief] is mine alone, my destiny" (Sophocles, 428). Here, the "divine and human worlds inter-penetrate" and this penetration leads to the inevitable completion of Oedipus' fated destiny (Winnington-Ingram 85). Ingram believes such integration is vital to epic literature in order to produce a "tension between freedom and necessity" (89). Sophocles addresses this tension through the story of Oedipus and creates an intriguing question as to whether there is some external power controlling our lives.

This question posed in Oedipus is the same that is beseeched by Aeneas in Virgil's Aeneid. Also a Trojan War veteran, Aeneas faces his destiny after the war: "his mission, imposed on him by the gods, is to found a city, from which, in the fullness of time, will spring the Roman state" (Mack, 636). During his journey to complete this mission, he is captivated by Dido, a temptress who falls in love with him. Here, the Roman pagan gods play games with the love of Aeneas and Dido and Aeneas' final mission. Thomas Van Nortwick is an epic critic and claims that "divine will has been fragmented up to now in regard to Aeneas' stay in Carthage, Juno setting snares

Other ancient epics such as The Iliad, Beowulf and even the story of Moses contain these same traits of predestination and fate. Achilles faces the imminent doom of his life after offending the god Apollo. Beowulf is destined to save the Danes from the monsters hindering their kingdom. Moses comes to fully understand his inability to enter the Promised Land after guiding the entire nation of Israel to their safe future. "This clash of personal autonomy and divine will is always at the heart of the hero story" (Nortwick, 137). The theme of predestination and fate as willed by the gods is evident in much of ancient literature.

The theme of pre-willed destiny is a commonality in much of the ancient, epic literature. The ancient hero's fate is an integral contributor to the success many of these epics have shared throughout history.

Works Cited

Epic of Gilgamesh. Trans. N.K. Sanders. The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces.

Ed. Maynard Mack. New York: W.W. Norton, 1997. 13-42.

Homer. The Odyssey. The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces. Ed. Maynard Mack.

New York: W.W. Norton, 1997. 100-336.

Kluger, Rivkah Scharf. The Archetypal Significance of Gilgamesh. Einsiedeln, Switzerland:

Daimon Verlag, 1991.

Mack, Maynard, ed. The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces. New York: W.W.

Norton, 1997.

Nortwick, Thomas Van. Somewhere I Have Never Travelled. Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 1992.

Poschl, Viktor. "Basic Themes." Ed. Steele Commanger. Virgil. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.:

Prentice-Hall, Inc. 1966.

Sophocles. Oedipus the King. The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces. Ed. Maynard

Mack. New York: W.W. Norton, 1997. 392-433.

Winnington-Ingram, R.P. "The Oedipus Tyrannus and Greek Archaic Thought." Ed. Michael

J. O'Brien. Twentieth Century Interpretations of Oedipus Rex. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc. 1968.