ABSTRACT
The poet-critics become important, especially in seeing how a process of character building begun by Homer found for itself a fine and accomplished form in Virgil. Are the words pagan and secular equivalents? Was Virgil’s notion of ideal character secular? Is only a secular individual fit to be the leader? Did this notion of ideal character perhaps facilitate the Industrial Revolution and the achievements that followed?
Also looking at the changes wrought by religion and the civil wars, the chapter goes on to examine how the heroic ideal had changed and altered the very meaning of war in Virgil, including the role of war in the making of the hero. It then goes into how this concept of hero changed further, especially in Milton, into that of the anti-hero, taking stock of changing notions of heaven and hell and shifting human ideals and the transformation of the mind into a battlefield.
In addition, this chapter does note Valmiki’s concept of the ideal hero and the unfortunate way India has received and responded to it.
