Heroes, you either love them or question their choices.
The tales of these individuals date back to before the Common Era, with the oldest known hero being Gilgamesh, from the Epic of Gilgamesh —a literary work from Ancient Mesopotamia that details the journey of the King of Uruk. Gilgamesh was not your typical good hero. At the beginning of the story, he was a tyrant with an ego that might as well be bigger than the sky, for he was two- thirds a god and one-third a man.
You must be wondering, “How is a guy like him a hero?” People today and people of the past have different viewpoints. To ancient civilizations, being a hero did not necessarily mean possessing virtuous qualities; if anything, they were often flawed and morally ambiguous. Ancient heroes are driven by the desire for glory and honor, unlike the sense of duty or compassion for others that modern-day heroes often exhibit. Heroes of the past were all about embodying strength that surpasses that of ordinary humans, or showing divine influence. As in the case of the Epic of Gilgamesh, the gods showed an active and capricious nature when intervening in events.
Over the course of history, from having semi-divine ancestry to just being an ordinary, everyday person, hero stories have changed and deviated from their original storytelling. Now, in our modern- day era, heroes like Superman or Batman are the norm. These selfless and morally coded individuals became a sort of role model for what a person should be like. You wouldn’t expect heroes like Heracles (with his violent rages) or Achilles (with his hubris) to be a shining example of what righteousness is, would you?
The difference between ancient heroes and modern heroes is like day and night. This, of course, is to be expected as ancient civilizations loved their tragedies, especially the Greeks. Many heroes from the past don’t have their happily ever after.
Nowadays, people prefer superheroes, and with the growing popularity of side categories like anti-heroes or anti-villains, ancient heroes are rarely thought of. However, this doesn’t mean they are without a purpose. These heroes embodied idealized qualities of heroism and acted as cautionary tales against man’s flaws.
