The Cleomedes Effect

“Does it make him a hero, Dr. Hieler?” I asked.

Dr. Hieler scanned the paper with his eyes as he eased into his chair. “Who?”

“Nick. If the people who survived are stronger and all about peace like the news says, does that make him a hero? Is he like the millennium’s version of John Lennon? Peace-spreader with a gun?”

“I understand that it would be easier for you to think of him as a hero. But, Valerie, he did kill a lot of kids. Probably not a lot of people are going to think of him as a hero.”

-- Jennifer Brown, Hate List

The above exchange caught my attention in Jennifer Brown's excellent novel about the aftermath of a school shooting. That final paragraph sounds reasonable enough, but it brought to mind the story of Cleomedes of Astypalaea.

I've written about him in the past, but those essays slid into the gutters of cyberspace long ago. Hence I might as well make him the subject of my first Goodreads blog post.

Cleomedes isn't one of the better-known figures from Hellenic legend. That's why I named my main World of Warcraft character after him, many years ago. Other players snatched up all the more popular ancient Greek names, including Telemachus (which I'd wanted because it was my character name in City of Heroes, my previous MMO). But no one had claimed Cleomedes, and thus it became mine. Later, during my years at 5th Planet Games, I used it as my screen name on our player-facing chats and forums.

I first learned about Cleomedes as an undergraduate, whilst ensconced in the University of Newcastle's Robinson Library. I'd often go there for research and sustenance (the cafeteria offered a good line of stotties). In this case, the former concerned an essay on Sophocles' Antigone (and the latter cheese & pickle). One of the books I dipped into was The Heroic Temper: Studies in Sophoclean Tragedy, and there on the page Cleomedes raged.

Cleomedes of Astypalaea boxed at the Olympic Games during the early 5th century BC. Neither he nor his opponent prospered. Cleomedes killed Iccus of Epidaurus, and the judges denounced it as foul play. One boxer lay dead. Disgrace hounded the other from Olympia.

Cleomedes returned to Astypalaea, stalked its streets, unleashed his fury on the school. Pausanias says he tore away one of its pillars. Plutarch tells of how he punched it in half. But the roof came down. The children screamed. Then they died.

The townspeople seized rocks, hurled them, tried to stone the murderer to death. Cleomedes ran. He sprinted to the temple of Athene, leapt into the sacred chest. The boxer held it shut from the inside. The townspeople couldn't match Cleomedes' strength, couldn't force the lid. They smashed the chest to pieces instead. But no man lay on the temple floor amid the shattered wood. Cleomedes had vanished.

Before Wikipedia, there was the Oracle at Delphi. Thus the people of Astypalaea went there for an explanation. The priestess of Apollo gave them one: The gods had elevated Cleomedes, lifted him above the realm of mortal men. He was now a hero. The Oracle commanded the townspeople to honour him. And so they did.

As I say, the dialogue from Hate List made me think of Cleomedes, for obvious reasons. But his story's fascinating in its own right. It illuminates the nature of ancient Greek heroism, when hero status wasn't about making the world a better place. It was about doing things other people couldn't do, wouldn't dare do, and demonstrating the unyielding fury of the heroic temper.

In one of those long-gone essays mentioned above, I coined the term "Cleomedes Effect" to denote this -- the attribution of hero status on the basis of magnitude rather than morality. Hence I'll throw it up there as the title of this post, and hopefully it might interest a sleepless reader or two.