The word aretê, which later comes to be translated as ‘virtue’, is in the Homeric poems used for excellence of any kind; a fast runner displays the aretê of his feet (Iliad 20. 411) and a son excels his father in every kind of aretê—as athlete, as soldier and in mind (Iliad 15. 642). This concept of virtue or excellence is more alien to us than we are apt at first to recognize.
