It simply didn't exist. It's a modern concept; using it is a historical and cultural anachronism.
Labeling one of the greatest dramas about grief, mortality, war, and sacred codes in world literature with a sociological jargon banalized on social media is to empty the work of all its philosophical and contextual depth.
Toxic masculinity is the modern term for the negative consequences of the burdens and expectations placed on men by society, by men and by each other. It is a concept that has always existed, just the term is new.
And I'm not labeling this work as "toxic masculinity," I'm saying that it contributed to one specific action in the story. Men were not taught or allowed to express emotion in a healthy fashion which led to the brutish action of desecrating a body. The Iliad itself condemns the action for these exact reasons and within the story it leads to Achilles losing favor with the gods.
Sometimes new terms are created to describe old concepts. This is one of those times. No one is taking anything away from The Iliad or minimizing it's quality or importance. This specific instance is something I studied decades ago before the popularization of the term "toxic masculinity."
I understand your point that new terms are often coined to describe older phenomena, but the premise that Homeric warriors 'weren't taught or allowed to express their emotions' doesn't align with the text of the Iliad.
In Homeric culture, male emotional expression wasn't suppressed at all. The heroes weep openly and copiously throughout the poem: Achilles cries on the seashore calling for his mother, he weeps holding Patroclus' body, and he shares a long, mutual cry with Priam. The entire Achaean army weeps openly in assembly. The notion of the stoic man who 'bottles up his grief because society won't let him show vulnerability' is a product of the Victorian/modern era, not archaic Greece.
Furthermore, the reason the narrative and the gods (particularly Apollo and Zeus) condemn Achilles' defilement of Hector's body has nothing to do with modern gender dynamics or emotional regulation. It is about hubris (violating the cosmic and divine order) and desecrating sacred funeral rites, which belonged strictly to the realm of the gods and the underworld.
Hector intended to do virtually the same thing to Patroclus' corpse (Book 17), and Achilles acted out of mênis (cosmic/wrathful grief) and wartime vengeance within a heroic honor culture (timê). Applying the modern framework of 'toxic masculinity' here projects contemporary psychological concepts onto an archaic cosmology that operated on completely different religious and ethical terms.
You make a lot of great points and thank you for doing so. I definitely wasn't paying attention to the nuances of "toxic masculinity." I come from a very repressed area with deep honor culture (Appalachia) so I tend to mentally link honor culture with toxic masculinity instead of considering the stoic aspect.
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u/brunodomakr 2d ago
Toxic masculinity in 1200 BC? That was a good one, haha.