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The only thing more amusing than your ahistorical just-so stories is your confidence that you'd totally p0wn GK Chesterton.
What a truly miserable attitude.
However, as I have pointed out many times, while Rome and Greece and other ancient societies were certainly patriarchal, there is ample evidence (in poems, other writings, and contemporary histories) that feelings of love and affection for wives and children (including daughters!) were not some alien innovation introduced by modernity.
You cite the Iliad and the Odyssey as being all about the bros, nothing but bros, ignoring that the entire reason for the war was the abduction of Helen. You will probably say that was just men fighting over a bauble and the dishonor of having a bauble stolen from them, but Homer, and later poets such as Euripedes and Herodotos, speak of much more complex motivations. Menalaus loved his wife, and whether she betrayed him with Paris or was forcibly abducted depends somewhat on the narrative, but her own thoughts on the matter are expressed as well.
And in the Odyssey, Odysseus's primary motivation is trying to get home to his wife and son! And Penelope is a figure of nobility and faithfulness who is worthy of his devotion.
Try reading what you cite.
As I wrote,
Maybe 5-10% of the lines are about family life. The majority of the content is about brothers-in-arms doing things. The foundational works of Greek culture are simply not about family. If they treasured family life over “brotherhood” (using the term very broadly) then it would have comprised a majority of their bedrock literature. Most of the time they are very far from their families. This is on purpose, it tells you their values. I’m sure you’ve read the works, of course, so you know this.
It's an epic about a war. War and brotherhood was a central feature in that story. It does not support your argument that the ancients did not place a high importance on family.
It's not just the battles and the gods and the monsters that are important. It's *why" they did all those things. The climax of a story may be the only place a hero's motivation is mentioned. That doesn't mean it's not important.
Your reasoning and your theories are very shallow.
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Under what rubric are you claiming that the Odyssey is “bedrock literature” but Antigone — which is not only centrally about family obligations, but also primarily about a woman — isn’t? If anything, shouldn’t Antigone be a more example of what constitutes “Greek civilization”, as it was written when Greece was at a considerably higher level of technological and artistic development than it had been when the Odyssey was composed?
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