The Duel and the Daïs: Iliadic Warfare as Spectacle

Chapter 2 explores how the Olympians and the Iliad’s audience are positioned as viewers for the warfare in Books 1–4, and their roles defined. The first section focuses on the gods. Homer initially defines the gods’ role as viewers by drawing on two specific paradigms of live event: entertainment at a daïs (banquet), and the formal duel. Each of these paradigms carries its own suggestions as to the nature of the event, its stakes, and the relationship between viewer and action. As entertainment accompanying a daïs, the warfare may generate pleasure (terpein) for viewers whose critical role is to praise or blame the dramatic figure pulling the strings. As a spectacle modelled on the formal duel, the warfare is observed by implicated, partisan viewers, who are themselves a part of the conflict, and can become actors by entering the central space. Rich tension is generated by the combination of these paradigms. The chapter’s second section reads the opening of Book 4, in which the gods watch a duel from their daïs, as a mise en abyme of the spectacle experience offered by the Iliad to its listeners. On the one hand, the combination of duel and daïs shapes audience understanding of the kind of spectacle that they, too, are witnessing, and their own relationship to the action. On the other hand, the gods’ particular responses—both to the events on the ground and to their staging and direction—dramatize possible responses on the part of Homer’s audience.