Ritual Scenes in the <i>Iliad</i>: Rote, Hallowed, or Encrypted as Ancient Art?

To analyze ritual scenes in the Iliad, one first must contend with the myriad scenes scholars have deemed ritualistic. These include not only prayer, supplication, sacrifice, and oathmaking, 1 but also gift exchanges and hospitality,2 speechmaking and taunting,3 grieving and funeral ceremonies,4 and dressings and armings.5 Indeed, the whole performance of the Iliad has been described as a ritualized feature of Totenkult (Seaford 1994; Derderian 2001) or, less comprehensively, a performance of Todesdichtung permeated with themes of lament, lament itself being identified as a micro-ritual with discernible performance features (Tsagalis 2004). Expressly or not, Homerists have attuned their ears to rituals in the poem ever since Parry and Lord discovered the performance-contexts for bards in the Balkans (for example, Lord 1960:13-29). By analogy with those performances, the Iliad represents an artifact of an extensive tradition of ritual performance: the ritual performed was the poem.