I think it's probably a little of both. It's definitely a Homeric device, but at the same time, we think such things are useless and not worthy of line space, whereas the Greeks thought they were massively important and as deserving of wordage as battles.

Greeks did conceive of time differently--that's a long conversation--but The Iliad is indeed a story involving gods and the hero battles are usually presided over and protected by gods, hence the ritual space.