Homeric Warfare

[poliphilo]

Homer establishes the convention that during any battle the biggest cheeses will seek one another out and indulge in speeches and hand to hand combat without any interference from the plebs.

It's the beginning of an unbroken tradition that passes through Shakespeare to modern Hollywood. In Mel Gibson's The Patriot, our righteous Mel seeks out the opposite commander on the battlefield (they have a history) and engages him in single combat. It is purely Homeric.

There is of course the slight difference that Homer didn't play favourites. Everyone in his scheme of things, Trojan and Greek, is equally amoral and equally tragic. In Mel's film, he (Mel) is noble and patriotic and a man of the people, while the enemy is a rancid, hi-falutin sadist. This kind of moralism is foreign to true epic (which derives honour from honouring the enemy.) It seeps into the tradition through Christianity.

Another thing about Homeric battles: when the two heroes engage one another normal time stops. A space is cleared- though the battle is still raging round them- and they have leisure to go through a ritual that always ends with the vistor stripping his victim's body of its armour. Think about it: you're in the middle of a battle and you're fiddling with straps and buckles and heaving a corpse about and no-one takes advantage of this to stop and skewer you with their spear.

Homer's sense of time is like the sense of space in pre-renaissance paintings. The more important you are, the more time you take up. There is always enough time for a hero to strip his victim. The hero exists in a bubble of ritual time that is isolated and protected from the much faster time of the rabble.

Comments

[archyena.livejournal.com]

Actually, I think it would be pretty neat to depict it like that in film, as if they occupy their own time. With a battle raging in slow motion around them as they fight at "normal speed" and then in reverse when the focus is on the main battle.

[beentothemoon.livejournal.com]

This comparison can also be made with Milton, who exists out of time and space as icons and ideals versus Shakespeare, with his vivid and fluid characters.

[besideserato.livejournal.com]

I think I attempt to mimic the Homeric battle style in my life. How delightfully absurd a notion, but so... appropriate.

[catvalente.livejournal.com]

Beauty has ritual time, too.

Homer takes time to have someone stop and admire and spell out the lineage of staffs and helmets and trees quite often.

So does heritage--two guys at some point meet in battle and realize that they're cousins, so instead of fighting to the death they drop down and have tea in the middle of a battle. No, really.