Before we can investigate the violence that emanates from oath-making rituals in the Iliad, we must have an adequate understanding of the specific cultural premises and principles on which Homeric oath-making is based. In the introduction, an oath was defined as a ritualized configuration of a relationship between two or more individuals, a configuration specified by solemn utterances, gestures, and sometimes artifacts, that may be sealed by a symbolic act. The cultural premises behind such ritualized configurations are amply, if elliptically, demonstrated in the Iliad, especially in depictions of warriors who reject oaths, who tend to be in the throes of battle passion and oblivious to the pull of cultural constraints. Such depictions inversely prefigure the paradigm of the oath-honoring man. Exploring these premises will help to illuminate the principles behind oath-making in the Iliad. In addition, we will enlist some Near Eastern comparisons to shed light on some ancient Mediterranean oath-making principles, and we will outline the premises and principles of Homeric oath-making against the anthropology of ritual set out in Chapter 1. Achilles' oath by the scepter in Book 1 will be discussed at the end of the chapter as an example of the poetic highlighting and manipulating of some of those ritual principles.

OATH-MAKING PREMISES