To say that the battlefield is a space purely devoted to military activities seems so banal that it risks stating the obvious. In this light, it may come as a surprise when we suggest that it is this military space that shapes the various forms of Iliadic war (ἀνδροκτασίαι, smaller-group combat, formal duels, ἀριστεῖαι), and that its rather vague topography is part of a sophisticated staging of the fighting, pointing to important themes that permeate the entire epic. In fact, as I am about to suggest, the presentation and the function of military space entail important consequences for the work’s perception of and outlook on the heroic world.

The study of military space will be organized on the basis of the main forms of fighting: the ἀνδροκτασίαι, the smaller-group combat, the formal duels, and the ἀριστεῖαι.

This introductory passage is followed by an extended simile that gives the impression of having been intercalated between the panoramic view of the two clashing armies and the subsequent close-ups on the individual warriors.

Although the simile refers to the preceding narrative, the narrator is well aware that he is now inviting his listeners to adopt a significantly different view of the fighting armies. Not simply adding material to the previous description, he is rather “mapping” the combat action onto a different mental grid, by temporarily stepping outside of story space and “leaping” into what I shall call paratopic space (παρά + τόπος ‘place’), the extratextual and atextual space of the Homeric simile.

The actual fighting is presented in four distinct phases, each one containing a short catalogue of individual conflicts. In order to make this division clear for his audience, the narrator views the battle in terms of four spatial snapshots. The first snapshot (Iliad IV 457–472) is carried out in three movements, which create smaller spatial units: (1) Antilokhos kills the Trojan Ekhepolos; (2) Elephenor drags the corpse of Ekhepolos to seize his armor; (3) Agenor kills Elephenor and the battle flares up around his body.

Next, the narrator moves his camera to the corpse of Ekhepolos being dragged away from under the arrows by Elephenor, who wants to take his armor (Iliad IV 463–466): we “see” him from a side angle dragging the dead Trojan by his feet, while missiles are flying over his head. This could have been the end of the scene, if the poet had wanted to allow Elephenor to despoil Ekhepolos. Instead, it is only the prelude to the camera’s ensuing move to a third warrior, the Trojan Agenor, who upon seeing what is going on strikes Elephenor in the ribs. The narrator makes sure to describe this event by inverting the regular order of aggressor-victim: we first follow Agenor’s spotting of the unprotected side of Elephenor, who bends over the corpse of Ekhepolos (468), and only then see the spear stabbing his ribs (469). This technique of backward zooming, which is also employed just before the death of Hektor at the hands of Achilles (Iliad XXII 321–327), constitutes a “visual allusion” to an ensuing action; the narrator capitalizes on the visualization of a specific spot of a very limited space—the ribs of the enemy—and only then mentally follows the course of the future victor’s deadly weapon. By entwining temporal and spatial elements, he throws into sharp relief the climactic tension of this first section of ἀνδροκτασίαι. As the scene shifts to massive fighting over the body of Elephenor, the audience realizes that during these ἀνδροκτασίαι it has been visualizing nothing else than a single string of interrelated killings. The poet’s covert comment has by now become overt: the catalogue has been turned into drama.

In this third snapshot, space is viewed through the detailed descriptions of the wounding of the two heroes. The symmetrical presentation of material includes a balanced emphasis on shocking minutiae: the appalling picture of Diores’ guts being spilled on the ground, vividly described with the triple alliteration χύντο χαμαὶ χολάδες, and the double zooming in on the fatal wounding of Peiros throw into sharp relief the cruelest aspect of war. From the first snapshot, where the catalogues of ἀνδροκτασίαι were turned into dramatic encounters, and the second where accidental death signaled the ironic twist of human fate, the narrator offers a view of story space in its most gruesome and appalling details.

In this type of retreat scene (as in Iliad XIII 566, XIII 648, XIV 408, and XVI 817), the narrator offers a telling variation of a hero’s withdrawal among his companions to save his life: in XIII 566–570 and 648–655, Meriones manages to kill an opponent by striking him in the back, at the very moment he is withdrawing into the mass of his companions; in XIV 408 Ajax wounds Hektor by hurling a stone at him, also just as the Trojan hero is retreating into the host of his own companions. This sophisticated variation is a disguised allusion to the death of Patroklos in Iliad XVI, where the hero finds himself away from the protection of the army: after being hit from behind (in the back) by Apollo (791–792 στῆ δ’ ὄπιθεν, πλῆξεν δὲ μετάφρενον εὐρέε τ’ ὤμω / χειρὶ καταπρηνεῖ) and Euphorbos (806–808 ὄπιθεν δὲ μετάφρενον ὀξέϊ δουρί / ὤμων μεσσηγὺς σχεδόθεν βάλε Δάρδανος ἀνήρ), he retreats and tries to find refuge among the multitude of his ἑταῖροι. It is exactly at this moment, when Patroklos aims at leaving the perilous space of isolation and plunging himself into the protective space of companionship, that Hektor strikes the fatal blow:

In this way, the Iliad makes a telling gesture to its audience, who are invited to realize the profound paradox of heroism: to acquire κλέος within warrior society by isolating oneself from it, that is, by fighting as a πρόμαχος away from the protection of the army.

The formal duels between Patroklos and Sarpedon, Patroklos and Hektor, and Achilles and Hektor are instructive for exploring how space functions in individual fighting between members of the heroic elite. Given that these three encounters are connected and constitute integral parts of the process that culminates in the death of Hektor, they allow for a comparative analysis in terms of spatial organization. As I will show, they comprise a three-step climactic process

In the duel between Achilles and Hektor the first violation of expectations ends with a second, even more sinister: Hektor is led to believe in the illusion of an actual heroic duel, since he thinks that his brother Deiphobos is standing next to him and that they will face Achilles together. Given that “standing next to” indicates solidarity and comradeship, the audience realizes that by manipulating the typology of dueling space, the Iliad knocks down conventional heroic themes one by one, like skittles. This climactic encounter of the epic’s greatest heroes is thus a crisp synopsis of the poet’s attitude to thematizing space and using it as a covert criticism of the fallout of the warrior code.

(3) Finally, the victor stands above his victim (in the case of Patroklos the victor is Hektor, not Apollo or Euphorbos) and pulls out his spear by pushing against the body of his dead opponent with his feet. The three aforementioned duels present an ascending climax of dramatic intensification: Sarpedon asks Glaukos to help him (Iliad XVI 492–501) and the latter prays to Apollo (XVI 514–526). Patroklos puts his foot on Sarpedon’s chest and pulls out his spear, while the Myrmidons stand close holding his horses (XVI 503–507). Things become more tragic after the duel between Patroklos and Hektor: the Trojan hero reminds Patroklos of his arrogance, Patroklos foretells that Hektor will die at the hands of Achilles, and Hektor angrily replies that he may kill Achilles first (XVI 830–861), standing on the chest of Patroklos and withdrawing his spear (XVI 862–863). Finally, in the duel between Achilles and Hektor, the rapid exchange of speeches (three by Achilles, two by Hektor) quickens the dramatic pulse: Achilles reminds Hektor of his own arrogance when he killed Patroklos, Hektor begs him to return his body to his parents in exchange for an enormous ransom, Achilles in an uncontrollable outburst of anger reveals his almost bestialized self, Hektor prophesies Achilles’ death at the hands of Paris and Apollo, and finally Achilles replies that he will accept his fate when the gods decide his death (Iliad XXII 331–366). When the speeches are over, every Achaean soldier who comes close pierces the dead body of Hektor with his spear (Iliad XXII 370–371).

In this constellation, those standing nearby and (especially in the case of Hektor) piercing the deceased’s body with their spears identify with the previous duel, collectivizing the experience of the one-on-one heroic performance of first-rank warriors. A victorious battle constitutes a powerful experience for the great heroes and the armies standing behind them, and the body of the fallen enemy becomes a vehicle for personal and collective empowerment. In the event of a heroic performance, then, it is not only the main warriors who embrace the glory, but anyone who claims a stake in the fight is entitled to his own share of heroism. The inherent spatial boundedness of the warrior’s fallen body at the end of a heroic duel becomes apparent in its topological oscillation: the body is neither here nor there, as both armies claim it with ferocious tenacity.

The nonidentification of the duel’s physical space not only calls attention to the actual combat, but also offers a dramatic forum for presenting the desire for self-characterization in the fighting tradition of the heroic community. When victorious warriors take control of the immediate topology of the battlefield, they construct a public image of their heroic selves. This offers a unique opportunity to other preeminent heroes on the victim’s side to move forward through the army’s ranks and rise to the center stage of communal attention, by defending the body of their fallen comrade. In the purely agonistic hierarchy of warrior society, the limelight of the space around the body provides the perfect forum in which to visibly establish one’s eminence: the closer one stands to the place where the duel happened, the stronger his claim to heroic status. Heroic duels best epitomize the spatial reorganization of social relations. The center stage where the duel takes place becomes a spectacular space for the overpowering of an opponent. The implication is that by coming close to Hektor’s corpse and repeating what Achilles first achieved on his own (piercing Hektor’s body with the spear), ordinary, anonymous soldiers appropriate the space that Hektor occupied so proudly on the battlefield, disregard differences in status, and call for their own victory.

These three successive camera shots invalidate all claims of a static aspect of space in duels. Contrary to previous beliefs that space is suddenly frozen when it comes to a duel, the narrator’s eye creates a dynamic scene, with first a sidelong but close-up view of the two warriors, and second a face-to-face view, which in the case of the death of Patroklos is profoundly—and significantly—undone. The narrator leads his camera behind each warrior who takes part in the duel, and changes his position to track the direction of the weapons thrown against the opponent. This zooming technique “spaces” duel-time into distinct parts, which are visualized as space-blocks, more or less in the manner of camera frames shot by the main narrator. The death of Patroklos offers much to explore, especially since the Achaean hero virtually loses his orientation, cannot properly retreat, and is fatally wounded by Hektor. In this light, the audience is invited to evaluate the importance of space for any warrior: whereas in the case of Sarpedon Patroklos emerges victorious by controlling the space where the fighting will take place, in the ensuing episode his disorientation leads to his death. This is also the case with Achilles’ pursuit of Hektor around the walls of Troy, the more so since this climactic encounter is intricately entwined with spatial constraints. Hektor, knowing that there is no space favorable to him for fighting Achilles, refuses to stand and fight and runs around the walls. In other words, he tries to nullify the very notion of a framed space, the basic prerequisite for the duel. This is done the same number of times that Patroklos was disoriented before being killed by Hektor. Seen from this angle, these three interrelated duels are a poetic exercise on space, which thus becomes the crucial test for viewing a duel.

Whether seen as a strategic device for promoting individual κλέος and accentuating heroic ideology, or a heuristic tool in the topological planning of fighting and the unfolding of the plot, Iliadic ἀριστεῖαι comprise a dense network of narrative snapshots of various competing heroic agendas that consistently create false expectations—credible scenarios that remain permanently suspended. Major warriors get involved in a series of heroic exploits where space constitutes a critical connection between individual power, recognition within the warrior community, and implicit claims to preeminence among the army. Moreover, in an epic where excellence on the battlefield represents a figurative locus for confirming one’s status, the ἀριστεία as a form of heroic distinction is always tied to the ebb and flow of the plot’s currents.

The narrative strategy of creating this continuous action space is fundamental to the Iliadic staging of war. It allows the audience to “see and follow” the rise and fall of warriors in terms of their illusion of ultimate success. Great heroes excel, and entertain for a moment the thought that they will reach each other’s space (the city of Troy or the Achaean ships) victorious and bring the war to an end, but they are all made to realize, in a very painful way, that the epic’s Kriegsanschauung is one of suspension, lack of resolution, and tormenting oscillation.

When placed against the backdrop of a whole range of military activity, the politics of space reveal the interdependence of individual and communal identity formation. Agamemnon’s superb performance on the battlefield in Iliad XI, as highlighted by the expanded area in which he triumphantly moves, magnifies and exemplifies his heroic prowess, against the strongly negative background of his initial verbal haughtiness during his conflict with Achilles. Furthermore, the extended area where his ἀριστεία takes place aims at doing justice to the figurative place he occupies owing to his high status among the Achaean army. Given that Agamemnon’s movement is expressed not through place markers but by means of individuals or pairs of opponents, space acquires a strongly personalized dimension.

The audience is encouraged to reconceptualize Agamemnon’s identity by realizing that his status is dynamically invigorated and affirmed on the battlefield. The invocation of the Muses (Iliad XI 218), before the beginning of a catalogue of warriors to be killed by the son of Atreus, is reminiscent of an epic proem. The result of such a marked opening up of his ἀριστεία is noteworthy, for it lets listeners reevaluate Agamemnon’s role. The power dynamics inherent in such expressions are considerable, since the bard’s recourse to divine authority reflects the sheer scope of the subject matter to be sung: by invoking the Muses, the poet implies that Agamemnon’s heroic exploits surpass human measure.

Consequently, through individual corporeal activity and by appropriating space as their own, heroes use the various abstract spaces of the Iliadic battlefield to match class hierarchies. The ἀριστεία provides claims to inclusion and exclusion, and by mirroring dichotomies between insiders and outsiders leads to the evaluation of power relations, enables identity formation, and last, but certainly not least, creates a single, unified action space.

The battlefield is used mainly, but not solely, for the presentation of martial activity. It is also transformed so as to include friendly encounters between enemies, oath-swearing, and assemblies. Moreover, it contains certain locus-images (the oak tree of Zeus and the fig tree, the river and ford of Skamandros, the tombstone of Ilos and the tomb of Myrine, the rise in the plain), which mark simple story space and are employed as mental tags that cue both bard and audience to specific associations.

The martial space of the battlefield is occasionally transformed into a nonmilitary space, when an oath is sworn or an impending duel is turned into a friendly exchange of arms. Both these deviations from the formal function of the battlefield space are worth considering, the more so since they take place in a purely martial space that is basically devoted to combat.

With respect to the swearing of oaths, I will examine only two cases: the oaths before the duel of Menelaos and Paris in Iliad III and before the duel of Ajax and Hektor in Iliad VII, which have to do with a temporary cease-fire and the creation of a special space for the performance of sacrifices and the swearing of the oaths.

After the interlude of the τειχοσκοπία episode, when Priam and Antenor arrive at the battlefield, the narrator carefully accentuates the fact that they stood between the two armies and that it was there that they “led up the victims for the gods’ oaths” (Iliad III 269 ὅρκια πιστὰ θεῶν σύναγον). Once all the necessary preparations for the ensuing oath-swearing have been completed, Agamemnon raises his hands towards the sky (275) and utters the oath (276–291), an important aspect of which is that its unwavering fulfillment will result in a radical change of space for both armies. In other words, should both Trojans and Achaeans abide by the oath, the battlefield where this whole scene takes place will cease to exist, since the Achaean army will return to Greece, the Trojan allies to their respective countries, and the Trojan army to the city of Ilion. The power of the oath is so great that it can bring the war to an end, and thus deprive the battlefield of its martial aspect and transform it into the peaceful plain of Troy. This last observation, which is prominently spelled out in the utterance of the oath, allows the narrator to make full use of the sanctified space where the oath is sworn, in order first to create a highly thematized juncture of ritual and martial space, and then to elicit comparison with the wider bipolar space bordered by Greece and Troy that the Iliad takes for granted.

Another case worth exploring in this respect is the swearing of oaths before the duel between Hektor and Ajax in Iliad VII. Here the situation is rather different from the oath-exchange and duel in Iliad III, for Apollo and Athena, who set this plan in action, aim at stopping all military activity only for this day (VII 29–30 νῦν μὲν παύσωμεν πόλεμον καὶ δηϊοτῆτα / σήμερον). Even when Apollo talks Hektor into this duel, he refrains from explaining the aim of this one-on-one fight, despite the fact that he employs the same diction (49 ἄλλους μὲν κάθεσον Τρῶας καὶ πάντας Ἀχαιούς) we have observed in the episode between Menelaos and Paris in Iliad III 68. Τhe same is true of the expression ἐς μέσσον ἰών (VII 55) used of Hektor and the “sitting down” of the Achaean army, as well as of the two gods—in the guise of vultures—on Zeus’ lofty oak tree (60 φηγῶι ἔφ’ ὑψηλῆι) and the mutual approach of the ranks of the two armies (61 τῶν δὲ στίχες εἵατο πυκναί). The privilege of determining the wording of the oath is left to Hektor, who―after the Trojan perjury in Iliad III―proposes that the winner shall take the arms of his defeated opponent but return his body to his comrades. In this light, this oath entails no radical change of space, like that in Iliad III, but rather advocates respecting and preserving the current spatial symmetry between Troy and the Achaean camp. Along the same lines, there is no clear demarcation of the oath or the martial space where the duel will take place. On the other hand, there is a notable effort to view the two heroes as they approach each other: Ajax “takes huge strides forward” (VII 213 ἤϊε μακρὰ βιβάς), whereas Hektor “can no longer find means to take flight and shrink back into / the throng of his men” (Iliad VII 217–218 ἀλλ’ οὔ πως ἔτι εἶχεν ὑποτρέσαι οὐδ’ ἀναδῦναι / ἂψ λαῶν ἐς ὅμιλον). Moreover, the duel comes to a halt when the rather elusive space where it occurs is violated by Talthubios and Idaios, the Achaean and Trojan heralds, who stand in the middle holding their scepters (277 μέσσωι δ’ ἀμφοτέρων σκῆπτρα σχέθον), while Idaios suggests that the duel end in a draw, now that Zeus has shown his love for both heroes (279–282).

The marked differences from the oath-exchange in Iliad III are instructive with respect to the function of space. The elusiveness of the area where this episode takes place, the absence of any radical spatial shift if the oath is observed, and the violation of the space of the duel by the heralds indicate the complete collapse of the oath. This time it comes about not as the result of perjury (as in Iliad III), but in the form of a deviation from or transgression of various topological factors that chart a ritual space for fulfilling this sacred agreement.

For the second step, the Homeric narrator has a twofold goal: first, he tries to create a symmetrical space for the two heroes, by making them stand between the two armies surrounding them, and then he attempts to isolate them from the rest of their armies by bringing them close. The formulaic line ἐς μέσον ἀμφοτέρων συνίτην μεμαῶτε μάχεσθαι, verbalizing the narrator’s first aim, subordinates the first phase to the second, which is also expressed formulaically (οἳ δ’ ὅτε δὴ σχεδὸν ἦσαν ἐπ’ ἀλλήλοισι ἰόντες).

The Trojans hold an assembly during a temporary halt before their great assault on the Achaean wall. This stationary location is designated by an extremely brief description:

In Iliad X 194–203, it is time for the Achaeans to hold an assembly. Oddly enough, the assembly takes place “in the open” and not in the Achaean camp:

In this light, the oak tree standing close to the Skaian Gates has preserved in the Homeric tradition something that we can see more clearly through the cognate Indo-European tradition of the Celts. In Celtic mythology the oak tree is the tree of doors, believed to be a gateway between worlds, or a place where portals could be erected. The oak is a figurative threshold, a symbolic gateway on whose two sides Zeus’ power becomes alternately protective and destructive. Seen from this angle, it is tempting to suggest that its formulaic symbiosis in the Skaian Gates reflects a latent feature of its mythological background, which bespeaks its function as transitory space.

In coming to grips with the function of locus-images, we must realize that space becomes epitomized in (in cinematic terms “is zipped into”) a landmark feature of the setting through association with and evocation of collectively shared cultural experience. Within the medium of traditional oral song, myth is by definition a strong means of transforming landscape markers, such as the oak and fig trees, into signs. Spatial contiguity is of vital importance for comprehending this transformation process: when the oak and the wild fig tree are mentioned, they trigger in the bard’s mind an association with another mental image (of the Trojan walls, the grave of Ilos, etc.), and form a mental pair or visual chain. These pairs include a marked and an unmarked element, the former being pulled to its new function by the latter. The unmarked element that is closely associated with the past of Troy “absorbs” the marked one and anchors it to a new meaning. Thus the Skaian Gates are the unmarked element, “pulling” the oak tree into their own interpretive and functional orbit. The oak and fig trees are signs of the past, which on the surface structure of the Iliadic epic appear as setting markers. They are not described or glossed by the narrator, but are tagged to other landscape pointers. This associative topography, where something is not described per se but is linked to something else, testifies to a process of mnemonic encoding based on nodes of mental vistas, which the oral tradition has shaped into culturally charged signs or pairs of signs.

The tomb of Myrine bears two different names: men call it Βατίεια ‘the Hill of the Thicket’, and gods σῆμα πολυσκάρθμοιο Μυρίνης ‘the tomb of dancing or bounding Myrine’: