ABSTRACT
It all—always—begins with Homer. In the Iliad, Helen, that warred-over object of desire, comes to the walls of besieged Troy and is observed and wondered at by the assembled Trojan elders. King Priam asks her to name particular Greeks whom she sees ranged against the city, and the face that launched a thousand ships identifies the warriors she has deserted. Priam's gaze distinguishes the leading princes of the Greek host: the bodily form of excellence and the social status of prince— mutually implicated categories 1 —are visible signs, visible attributes, paraded for recognition. This privileged scene of viewing (the teichoscopia) establishes an economics of display that is rehearsed throughout the epic: physical and social worth is constructed in and by the gaze of others. So Achilles at the height of his destructive rampage cries out to his victims, “Look at me! Do you not see how beautiful, noble and great I am?” (I1., 21.108). Even the Odyssey's games of disguising its hero lead to his splendid, epiphanic appearance, flanked by his father and son, at the epic's close. The hero is ineluctably linked to the modality of the visual.
