Ian Tewksbury, "Death Is a Feast: The Ideology of the Homeric Banquet - Dissertation Defense

In large part, feasting in the Iliad and the Odyssey has been critically overlooked by studies on the political ideology of the Homeric poems. This dissertation studies the meaning of the feast, δαίς, in these poems and contends that the feast in Homeric poetry is what the anthropologist Bryan Hayden has called “a critical element, almost entirely overlooked in the past.” Feasting, as the anthropologists Bryan Hayden and Michael Dietler have shown, forms critical reciprocal obligations which encompass “the political, economic, ritual, and social universe.” Likewise, I argue that feasting reveals the reciprocal obligations at the heart of the political, economic, and ritual world of Homeric society. By providing an updated formulaic and linguistic analysis of the language of feasting in Homer, the “critical” social relations of the Homeric community are revealed. Part I one of this dissertation provides an exhaustive formulaic analysis of two contrastive verbs used to describe feasting: (1) δατέομαι, “to divide up, share,” and (2) δαίνυμι, “to feast.” Part II analyzes the formulaic meaning of the δαίς, “feast,” as a particular conceptual form of division. I show that the δαίς, derived from the Indo-European root, *deH2-, “to divide,” is not a “meal” that embodies “the egalitarian participation of the whole group” [Seaford 2004: 111], but is instead a gift that instantiates an ideal form of hierarchy (social division). This study resolves contradictory definitions in the Homeric lexicography of feasting by showing how they rely on incomplete and partial conceptualization of the Homeric idea of division. Finally, this study concludes by re-contextualizing the Homeric feast within the anthropological study of feasting. It contends that the reciprocal obligations of the feast reflect a singular vision of ideal power and community: single patron rule. This allows us a unique perspective on the question of the political ideology of Homeric poetry. Instead of the struggle between aristocratic and plebiscitary democratic ideology, it is suggested that the Homeric feast reflects an ideological struggle between royal tributary rule (Odysseus’ patron feast) and the rise of oligarchy (the Suitor’s symposium) in the 8th to 6th century BCE.