In Homer’s Trojan Theater, I argue for the centrality of vision in Homeric poetics and its importance both for the poet in constructing, and for his audience in comprehending, the course of his narrative. The Iliad’s battle scenes, which take up a third of the poem, pose an exceptional challenge to a narrator. Of the 360 named characters, 232 are warriors killed or wounded, yet the poet is remarkable in his ability to keep his characters on the battlefield straight (the instances of Homer’s nodding are strikingly rare). The action, I contend, is conceived in spatial terms and visualized in the “mind’s eye” of the narrator. The poet in turn is able to translate his vision into words with such vividness and clarity that his audience can for its part imaginatively re-envision the Trojan plain on which the heroes fought and died. This project takes the text of the Iliad as its script, paying particular attention to spatial indications such as for example “left” and “right,” and attempts to reconstruct the activity on the battlefield with the help of digital technology. Translating the poem’s verbal account into a visual medium demonstrates not only the coherence of its plan, but also reveals the role of spatial design in plotting its narrative. We have provided a schematic map in accordance with the Iliad’s orientation and indicated the significant landmarks against which the actions are played out as well as the location of the leading characters in the battle narratives of Books 12.

We have also provided the text of the poem in either Greek or English (Lattimore’s translation) as a crawl below with significant moments highlighted. Those highlighted actions reflect spatial shifts that may involve either a change in the position of a character or a change in the focus of the narrative from one area of the battlefield to another. Characters that are dimmed after such a shift can be assumed to continue their activities in the background when the narrative moves to another area. In the latter case, we have also highlighted some of the transitional devices, e.g. similes, the poet exploits to indicate his narrative shifts. Two timelines, one indicating narrative time and the other, narrated time with the latter showing significant events marked by a vertical red line.

The Iliad interface has two ‘timelines’ (with ‘action points’, ‘navigation buttons’ and a ‘dragger’), a text display area, and a ‘stage’ for the visual representation of  actions described in the text, oriented to the coordinates of a background ‘map’. [Click image to display interface - opens new window.]

The stage displays ‘actors’ and their movements over the map. Red lines indicate a positional change. Names are displayed and distinct icons represent the actor type. On the timelines, action points are highlighted, red areas that refer to particular instances of activity specified in the associated text (in this case Book 12 of the Iliad).

The upper timeline is associated with actions that may be described in multiple places throughout the text, though they appear only once on the line, in the order of their temporal occurrence.

For example, according to the text an action occurs at a specific time. A particular action may continue in the background and be taken up at a later point. The lower timeline displays all the references to specific events in the order that the references occur ‘physically’ within the structure of the text.

Both timelines have ‘draggers’, (vertical translucent bars). Mouse-over and click the bar to grab and drag left and right. Dragging the bar right and left moves the viewer forward and backward chronologically with respect to the text. Moving a dragger all the way to the left resets the display.

Both timelines have 3 associated navigation buttons, 2 outer buttons with double arrow icons and 1 inner button with a single larger arrow. The 2 outer buttons allow chronological traversal by discreet jumps from action point to action point, forward and backward. Click and release to jump. The inner button allows forward chronological traversal at a constant rate. Click and release to ‘play’ the text. Click and release again to stop. Also, clicking anywhere on a timeline will move the dragger instantly to that spot and adjust the stage to the concurrent moment. Note: doing this on the lower timeline also moves the associated text.