‘Once Inside the Hut, No-one is Going to Kill You’
From Ilion to Iraq, Battle-space to Peace-space
Abstract
This paper seeks to establish links between the final book of Homer’s Iliad and methods of peace negotiation, with the interaction of Priam and Achilles providing a template for how enemies might meet within a delineated “peace-space” and thereby achieve a degree of reconciliation, transformation and agreement. The Iliad (and Odyssey) was treated as a repository of wisdom by Ancient Greeks and subsequent civilisations, and as such is worth reading today as not merely a narrative but an instruction manual. The paper draws on contemporary war studies to describe the concept of a “battle-space” and psychological and sociological aspects of what is termed “Will to Fight”. It concludes by stating that the compulsions and desires which prompt men to fight may also be the means by which they make peace: that it is within the transformative peace-space, not the battlespace, that these aspirations can be answered and fulfilled.
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