> [[muellner]]. Comment on Iliad 1.13-15 in [[chs-homer-commentary]]. > [hcp](https://nrs.chs.harvard.edu/v2/urn:cts:CHS:Commentaries.AHCIP:Iliad.1.13-1.15.ZJD6fr8.0) > Chrysēs came to the ships to engage in an exchange, a behavior that the anthropologist/sociologist Marcel Mauss described as the basic form of social contract in archaic societies. Archaic exchange systems, he said, are "total social phenomena", in that they seamlessly interweave _economic_, _sacral_, and _social_ or _group_ interaction. That is exactly what we see here: the intention to exchange involves Chrysēs with the whole social group (l. 15, πάντας Ἀχαιούς, 'all Achaeans'), it requires of him the transfer of wealth —the verb φέρω 'carry, bear' (l. 13) designates the movement of prestige goods that cannot move by themselves—, and it is accompanied by the display of sacred symbols referred to the god Apollo, namely wreaths on a golden scepter (lines 14-15). This attempt at exchange may look to us like the kind of economic transaction that only occurs between civilized people and criminals. It is customary to translate the word λυσόμενος in line 13 with the English word 'ransom', because for us, the exchange of human beings for goods is 'human trafficking,' which is by definition a heinous evil. Mauss also clarifies this problem, which is one of the most difficult aspects of an archaic exchange system for us to understand. In the world of Homeric epic, Mauss would say, humans are exchangeable for goods not because humans are commodified or objectified, but because _goods are humanized_, because they are as dear and as attached to human beings as human beings are to each other. Lacking a medium of exchange like coins or bills, which can dehumanize even prestige goods made by artists or skilled craftsmen, people in the Epic world not only identify themselves with what we call objects (as we sometimes do), they also do not categorically distinguish between people and things as property types. Instead, the regnant distinction is between immovable goods (those which cannot move themselves), like tripods or golden cups or woven goods, and movable ones (those which can move themselves), like cattle or human beings or slaves. > <br> > References: > [[mauss1925]] > [[benveniste1971]] > [[muellner1996]]