At the heart of Classical studies is Homer. His epic poems, whether composed by many or only one poet, have shaped the Greco-Roman consciousness in a myriad of significant ways that have left their impact on Western culture, whether we realize it or not.

But the rich oral tradition from which Homer’s epics drew extended far beyond the Iliad and Odyssey. Not only did the Ancient Greeks have a wider range of what we might call mythology, but their poetic tradition was in fact inherited from an older, Indo-European oral tradition that languages like Ancient Greek, Sanskrit, and even Germanic have in common, among many others.

While it is impossible to know for certain exactly what stories were told by the elusive ancestors of Indo-European cultures, the striking similarities between cross-cultural epic traditions reveal shared, all-too-human preoccupations and important themes at the heart of epic traditions crossing continents. Eventually, this deep well of mythological history influenced the tales told by authors such as J.R.R. Tolkien, whose modern hand always had its fingers on the pulse of ancient storytelling.

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Epic Poetry as Legal Texts

From a modern standpoint, epic poems like Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey border on fantasy. Monsters, witches, sirens, and gods populate the fantastical realm in which characters like Achilles and Odysseus—half-mythological themselves, and in the case of the former literally half-divine—can exist. But were they always understood that way?

While an element of enchantment must have been allowed for the audience to fully immerse themselves in these tales (assuming no one in those ancient audiences had encountered cyclopes or sirens in their day-to-day life), perhaps these tales were not passed down for pure entertainment at a dinner party or festival. Just as, once upon a time, these epics were not restricted to academia’s exam rooms, it is plausible to assume these tales, and many more of them besides Homer’s two epics, were immortalized in song because of the important messages embedded in them.

Now, I’m not speaking strictly moral messages, especially not in our post-Christian conception. But in taking a step back and viewing the oral traditions of other Indo-European cultures, namely the Indic tradition, we have evidence that epic poetry was also understood through a legal lens (though here we must remember that legal texts did not always equate to the cut-and-dry writing you read in modern contracts). Legality, after all, and law were and are a major preocuppation for all societies, and for a peaceful society to exist, laws must be followed, but there has always been and always will be nuanced situations that do not fit nicely into legal categories, and therefore it is up to the jury—or we might say here, audience—to determine what is right and wrong (or determine just how complicated that answer can be).

In India, for example, alongside their law codes, their narrative literature (much more extensive in body and scope than what has remained on the Greek side) also goes into meticulous, detailed scenarios about what you might call various legal situations, exemplified by heroic characters, battle scenes, marriages, etc., just as in Homer’s epics. In fact, the Mahābhārata is known in India as “a dharma-text, or text of customary law. The episodes in this great drama often exist in part to exemplify or work out legal principles…In other words, epic narrative occurs in a legal context, is explicitly concerned with the socially sanctioned or unsanctioned nature of the action depicted.”1

One of the major concerns you see in these stories is marriage, both legal and illegal, especially as it pertains to the heroes of the story. In the Indic tradition, there are no less than eight categories of marriage, ranked according to the nature of their legality (though all are considered possible marriage rites), based on “the circumstances under which the bridegroom takes charge of the bride.”2 Naturally, a marriage by mutual agreement is considered the best, and a violent, unwilling, illegal abduction the worst, and in between we have a legal abduction, as when a man properly wins the wife of another man according to certain rites that must be followed. And we see these situations played out in various ways throughout the Indic epic tradition. Interestingly, you see very similar situations described in the Greek tradition (whose important details I will discuss below), leading scholars to believe that these stories revolving around marriage and heroics must have been inherited in some form from a common ancestral story.

One such scholar is the renowned Indo-Europeanist, Stephanie Jamison, who has written two articles, ‘Draupadí on the Walls of Troy: “Iliad” 3 from an Indic Perspective’ and ‘Penelope and the Pigs: Indic Perspectives on the “Odyssey”’ about, as their titles suggest, the Iliad and Odyssey from an Indic perspective, and whose analyses has informed most of my understanding of the Indic tradition. Therefore, my contribution to this topic is further analysis of the Ancient Greek stories by comparing them to Tolkien’s work (whom I consider an inheritor of the Indo-European tradition) and the possibility for his tales to illuminate the past.

Comparing Indic and Greek Traditions

To start with the Iliad, Jamison’s main point concerns the famous Teikhoskopia, or “The Viewing from the Wall,” when Helen points out the various Greek heroes to Priam before the duel between Menelaus and Paris, which they set up to end the war. Of course, this never happens, and Aphrodite saves Paris and takes him away from the battlefield. Historically, this interrupting scene is criticized as out of place, perhaps wrongly included by later scribes, or simply bad storytelling. But in light of the Indic tradition, Jamison points out that this scene actually follows a classic procedure of legal reabduction.

At this point, it’s important to recall why the Trojan War began in the first place: Helen was abducted by Paris. If we consider Indic law, this abduction was not legal. As Jamison walks through in more detail than I will here, it did not follow the proper steps to make an abduction legal, namely the abductor must come alone or with one other companion to where the maiden is, announce his name, lineage, and intention to abduct specifically to an armed host, and most crucially, must challenge to fight them all, in which “this act of heroism (vīrya) …substitues for the bride price.”3 If we evaluate Paris’s actions, there are a few glaring mistakes in his abduction, and so this “marriage” between Helen and Paris was performed illegally.

This same illegal abduction occurs in one part of the Mahābhārata, in which the character Draupadī, who is wife to the five Pāṇḍava brothers and heroes of the story, is illegally abducted by a king named Jayadratha. He approaches with an armed host when her husbands are away, does not declare his intentions, and takes Draupadī away unwillingly without performing a heroic act. The narrative explicitly calls out the illegality of this marriage rite and criticizes Jayadratha’s actions, not, interestingly enough, that he wished to abduct her in the first place, but rather the fact that he did so without fighting her five husbands alone in a heroic feat (equivalent in this case to not paying a bride-price) and therefore abducting her illegally.

Now we turn to the reabduction, which is for all intents and purposes the entirety of the Trojan War and therefore the Iliad, since Menelaus convinces all the other Greek heroes to help him lawfully reabduct his wife. And of course, there are specific steps necessary for a legal reabduction, which, as we see outlined very clearly with Draupadī on the Indic side, includes a nice mirror of how a legal cermony would go: the woman must identify “by name and qualities, the reabductors, who can then legitimately claim her back as their wife. She does so to the person who illegally has her in his power and who thus fulfills, in a fractured way, the role of her guardian and protector.”4 After this pause in the action for the naming to take place, much fighting ensues, when the heroic act is performed as the bride price: on the Indic side, Draupadī’s five husbands fight against Jayadratha and his armed host, while on the Greek side, Menelaus plans to duel Paris in one-to-one combat (which turns into full on war when he is rescued by divine interference).

But before the fighting, the woman—Draupadī and Helen respectively—interrupts the pivotal action scene and lists the men approaching, fulfilling the proper steps for a reabduction marriage rite. We see this quasi-ceremony with Helen on the walls of Troy, as well as with Draupadī as her husbands approach to fight Jayadratha, and the details that Jamison sketches out in more depth are remarkable. For our purposes, it is most important to note that in both battles the illegal abductor—Jayadratha and Paris—takes the cowards path and flees (in the latter case, is rescued), which also reveals one crucial difference between the two traditions: on the Greek side, just before Menelaus and Paris are to duel, Priam is brought down to help the two heroes swear an oath that whoever wins will take Helen and all his possessions. The oath calls upon Zeus and Helios in an archaic format that resembles typical Ancient Greek marriage rites, as seen, for example, in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, in which the only witnesses to the abduction of Persephone by Hades are Zeus and Helios. But even this turn of events could be seen to follow a similar pattern as to the Indic one; just like Jayadratha, Paris shouldn’t be allowed to fight or die heroically for Helen anymore, since he violated the abduction code in the first place, but rather, being unworthy of a hero’s death on the battlefield, should be defeated in a more humiliating fashion.

Now, to turn to the Odyssey, we can see that although a different kind, this epic is also concerned with marriage and its various legal and illegal contexts. In this story, Penelope and Odysseus were also already married, but now Odysseus has been away for twenty years. By law, women are considered under the legal protection and ownership first of their father, then their husband, and lastly, their adult son, which is the case across Indo-European traditions. The unfortunate circumstances of Penelope are that she no longer belongs to her father, her husband has been away a very long time, and her son has not yet come of age. So the legal question becomes: is it right for Penélope to remarry or must she wait for the possibility of her husband’s return?

Luckily for us, this question has already been discussed extensively in the Indic tradition, which contains, unlike in the Greek tradition, “‘technical literature’…, codifications of customary practice that provide background for and help to explain the behavior in narrative literature—both deviations from this customary practice and faithfulness to it. Unless we know how people are ordinarily supposed to act, we cannot fully evaluate how they are depicted as acting in exceptional circumstances.”5 In Indic law, just as it would be in Greek, women have no independent legal status and therefore cannot marry at will, but must be given in marriage in exchange for a bride-price. Even as widows, they are under the care of their sons. But despite these strict laws, societies could envision situations that would complicate this, namely when a woman’s “husband disappears or goes on a journey and fails to return.”6 The woman becomes trapped because she is not yet a widow and therefore must still be loyal to her husband, but even if he were presumed dead, if her son is not of age (as Telemachus is not), then she cannot be given away in marriage either.

Interestingly, we find parallels to this situation on the Indic side, whose “exact circumstances are treated in the ancient Indian law codes, with a lack of unanimity and a clear distaste for choosing among the alternatives that recall the Odyssey uncannily.” 7 But still, we do see some details that conform to the law, like the fact that the wife whose husband is gone should live without amusement or enjoyment and remain in her quarters until the husband returns, much as Penelope does. The waiting period, however, varies depending on the purpose of the husband’s journey, the social class of the husband, and whether the wife has borne a son by him. This seems to serve multiple functions, like giving the husband time to return and saving the woman from being taken by another man. But at this point, even in the Indic tradition, the law becomes murky, and there is no explicit statement of what the woman should do next. Penelope herself exemplifies this gray area best; she must be given to one of the suitors despite the shame that would incur, but she is, as is her duty, waiting for as long as possible in the sliver of hope that her husband will return, even if that waiting period should have already ended. These contradictions have historically been viewed critically, some scholars blaming the author for not resolving this problem, but Jamison offers another perspective, arguing that this situation is another legal conundrum that audiences were expected to debate and deliberate over, much like Helen’s illegal abduction and reabduction.

As we know, luckily for Penelope, her husband does indeed return, saving her from the double-edged sword of choosing a suitor to marry. But before this happens, she follows a pattern that is mirrored in the Indic tradition called the bridal self-choice, or svayaṃvara, in which suitors are invited and treated hospitably as guests, and where a contest of skill is set, when the bride will choose the winner as her husband, whose manly deed will be the bride-price, much like the heroic deed in a lawful abduction. Jamison works out the irrefutable parallels between Penelope’s situation and that of several women in the Indic tradition (all with varying outcomes), but here it suffices to say that Penelope follows the correct ceremonial steps, with the suitors gathered, the contest set up, and with the expectation that she will choose the most manly of them as her new husband. The contest itself in both traditions has many striking similarities, such as a younger male relative (Telemachus in the Greek case) announcing the terms of the contest and its prize to the assembled suitors, and then the twofold structure of the contest as a test of strength and then skill. In both, “a mighty and famous bow must first be strung.”8 And again, in both, it is an outsider, a hero disguised as a beggar and not technically one of the suitors, who is nonetheless able to string the bow and win the prize. And again, in both, the “lowly stranger’s successful challenge ends with a battle.”9

There are many more similar details in both the Greek and Indic traditions elucidated by Jamison that I will not include here, but all in all it is clear from the examples above that the Indo-European epic tradition was extremely preocuppied with marriage on multiple levels, not just individual but institutional, and they were ultimately fascinated with the gray areas. On the Greek side, these two marriage contexts were so bound up with the heroics of the warriors that the Iliad and Odyssey have remained the central mythological body upon which all later literature expounds, even to this day. This begs the question, then, of why marriage was at the heart of these heroic stories? Is heroism, perhaps, one side of the same coin as marriage? Can one even exist without the other? And lastly, can we really consider war and marriage merely legal institutions, or do these stories point to something more, something that still moves the heart thousands and thousands of years later?

Tolkien’s Beren & Lúthien

Before answering those questions, I would like to draw a comparison between the similarities of the marriage contexts above and two scenarios in Tolkien’s work, who, as a scholar intimately familiar with not only the Homeric tradition, but also that of other Indo-European cultures, was certainly influenced by them. The first story I will mention concerns the marriage of Beren and Lúthien as told in the Silmarillion, The Book of Lost Tales, and The Lay of Leithian.

To set the scene, Beren is a mortal Man who has escaped the destruction of his people by Morgoth’s forces (another name for the evil god Melkor), and flees south into the woods of Doriath, where King Thingol, an Elf, rules beside his wife, Melian. In the woods, Lúthien, daughter to the king and also of Elven kind, is singing and dancing when Beren stumbles upon her and almost instantly they fall in love. Their love only grows, even when they are caught and forbidden from seeing each other, so Lúthien presents Beren to her father, King Thingol, intending to marry him.

Naturally, Lúthien’s father does not approve of the marriage of his only daughter, and princess of Doriath, with a stranger who is essentially a beggar in their kingdom, let alone a mortal Man. Whether by chance or (sub)conscious influence from Indo-European traditions, Beren clearly states his intentions of marrying Lúthien to Thingol, as would be correct in a traditional marriage rite:

“My fate, O King, led me hither, through perils such as few even of the Elves would dare. And here I have found what I sought not indeed, but finding I would possess for ever. For it is above all gold and silver, and beyond all jewels. Neither rock, nor steel, nor the fires of Morgoth, nor all the powers of the Elf-kingdoms, shall keep from me the treasure that I desire. For Lúthien your daughter is the fairest of all the Children of the World.”10

In response and still following correct ceremonial procedure, King Thingol sets the challenge, with a heroic act as the bride-price:

“See now! I too desire a treasure that is withheld. For rock and steel and the fires of Morgoth keep the jewel that I would possess against all the powers of the Elf-kingdoms. Yet I hear you say that bonds such as these do not daunt you. Go your way therefore! Bring to me in your hand a Silmaril from Morgoth’s crown; and then, if she will, Lúthien may set her hand in yours. Then you shall have my jewel; and though the fate of Arda lie within the Silmarils, yet you shall hold me generous.”11

This heroic act, of course, is meant to be impossible (much like stringing a bow and shooting it through twelve axe heads as in the Odyssey), and the first time that Beren attempts this he is taken as prisoner by Morgoth and it is Lúthien who helps him escape by her power of song. Then they choose to return to his stronghold together and retrieve one of the Silmarils from the crown of Morgoth, even if it seals their doom, wishing to face their fate together. Their plan succeeds thanks to Lúthien’s song “of such surpassing loveliness, and of such blinding power, that [Morgoth] listened perforce,” which no other mortal Man, let alone woman, had ever been able to do before:

“…and a blindness came upon him, as his eyes roamed to and fro, seeking her.

All his court were cast down in slumber, and all the fires faded and were quenched; but the Silmarils in the crown on Morgoth’s head blazed forth suddenly with a radiance of white flame; and the burden of that crown and of the jewels bowed down his head, as though the world were set upon it, laden with a weight of care, of fear, and of desire, that even the will of Morgoth could not support. Then Lúthien catching up her winged robe sprang into the air, and her voice came dropping down like rain into pools, profound and dark. She cast her cloak before his eyes, and set upon him a dream, dark as the Outer Void where once he walked alone. Suddenly he fell, as a hill sliding in avalanche, and hurled like thunder from his throne lay prone upon the floors of hell. The iron crown rolled echoing from his head. All things were still.

As a dead beast Beren lay upon the ground; but Lúthien touching him with her hand aroused him, and he cast aside the wolf-hame. Then he drew forth the knife Angrist; and from the iron claws that held it he cut a Silmaril.”12

The Quest, however, is thwarted when the evil wolf Carcharoth bites his hand holding the Silmaril, and it is only later that Beren, now one-handed, slays the wolf and retrieves it. But the battle costs him his life, and according to the version of The Book of Lost Tales, in his dying breath, he tells Thingol:

“I give thee the wondrous jewel thou didst desire, and it is but a little thing found by the wayside, for once methinks thou hadst one beyond thought more beautiful, and she is now mine.”

It is only told in legend, that beyond the Western Sea in the halls of Mandos (a kind of purgatory on earth), Lúthien and Beren are reunited, and she is given the choice to remain in Valimar, separated from Beren, or renounce her immortality and become mortal with Beren once more, giving them a second life but at the cost of death. She chooses the latter, so “that thus whatever grief might lie in wait, the fates of Beren and Lúthien might be joined, and their paths lead together beyond the confines of the world.”13

Thus, Beren successfully wins the hand of Lúthien, at the cost of his literal hand and her life. This story, while an epic tale of a hero’s journey to retrieve a Silmaril from Morgoth’s crown, is inextricably bound with his marriage to Lúthien, just as the Iliad and the Odyssey are inextricably bound with the marriages of Menelaus with Helen and Odysseus with Penelope. While Tolkien’s marriage does not wholly follow the same traditional patterns, the apparent differences do actually provide another lens of interpretation of the Homeric epics.

For example, quite different from Helen and Penelope, Lúthien participates actively in what we would deem the heroic act that Beren must perform to win her hand. Not only did she first rescue Beren from Morgoth’s dungeons, but she also went with him there a second time to share in the same fate as him (quite unlike Penelope and Helen appear to do). However, she does not fight with sword in hand as Beren would, and instead she uses song and dance—a more feminine approach, one might say—to enchant Morgoth to sleep, also a non-violent, more feminine act of aggression. Enchantment, moreover, like Circe’s magic of turning men into pigs, is in the Homeric world considered mainly a female occupation. But still, she accomplishes something that no other being alive has been able to, and enchants the very powerful Melkor into a deep sleep. So we might assume that Tolkien has innovated and given the female counterpart in the marriage a more heroic role. Yet if Middle-earth’s mythology has roots in ancient Indo-European traditions, might we not look upon marriage in Homer with different eyes?

Take Odysseus and Penelope. While the former is away at war, battling against the Trojans and then subsequently fighting for his life at sea, the latter is not lounging about at home doing nothing. No, she is weaving. During the day, she weaves a burial shroud for Laërtes, and at night, undoes the work she had done. This doesn’t overtly appear like a heroic act, but looking closer, we see that it holds as much cunning as her husband’s Trojan Horse. In fact, linguistically, the loom links Penelope to her husband’s twenty-year-long journey sailing to Troy and back: the word for mast, ἱστός, is the same word for the beam in a loom that keeps it upright, and therefore can generally be used as a word for loom. We might then recall that Odysseus is tied to the mast of his ship when he listens to the sirens’ song, paralleling his wife, who, in her own way, is tied up with the loom to stall the suitors. If we take the symbolism further, the mast is at the center of the ship, and the loom is at the center of the household, like two pillars of a marriage, which is even further echoed in the tree-trunk pillar that Odysseus built their marriage bed around. So we can say of Penelope and Odysseus that they are both sharing in the same fate, much like Lúthien and Beren decide to do, just in different ways that complement each other, for if Penelope had not fended off the suitors, and Odysseus had not fought his way back home, well, there wouldn’t be any home for him to return to.

If we look at The Lord of the Rings, and the marriage of Aragorn and Arwen—both, significantly, products of the original marriage of Beren and Lúthien—we see another marriage bound to the results of a war. Elrond, much like King Thingol, demands a great price from Aragorn if he wishes to claim the hand of Arwen:

“Therefore, though I love you, I say to you: Arwen Undómiel shall not diminish her life’s grace for less cause. She shall not be the bride of any Man less than the King of both Gondor and Arnor.”

To defeat Sauron and become King of both Gondor and Arnor, Aragorn must, in the final hour, face Sauron with a very much diminished force in a heroic act of self-sacrifice to draw Sauron’s eye away from Mordor and give Frodo a fighting chance to destroy the Ring. By doing so, without knowing whether he shall live to see Arwen again, let alone marry her, Aragorn performs the greatest act of heroism that would have been deserving of marriage with Arwen, who has herself taken on the doom of mortal Men, forsaking both her people and her own immortality.

In this way, her fate is also tied to the fate of the war, just like Aragorn’s. If Aragorn should fail, Sauron would hold dominion over Middle-earth, and Arwen would perish along with it, being too late to return across the seas to Valinor. But if Aragorn should succeed—as we know he does—then he will win the hand of Arwen and be crowned King. We might see an echo of this in the Iliad between Menelaus and Paris, especially when they decide to duel, where the victor is promised Helen as their wife and all the possessions of the vanquished. Helen’s fate, too, is bound to the fate of the war, and in both instances, the side that truly has a claim to her ultimately wins, though at great cost, not just to the man willing to die for her, but to the woman whose fate hangs in the balance.

Yet as Beren says of Lúthien, whose beauty is “above all gold and silver, and beyond all jewels”—much like Helen’s face that launched a thousand ships and Menelaus’ oath to win her back—“neither rock, nor steel, nor the fires of Morgoth, nor all the powers of the Elf-kingdoms” would keep them apart. So the Elders say of Helen:

οἳ δ᾽ ὡς οὖν εἴδονθ᾽ Ἑλένην ἐπὶ πύργον ἰοῦσαν,
ἦκα πρὸς ἀλλήλους ἔπεα πτερόεντ᾽ ἀγόρευον:
‘οὐ νέμεσις Τρῶας καὶ ἐϋκνήμιδας Ἀχαιοὺς
τοιῇδ᾽ ἀμφὶ γυναικὶ πολὺν χρόνον ἄλγεα πάσχειν:
αἰνῶς ἀθανάτῃσι θεῇς εἰς ὦπα ἔοικεν…14

When they saw Helen moving among the ramparts,
they all murmured winged words to one another:
‘None can blame the Trojans and well-greaved Achaeans
suffering pains so long for the sake of such a woman—
terribly like a deathless goddess she seems to our eye!

At the end of the day, heroic acts are deemed heroic namely because they are performed in honor of another, in sacrifice for the person they love, which is a higher purpose than mere pride or hate or power—in fact, it is blameless, justified even. That is why men like Odysseus and Beren are considered heroes, not just because of their prowess in combat or resilience during hardships, but because they would fight an entire army, they would cross an entire ocean, they would go to Hell and back—nay, they would face certain death without hope of return!—if it meant reuniting with the one they love. And they know the woman they love would do the same.

Perhaps that is why these epic stories of marriage and war stay with us more than the others, and why Homer’s epics withstood the test of time when few other Ancient Greek epics have. For there is nothing else more noble, nothing that would make the most violent act admirable, and nothing that would stir in the human heart the courage to be so utterly selfless, save love; that is, after all, when mortals are at their very best, and even the gods, immortal as they are, can only watch and wonder.

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Works Cited

Homer. Homeri Opera in five volumes. Oxford, Oxford University Press. 1920. www.perseus.tufts.edu. Accessed 10 April 2025.

Jamison, Stephanie W. “Draupadí on the Walls of Troy: ‘Iliad’ 3 from an Indic Perspective.” Classical Antiquity, vol. 13, no. 1, 1994, pp. 5–16. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/25011002. Accessed 10 Apr. 2025.

Jamison, Stephanie W. “Penelope and the Pigs: Indic Perspectives on the ‘Odyssey.’” Classical Antiquity, vol. 18, no. 2, 1999, pp. 227–72. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/25011102. Accessed 10 Apr. 2025.

Tolkien, J.R.R. The Lord of the Rings. William Morrow, 2012.

Tolkien, J.R.R. The Silmarillion. Houghton Mifflin, 1997.

Tolkien, J.R.R. The Book of Lost Tales, Part Two. William Morrow Paperbacks, 1984.

1

Jamison 1999 p. 229

2

Jamison 1994 p. 7

3

Ibid. p. 8

4

Ibid. p.11

5

Jamison 1999 p. 230

6

Ibid. p. 231

7

Ibid. p. 232

8

Ibid. p. 252

9

Ibid. p. 255

10

Tolkien 1997 p. 166

11

Ibid. p. 167

12

Ibid. p. 180-181

13

Ibid. p. 187

14

Homer, Iliad, Book 3.154-57. Translation mine.