This book is a revised version of my Cambridge dissertation on the Homeric laos. I have called it ‘Homer's people’, because from the start I wish to draw attention to some of its wider implications. The laos in Homer is not a group among others: I shall argue that any attempt to understand their role and character affects our understanding of early Greek hexameter poetry as a whole, of the Homeric poems as a prominent part of the genre, and of the performance of Homer in archaic and classical Greece. My task is complicated by a long tradition of Judaeo-Christian thought, which resulted in ‘Homer's people’, laos Akhaion, becoming the ‘people of god’, laos theou. Under such circumstances, the older picture could only be reclaimed in an act of detailed analysis. This is what I am hoping to provide.

Since this book is not written for Homerists alone, a few general words about its background and aspirations may be in place. In classics, as in many other social sciences, there has recently been a trend towards combining the study of (literary) texts with that of social and political (power-)structures. Prominent players within the field of postmodern hermeneutics have often approached the world as text, while at the same time emphasising the intimate link between textual communication and social formation.