Evaluating Workplace Relationships in the Homeric Iliad: Bringing Together Digital Approaches and Social and Cognitive Theory

In this paper I bring together a cluster of verbal behaviors in the Homeric Iliad, a recent psychological study of four interrelated modes of communication in the workplace (the Responsibility Exchange Theory), and DICES, the Digital Initiative for Classics: Epic Speeches. I draw on the DICES database as a quantitative search tool and assess its capacity as a starting point for a qualitative study of how the poet depicts certain critical social interactions in the epic. My interest in a project such as this is, as always, in learning more about what makes a good story good—from the perspective of not only the storyteller but also the audience.