To summarize, in the Iliad and seemingly throughout early Mediterranean and Near Eastern cultures, divine vengeance may be expected for oath-violation because the covenants forged by rituals are performed in a high register, according to canonical paradigms regarded as initiated and fixed by supernatural forces, and are regarded as on a par with bonds made of blood. Bonds forged by ritual are deemed irreversible, and as if inscribed on the cosmos itself. In Homeric tradition, such bonds are defended by the same forces that defend blood ties, suggesting equal standing between ritual bonds and blood bonds in the eyes of the gods. In Near Eastern traditions, the same equivalency is implied in treaty language awarding to treaty-partners various titles drawn from the sphere of family relations. These and other features of oath-making rituals in the Iliad have been found to correspond to features of oath-making as depicted in the traditional literatures of the ancient Near East.

Exploring the means by which the high register of certain ritual performances establishes authority and compulsion has been one of the aims of this book. Envisioning that register, authority, and compulsion through ritual narratives in the Iliad has been another. The structure of the oath-sacrificing typical scene has been demonstrated to be relatively fixed, and has been argued to correspond to the ritual item named a liturgical order by anthropologist Roy Rappaport.