so far we've examined homer's two fictive heroes as prototypes for ways the basileus of the Formative period (ca. 900–760) and early state (to ca. 700) transformed himself into a new kind of social role and a new kind of self. I've proposed that Homer dramatizes Achilles' and Odysseus' struggles to assume this traditional role as the agent of justice, and that as they struggle to “render a dikê” they open to Homer's audiences the possibility of theorizing about the self. Each hero is temporarily isolated from his peers and inferiors, experiencing a version of individuation that enhances his moral autonomy. This takes the form of a shelter in which he chooses performatively to redefine and realign himself with the dominant social other, whom I identify with the corps of elite citizens in the nascent state. In contemporary terms each hero enacts an autonomy that briefly conjures up the image of an “unencumbered” self – but then chooses to “re-encumber” himself with a cluster of intersubjectively constituted social roles. This re-encumbering, we saw, enables Achilles to resolve disputes among peers and reconcile with an arch-enemy; it enables Odysseus to undergo a self-transformation in order to punish peers who threaten his individual status (timê) and his household's welfare. For Achilles this led to acknowledging that his fate was in some way interchangeable with the fates of others in his community; for Odysseus it led to understanding that achieving justice means realigning the objects (victims) and subjects (perpetrators) of a crime as persons rather than mere agents.