People, through some theatrical spectacle, some embodiment of the dramatic, become motivated to kill people who are otherwise total strangers. This, if I understand what you’re suggesting, is parallel to what is going on when the Good is taken to be the Good of Society rather than the individual. It’s a role-play where there is such a thing as ‘A Society’ made up of a cast who know their lines and that they’re performing them.

To motivate yourself into certain acts - to be an actor (in the sense of someone who does things) - sometimes relies on the transformation of self into an actor (someone who pretends to be a certain kind of character who would do those acts). And this carries with it some kind of loss of individualism. Without meaning to, you have transformed yourself into something inherently group-orientated, audience aware.

I’m not certain, but my instinct is that this isn’t what’s going on The Iliad. I mean, there’s a lot going on in The Iliad, and much of it (including everything Achilles does or says) could be interpreted to be relating to this very question: what motivates men to risk their lives to kill others?

But first I want to talk a little about what death looks like. Frequently, when someone kills a man, there is a pause in the action right at the moment the reader finds out who is going to die. A typical example, one of the dozens of times this same pattern occurs:

Next [Idomeneus] killed the hero Alcathous, the dear son of Aesyetes,

nurtured by Zeus; he was the son in law of Anchises,

and had married the eldest of his daughters, Hippodameia,

loved by her father and revered mother with all their hearts

in their halls, since she excelled all girls of her age

in beauty, in handiwork, and in good sense; and so it was

the best man in broad Troy who had gained her in marriage.

He is was whom Poseidon beat down by Idomeneus’ hand,

bewitching his shining eyes and shackling his bright limbs;

he was unable either to run back or to swerve aside, but

stood motionless like a grave-pillar or a high-leafed tree,

while the hero Idomeneus stabbed him with his spear

in the middle of his chest, and broke through the bronze tunic

that had up to then kept death away from his body; but

this time the spear tore through it with a loud grating noise.

He fell with a thud, and the spear stuck fast in his heart,

but then towering Ares took away the heart’s fury, and

Idomeneus gave a great shout, and boasted terribly over him…’ [13.427-445, Verity]

Yep, that’s right, this is the moment to spend a little more time getting to know his aging in-laws! And his soon-to-be bereaved wife! Notice he is already dead this whole passage, and then he dies again at the end of it, but with all the graphic violence and specificity second time around. It’s not like we’d met this character before the moment of his death. He was just one of a crowd, heading towards becoming a body in the pile, until the poet decided we needed to hear a bit more about his shining eyes. In order to what, though? To truly appreciate the significance of the action of taking away a stranger’s life?

While the dead would often be strangers to the reader, if not for these interludes, the heroes on opposing sides do regularly recognise and even speak to one another. In the passage above, just after I left off quoting, Idomeneus boasts to Deïphobus (referring to him by name) - who had just killed Hypensor in order to avenge Asius, who died seeking to protect the body of Othryoneus - that he has killed three in exchange for Deïphobus’ one. Only once, in amongst the many deaths in war, do two heroes speak to one another, and afterwards mutually decline to even try to kill one another (the famous ‘guest- friendship’ of Glaucus and Diomedes in Book 6).

These passages do humanise the dead, but why not focus on the grief and friendship of those that fight alongside them, instead of those back home? After a death, grief frequently comes over their allies, but this comes later, and is generally described in practical terms, often associated with the stripping of their armour by their killers. Deïphobus, for instance, goes to fetch Alcathous’ brother-in-law Aeneas ( ‘Aeneas, counsellor of the Trojans, now surely is the time for you to help your brother-in-law, if indeed grief for him touches you. So come, let us go and save Alcathous… Look, spear-famed Idomeneus has stripped his armour from him [13.463-467]) and the resulting rally by the Trojans leads to consequences in battle: several more deaths on both sides. But I’d argue these death passages consist of an assertion of the loss of the individual - outside of their membership of a group or a force or cast, they have ‘real’ lives, a wife who is skille d in needlework, who has a mother who loves her.

But look, ​can you tell me why, if what The Massacre at Paris is doing is describing our whole attitude to violence and by extension, the modern attitude to morality, it couldn’t also work as a play? Because it really doesn’t work as a play.