Near and far, small and large, in and out, my land and your land: these fundamental human categories of space aid our navigation of charted territories, unbounded and trackless misty distances of sea, ¹ and perceived celestial bodies. Both of Homer’s² poems exploit territorial possession and aggression, life abroad, death at sea, nostalgia and homesickness, rootedness in a particular rocky soil. Strabo deemed Homer the founder of geography (ἀρχηγέτης, 1.1. 2). Controlling territory against competitors and invaders, awarding it to subordinates, and penetrating other tribes’ privileged spaces are central Homeric honor-bringing occupations. Trojans defend their home territory and town against Akhaians, Akhilleus quarrels with Agamemnon over spear-won chattel, a property equivalent on alien ground (Il. 1.122–40). When Agamemnon threatens to invade Akhilleus’ camp to seize this local woman, Akhilleus threatens to kill him, should he try to take anything therein but the awarded prize, Briseis (κλισίηνδε, Il. 1.185; εἰ δ’ἄγε μὴν πείρησαι, Il. 1.302). At his wits’ end, Agamemnon subsequently offers him one daughter (no bride-price!) and seven rich Pylian towns to rule that will honor and support him (Il. 9.141–56). Furious Poseidon disputes control with Zeus’s proxy over allegedly common territory (Il. 15.158–217), a passage to which we shall return. Penelope’s “suitors” occupy Telemakhos’ domain against his Laërtid will, beggar Odysseus holds a minimal foothold in the face of the “suitors,” Laërtes has retreated to the hilly periphery, etc. Property and territorial expectations focus heroic and divine conflicts and thus furnish essential motives to both Homeric plots. This paper, therefore, addresses four space-based topics. It hopes to illuminate [A] Homeric linear and spatial measures and concepts, quantifiers of human and divine experience. Then, it identifies [B] Homer’s characters’ conscious and subconscious perceptions and manipulation of travel-paths, battlefield ground gained and lost, built urban architecture and choke-points (eg, gates), and social distances (or proxemics, including characters’ access, elevation, and other spatial recognitions of hierarchy). Thus one opens a window to glimpse narrator and characters’ conceptions of body envelopes and positional

 ἄπειρον πόντος, ἠεροειδές, while ὑγρὰ κέλευθα may be a sailor’s joke.“Homer” here signifies the two monumental texts that later Greeks and we possess. It does not imply answers to the notorious “Homeric questions.”