uncanny homer

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Uncanny HomerAuthor(s): Norman AustinSource: Arion, Third Series, Vol. 16, No. 3 (Winter, 2009), pp. 65-98Published by: Trustees of Boston UniversityStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/29737414 .

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Uncanny Homer*

NORMAN AUSTIN

?To Ronald M. H. Shepherd

A Xomer, whoever he, she, or they may be and

whatever his, her, or their date, is a genius. If we take a poet's

genius to include, beyond personal brilliance, the sweep of

fame in time and space and the longevity of influence, Homer

has no peers save perhaps the author or authors of the Pen?

tateuch. The Pentateuch no doubt has had a wider circula?

tion but the Homeric epics must come in a close second.

They are staples in the American college curriculum, and

thousands who did not encounter Homer in the classroom

may receive their education in Homer via various movie ver?

sions and now, failing the movies, from comic books.

Homer, to use that time-honored name for convenience for

the poet of the Iliad and the Odyssey, set the bar for sublimity very high indeed. When Alexander Pope came to publish his

translation of the Iliad, he opened his preface with a bold dec?

laration: "Homer is universally allowed to have had the great? est invention of any writer whatever. The praise of judgment

Virgil has justly contested with him, and others may have their

pretensions as to particular excellencies; but his invention re?

mains yet unrivalled." He amplifies on this pronouncement at some length. He talks of "our author's work" as "a wild para?

dise." The power of this "invention," which today we might call "imagination," produces "that unequalled fire and rapture, which is so forcible in Homer, that no man of a true poetical spirit is master of himself while he reads him." We acknowl?

edge Homer, Pope continues, as "the father of poetical diction, the first who taught that language of the gods to men."

""Review essay of Rainer Friedrich, Formular Economy in Homer:

The Poetics of the Breaches, Hermes Einzelschriften ioo (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2007), 159 pages. ?35.00.

ARION 16.3 WINTER 2009



66 UNCANNY HOMER

Pope, no mean poet himself, confesses in amazement and

without reservation that no subsequent poet has ever achieved

the sublimity that we find in Homer. Even in western Europe, when Greek went underground and Virgil took Homer's

place as the master of epic, people knew that Virgil was the

imitator and Homer the original inspiration. Everywhere we

look in Virgil we see Homer's footprint. The imitations are

not disguised in obscure or recondite allusions; they are as

plain as day. As Pope puts it, if Homer must have his funeral

games for Patroclus, Virgil must have his for Anchises. If

Odysseus is sent to visit the shades, then Aeneas must follow

after. If Odysseus is detained by Calypso, then Aeneas must

be detained by Dido.

On the question of imitation, Pope concludes: "Nor is it

only in the main design that they [subsequent epic poets] have been unable to add to his invention, but they have fol?

lowed him in every episode and part of story. " Clearly, Pope

was thinking not of Milton's Paradise Lost in this connec?

tion, but of the Roman poets such as Virgil and Silius Itali cus. But even adding Milton and Dante to the list, we are still

confronted with the truth, somewhat formidable perhaps to

all subsequent poets with aspirations to epic, that the first

epic poet of the European tradition was also the greatest. The

best hope that could fire a later poet's imagination was to be as good, or almost as good, as the original genius. To dream

of surpassing Homer was to be an Icarus, who plunged into

the sea for daring to fly too close to the sun, with nothing more than beeswax to sustain one's flight.

After his effusive tributes to Homer's brilliance, Pope can?

not conclude his preface without acknowledgement of cer?

tain imperfections in the great master's work. Sometimes, he

admits, Homer's imagination outruns itself, as when Homer

has Achilles' horse speaking in human language. He admits

too that the Homeric similes "have been thought too exu?

berant and full of circumstances." He agrees that the grosser

aspects of Homer's gods and heroes are indefensible but at?

tributes them to the mores of the Homeric age. "Who can be



Norman Austin 67

so prejudiced in their favour as to magnify the felicity of

those ages, when a spirit of revenge and cruelty, joined with

the practice of rapine and robbery, reigned through the world, when no mercy was shown but for the sake of lucre, when

the greatest princes were put to the sword, and their wives

and daughters made slaves and concubines?" If we consider that we are stepping three thousand years back in time, we

shall pass judgment not so much on Homer, the "author" as

Pope calls him, as on the ethos of the times; we can then de? rive pleasure from Homer's uncanny gift to be "the only true

mirror of that ancient world."

Another defect, which Pope cannot ignore, is the Homeric use of repetition, though Pope restricts his discussion of this

topic to the frequently repeated epithets of the gods and he?

roes, "which some have censured as impertinent and te?

diously repeated." Pope attributes this perhaps tedious

characteristic of the Homeric style to the same cause?the mores of the Homeric age; we are to reflect "that we are

reading the most ancient author in the heathen world."

Making the best possible defense for this primitive feature of

the Homeric style, Pope supposes that the epithets have a

kind of religious aura and it would be "an irreverence to

omit" them. So much for the Homeric formulas. Of the in?

terlocking system of formulas, or of the metrical conven?

ience of these formulaic systems, Pope shows no awareness

at all. He assumes, of course, that Homer is a writer who sits

at his desk with quill in hand like a fine calligrapher and

composes his verses one careful dactyl after another. The

blemishes, such as they are, are to be ascribed to a certain

quaintness in this primitive author and excused, being over?

shadowed by the poet's brilliance in so many other respects. If he were granted telescopic vision, Pope would surely be

astonished to discover that two hundred years after his mag? isterial translation of the Iliad those very repetitions, which

seemed minor faults in a great poet, would be seen as the

very essence of the Homeric style, not incidental but the

bedrock on which the Homeric architecture is built. Some



68 UNCANNY HOMER

eighty years ago now, a young American, Milman Parry, rev?

olutionized Homeric studies with the two theses that he pub? lished for his doctorate at the University of Paris, in which he

outlined the remarkably pervasive system of formulas in

Homer and argued that Homer was not a writer at all, but a

singer, or if we prefer, a bard, singing his songs, whether the

Iliad or the Odyssey, anew in every performance, like the Yu?

goslav guslars whom Parry himself had recorded. Some argu? ments foreshadowing such a theory had been brought forward by earlier scholars, notably by Robert Wood in 1767, and intimations of some such theory of Homeric composition were to be found here and there, yet Parry's theses fell like a

lightning bolt onto the world of Homeric scholarship.1 Some accepted Parry's evidence for the oral composition

of the Homeric poems without reservation, as if Parry had

just discovered for them the Golden Bough. Others, myself included, reacted with consternation. I had fallen in love

with Homer's Odyssey in my first-year Greek class at the

University of Toronto, when I, along with the other four

freshmen in the class, read books 9-12 with the charismatic

professor Ronald Shepherd. Later, as a graduate student at

Berkeley, I was deeply disturbed when introduced to the the?

ory that this mellifluous poetry could not be ascribed to a

poet at all, or not as we had grown up to think of poets and

poems, but was to be understood as the work of bards cre?

ating each performance anew, spontaneously and in haste,

using a set of formulas handed down through the genera? tions from one bard to the next. Gone was the idea of the

original genius; gone was the idea of a carefully constructed

design; gone was le mot juste, which we take to be the hall?

mark of the poet composing on the written page for those

who would be reading his words off the written page. How would Pope react to a theory that the brilliance of the

original genius was to be ascribed on one hand to improvisa? tion, and on the other hand to a bard's memory packed with

formulaic clich?s which had served for bardic convenience over generations, even centuries? Pope had defended the epi



Norman Austin 69

thets attached to the gods and heroes as having a certain no?

bility, used by the poet much like surnames in modern times.

Reaching to the full extent for the aesthetic function of these

epithets, he recalls the Age of Heroes as described by Hesiod, men whom Hesiod calls demi-gods, who live on after death on the Islands of the Blest. "Now among the divine honours

which were paid them," Pope conjectures, "they might have

this also in common with the gods, not to be mentioned

without the solemnity of an epithet, and such as might be ac?

ceptable to them by its celebrating their families, actions, or

qualities." We can see in this defense Pope struggling to jus?

tify these Homeric epithets as still les mots justes, even when

they seemed to proliferate beyond what might seem appro?

priate for the style of the world's greatest poet. But if the

name-epithet formulas indicate the veneration of a primitive age for its gods and heroes, what are we to make of the for?

mulas for the lesser characters and for objects like ships, chariots, swords, and even hands and knees?

The epithets are, of course, the most conspicuous example

of formulaic repetitions in Homer, but repetition is far more

pervasive than Pope acknowledged or perhaps even per? ceived. It extends to the systems of verbs that are used with

the name-epithet formulas, to full-verse formulas, and even

to those passages where several whole verses are repeated,

either verbatim or with the most minor alterations made

necessary by the context. Pope could not see in these repeti? tions a system, nor could anyone else, until Milman Parry laid it out in his 1928 theses. The system was almost wholly invisible to Pope as to others, whether poets or readers, be?

cause everywhere it was axiomatic that Homer, being a ge?

nius, was to be read as a genius is read, celebrated for the

sustained brilliance of his invention, in which was to be in?

cluded his greatest gift, "the language of the gods." So strong is the pressure today of Parry's Oral Theory that

even now, eighty years after he published his devastating

analysis of Homer's poetics, no one dares write of Homer as

Pope did. Who today would argue for the Homeric diction



70 UNCANNY HOMER

as "the language of the gods"? Who would risk his or her

reputation by speaking of Homer's "fire," which makes any

person of poetic sensibility lose control of him- or herself?

Milman Parry?the iconoclast, though certainly not by in?

tention?has won the day. The systems that he presented in

his tables, with their efficiency and economy, are so convinc?

ing that no one, it seems, will ever be able to argue for the

Homeric poems as the compositions of a writer (or even of two writers, if we prefer to ascribe each of the two epics to a separate genius). The arguments against Homer as a writer

are based, first and foremost, on the formulaic system but

also on other factors less specific, like the mixture of dialects

and the historical vagaries of the texts as we have them. The common opinion now is that these poems were the products of a long oral tradition and were committed to writing sometime around the middle of the eighth century bce,

shortly after the Greeks had adopted the Phoenician writing system and created their own alphabet.2

If the poems were actually composed by a writer in the eighth century, we would expect a host of indications, great and small,

pointing to the identity of this person. Instead, we have an

amalgamation of histories from different regions of Greece and

different epochs. The Catalogue of Ships (in Iliad 2), if we ac?

cept Page's detailed analysis, cannot be a composition from the

eighth century but must have been transmitted by memory from the Bronze Age.3 We need to remind ourselves from time to time that nothing in these Homeric poems that might pre? date the mid-eighth century could have been preserved in writ?

ing, there being no writing system to record such data.

If our Homer were a writer, we would have to assume in

this writer a rare talent indeed. These persons would, first, have written their poem, or their additions to the original oral

poem (or poems), as if they were the most accomplished non

writers. When read from the page, their compositions would

have sounded to listeners exactly like the compositions of a

non-literate singer. The author's written texts would have had

all the hallmarks of the spontaneous, improvisational compo



Norman Austin 71

sition that Parry and Albert Lord, who had assisted him, trained us to expect in oral poetry.

The reverse side of this talent would be that such a poet, who had discovered in himself ex nihilo a gift for writing at

the very dawn of literacy, would have been one of the most

accomplished writers the world has ever seen, such as to

dazzle even an exemplary one like Alexander Pope. Herod?

otus, when he decided on his career as an author, had behind him some centuries of Greeks setting down histories or ge?

nealogies. By his time, there was at least established the idea of a man who might choose to be a writer. To support his re?

search, Herodotus could consult, in addition to oral stories, many documents, whether the histories of Hecataeus or the lists stored in temple archives. Also, as a historian, he had a

personality. He could inform us where he had gone in search of his information, and on many occasions give us his per? sonal attitude toward the information he had received. He

could tell us something (never enough) of his sources; he could adjudicate on his sources' reliability. If Homer were a

poet of the pen (or stylus), we would expect to find at least some of those markers that Herodotus has left as evidence of

himself as a writer.

Instead, we have no sense at all of Homer as a person. If he were a writer, we must assume that he gathered all his mate?

rial from the numerous strands of oral tradition?the legends emanating from Mycenae, Troy, Pylos?for his epical digres? sions into the lives of the heroes of an earlier generation, like

Heracles. Did Homer as a writer travel around Greece and Anatolia as Herodotus did, interviewing authorities and ex?

perts and writing down their information? Did he have some

rhapsode sit down and dictate to him the whole Catalogue of

Ships? Did the rhapsode give him the long version or the short? Did this Homer ask any questions of his informer

about the historical veracity of this or that episode in the nar?

rative? As a writer, Homer has kept himself miraculously in?

visible. Nothing in the Homeric poems would betray, at least to our eyes, at this great distance from the original texts, that



72 UNCANNY HOMER

a world-class writer had sprung onto the scene in the mid

eighth century as if from the head of Zeus himself.

Now that Parry's theory has had time to settle into our

thinking, we are mostly prepared to believe that the name it?

self, Homer, cannot mean a person, one unique and creative

genius, but must be merely un fa?on de parler. Purists would

rather say "the Homeric tradition," or "the epic," or "the

epic tradition," to indicate that we mean not a person but, if we like, a school, oral bards learning their craft from older

bards in the villages of Greece, and passing their themes, their stories, their well-honed formulas on to the next gener?

ation of bards in one continuous flow through all the illiter? ate centuries of Greek culture from the Bronze Age to that

moment when Greek writing was invented and the songs could be committed to a written form.

Still, we feel a certain unease. Underlying all our supposi? tions is the cardinal principle that oral poetry may be charm?

ing but it is artless.4 How could any poetry be art without the

artist, when one formula for Odysseus is repeated countless

times, when dawn is spoken of in the same formula time af?

ter time, when whole passages are repeated verbatim, when

stock scenes are given only so much alteration in their details as required by the immediate context? Where is the art in the

Catalogue of Ships? Can there be an artist when so little in

the Homeric style even hints at individuality? Are we to call

the "artist" those five centuries of anonymous and illiterate

singers that fill the gap between the end of the Bronze Age and the beginning of writing in the eighth century? This is in?

deed an aporia. Plato criticizes the tragic poets who, when

they reach an aporia in their dramatic plots, bring in "the

gods from the machine." The deus ex machina, Plato argues, is not an explanation. But, in our present impasse, if we call

the Iliad a masterpiece but there is no master, to whom are

we to turn if not to the god from the machine?

A strong piece of evidence for our belief that the Homeric

formulas are artless is to be found in our modern English translations. Pope hardly ever employed a recurring formula



Norman Austin 73

in his translation and more modern translations generally fol?

low his precedent. Lattimore soldiers on bravely in his Iliad, as does Cook in his Odyssey, to give us Homer with all his

formulaic repetitions. Even so, they hardly seem like formu?

las in the Homeric sense; they lack that remarkable rhythm that Vivante studied over so many years. 5 Fagles belongs to

the school that considers these repetitions artless. The name

+ epithet formula polym?tis Odysseus occurs sixty-eight times

in the Odyssey. In his translation of the first twelve books of

the poem, Fagles has the following fourteen variants to ex?

press that single formula: resourceful, worldly, wary, man of

craft, diplomatic, quick to the mark, wily, tactful, deftly, gen?

tly (speaking), master of many exploits, great teller of tales, deft and tactful, man of countless exploits.

It is contrary to our aesthetic or our narrative expectations

for a translator to work towards anything truly resembling the Homeric system of formulas, but the most compelling reason for a translator to drop the formulas is that no indi?

vidual writer, whether poet or novelist, could create a system like the Homeric one, which includes not just names but net?

works of verbs and whole sentences. A translator may

choose to retain the epithets attached to the names, as Latti?

more does, but even so to write like Homer is an absolute

impossibility. Translators, even when allowing themselves a

few formula-like repetitions, side willy-nilly with Pope, tak?

ing the complex formulaic aggregate to be incidental to the

poetry and concentrating as best they can on everything else

where Pope saw the brilliance of Homeric invention.

This puts us in the awkward position aesthetically that the

translator must eliminate from Homer the single most distinc?

tive feature of Homeric verse. Certainly what Pope called

Homer's invention is everywhere evident in the poetry. It is

spellbinding and majestic; it can be seen in the simplest events

of ordinary life and in the most sublime moments. This imag? inative quality is so vivid that it can be translated into any lan?

guage, into poetry or prose. But what of the Homeric

hexameter itself? Has it no inherent beauty, even in those sim



74 UNCANNY HOMER

plest, repetitive formulas like "and answering him spoke Achilles swift of foot" ? Vivante is one scholar who has dared to argue for the aesthetic richness of the simplest Homeric

hexameter, as expressing a rhythm as common and as pro?

found as life itself, but his has been a solitary voice.6 For the most part, the Homeric formula is judged artless, discreetly to

be sure, for the simple reason that it is a formula and there?

fore betrays the absence of any individual creative genius. Some modern scholars have put the Homeric Question to

the side and have brought their attention to bear on broader

social issues related to character, the Homeric cosmology, the heroic ideal, or the role of women. Such studies have

deepened our understanding of the Homeric world in many

ways but they have skirted the issue that occupied both the

earlier Analysts and then Milman Parry. Unity was the basis

of the old Homeric Question and it remains the question to?

day; but how can we speak of unity in the Homeric poems, whether of character or plot, when the poems are conglom?

erates compiled over generations, a virtual kaleidoscope of

attitudes and poetic talents, a m?lange of history and cul?

ture? Parry's theory gave us a new approach to the problem but it did little to resolve the underlying question. Albert

Lord, Parry's assistant in the field, who continued the col?

lecting of truly oral poetry in Yugoslavia, argued that to un?

derstand the Homeric poems we need to construct a new

aesthetic. Scholars have made approaches in that direction, in comparative studies of pre-literate societies or of older

heroic poetry, but the nagging doubt remains. Can we con?

struct a viable aesthetic when the poetry can be assigned to

no specific date or place, and to no specific author, when we

cannot use the categories by which we evaluate poetry? We can trace this unease in Rainer Friedrich's monograph,

Formular Economy in Homer: The Poetics of the Breaches.

Like many scholars before him, Friedrich is troubled by the austere implications of the Oral Theory as defined first by

Milman Parry and further codified by Lord.7 He searches for some loophole that will allow us to re-introduce the word



Norman Austin 75

"art" into Homeric studies without embarrassment. Fried

rich divides his monograph into two sections. In the first, he enumerates instances of what he calls the breaches in the

economy of Homer's formulaic system. In the second, he un?

dertakes an aesthetic critique of these breaches, considering both their frequency and their variety.

The book begins with a good exposition of the tests for

orality as Parry defined them. The first three are the tests by

formula, by theme, and by the use of enjambment. To these

Lord added a fourth, which Friedrich calls "the economy test, better known as the 'test by thrift'" (9). Parry himself

did not make this issue of thrift one of the essential tests, but

it permeated his thinking and emerged in Lord's discussions as a test of equal value with the other three. Friedrich him?

self argues that this should really be the primary test since

the thrift of the system?one formula of one metrical shape for each "essential idea," to use Parry's phrase?is the sine

qua non in the immediacy of a song's performance.

The poet who composes for the written page can pause be?

tween one word and the next, a pause that might last for

hours, days, or even weeks. The singer does not have this lux?

ury. The song, once begun, must proceed inexorably at its own

pace. The thrift of the formula system works to maximize the

product, making for poems of greater length and of even

greater complexity, while at the same time minimizing the

poet's mental effort in the moment-by-moment delivery of the

song. The formulas themselves must be the basis for any study of oral poetry, but once the system is established, the next prin?

ciple to be investigated must be the system's thrift. The greater the economy of the system, the more conclusive the evidence

for oral composition. Presumably?at least this seems to be

Friedrich's assumption?a poem that is one hundred percent the product of oral composition would show one hundred per? cent economy in the system. In the completely economical sys? tem, there would be only one formula of one metrical shape for each "essential idea," e.g., for the various metrical shapes

for the name "Achilles" in the nominative case.



76 UNCANNY HOMER

Friedrich's monograph contains much interesting material

for Homeric scholars, which is difficult to summarize in a

brief review. The core is to be found in three tables. Table i

lists the "Achilles" formulas for five cases (nominative, gen?

itive, dative, accusative, vocative) for the various metrical

positions in the hexameter verse, and table 2 gives us the same kind of list for the "Zeus" formulas. Using the evi?

dence of these tables, Friedrich notes that the principle of

formular economy is breached eleven times in the Achilles

system and nineteen times in the Zeus system. In the Achilles

system, we have thirty-four formulas for "Achilles" in all the

cases, excluding full-verse formulas or formulaic expressions that do not fit the standard metrical shapes; of these, eleven are duplicates, alternate formulas for expressing the same es?

sential idea. For the Zeus system, Friedrich lists thirty-five formulas and of these nineteen are duplicates, alternative

formulas for the name in one or other of the grammatical cases. The Zeus system is particularly interesting since for

"Zeus"nom, the poems give us twelve different formulas for

the four metrical shapes. For one metrical shape alone, num?

ber three on his list (-4 ? --5 ?

--6-), we have six dif?

ferent formulas. The name-epithet system, Friedrich reminds

us, is where "the 'argument from thrift' can be demonstrated at its strongest" (39). Yet the count of the breaches of this

principle is remarkably large, and for only these two names.

In table 3, Friedrich moves outside the name-epithet sys? tem to a more general study of the breaches of economy for a variety of formulas. His list is by no means exhaustive; it

represents instances that Friedrich himself has accumulated

from his own readings of Homer and from the work of ear?

lier scholars. It includes some name-epithet phrases, noun

epithet phrases, and verb phrases, including the common

ones, like "X replied to Y." The point again is to show how

often we have duplicate formulas for a certain name or ordi?

nary noun of a single metrical shape?two formulas for

"Trojans"nom, two formulas for "chariot"nom or acc, two for?

mulas for "chariots"dat, two formulas for "hand"dat, etc.



Norman Austin 77

Friedrich attempts the daunting task of putting this mate?

rial into some rough statistical form. For example, his table

3, which he admits is not complete, gives us 321 items where we have alternative formulas for one metrical shape and one

"essential idea." He puts the data of his tables 1 and 2 into

percentages: we could say that the epithet system for

"Achilles "nom is slightly breached but that the systems for

"Achilles"?en (forty percent), "Zeus"nom (fifty percent), and

"Zeus"voc (more than fifty percent) are "heavily breached."

He gives the breaches for the Achilles system taken as a

whole as twenty-two percent, and for the Zeus system

thirty-three percent. However we tabulate the exceptions to

the principle of formulaic thrift, they are sufficiently numer?

ous to make us rethink the principle itself as the foundation

of oral composition.

Unfortunately, interpreting these data is as difficult and

controversial as any other aspect of Homeric diction, since

our interpretations must be based on many unknowns, which

would not plague the analysis, or at least not to the same de?

gree, of a writer whose life and works were known. Every

analysis of Homeric diction leads us inevitably to make a

leap from the small island of the known into the abyss of the

unknown. This problem forms the basis of the second half of

Friedrich's monograph, "The Poetics of the Breaches." To

what degree can we detect an aesthetic at work that could ac?

count for the number and variety of breaches that Friedrich

tabulates in the first half of this study? "Poetics" comes

down to intention and design. Friedrich addresses the prob? lem under three headings: (1) deliberate variation; (2) avoid? ance of stylistic infelicities; and (3) what he calls "the pursuit of justness of expression." For the first two categories, draw?

ing on the studies of earlier scholars and his own readings, Friedrich can plausibly argue for a certain degree of appar?

ently deliberate intention in the Homeric poems in the pref? erence of one formula over another where alternative

formulas exist. In a simple example taken from Iliad 3, in the scene between Priam and Helen, in the space of sixty verses



7$ UNCANNY HOMER

the poem has Helen respond to Priam's questions three times

(171, 199, 228) and each time a different answering verse is

used, giving the passage, in Friedrich's words, "richness and

colour" (75). Each of these three verses is unique, occurring

only here in the poem, a fact that leads Friedrich to conclude

that each was "obviously coined for this particular passage"

(75). Friedrich notes that Edwards had drawn attention to

this sequence in a paper in 1969, as demonstrating "signs of a liking for variations in expression."8

Several previous scholars have noted another example Friedrich takes up: the metrical doublets for "Hera"nom: 0ea

??\)kc???vo? "HpTj (nineteen times) / ?oomic 7t?xvia"Hpr| (four? teen times). Others have argued that the usage of these two

formulas does not demonstrate deliberate variation, though Beck has argued that the clustering of these formulas depends on certain contextual associations.? In ten instances the for?

mula ?oomic 7t?xvia 'Hpn is used in the context of "enmity with Zeus"; the other four occur in contexts of "opposition and conflict." The second formula, which seems to fit the defi?

nition of an "ornamental" epithet-formula, Friedrich suggests, is used in passages where the other formula would be inappro?

priate, where the poet wants a "context-neutral" formula

(78-79). Friedrich devotes his longest treatment of the poetics of the

breaches to the question of le mot juste, a term taken from

Parry.10 This takes us to the heart of the Homeric Question, if we see the Question as first and foremost a question of aes?

thetics. Parry treats this issue as part of the broader question of the meaning of the epithets. To what degree are the epi? thets chosen for their meaning and to what degree are they determined simply by their metrical convenience? Friedrich

begins with Parry's statement that a poet, or rather a writer,

who is to choose le mot juste must be free from all con?

straints of versification. By this standard, le mot juste would

be available only to the modern prose writer. John Milton

would be out of the running, since in composing Paradise

Lost he was certainly as constrained by the rules of versifica



Norman Austin 79

tion as any ancient poet. This is a large assumption. Few

would want to press the case that a modern novelist would

be more proficient than Milton in finding the exact word to

convey his or her thought. That quibble aside, we can agree that the rigorous formulaic system of the Homeric poems

militates against le mot juste to an extraordinary degree, well

beyond the degree of constraint imposed on literate poets like

Virgil composing their thoughts for the written page. The

highly schematized diction of the oral performer, which

guards against what Friedrich calls "the peril of metrical

breakdown," has as its side effect, if we like, that it "pre? cludes the conscious pursuit of stylistic justesse in oral com

position-in-performance" (83-84). Friedrich advises us that

since the individual word is so intricately bound up with the

formular system, we do better to search not so much for the exact word as the fitting phrase, la phrase juste. He begins his discussion with the distinction made by the

ancient scholia and then used by Parry to separate ornamen?

tal epithets from particularized epithets, ornamental epithets in turn subdivided into those that are generic (used of a va?

riety of persons) and those that are distinctive to one char? acter (like "swift-footed Achilles" or "Odysseus of many

wiles"). Parry insisted that an epithet must be either orna?

mental or particularized; once it achieved its "ornamental" status through repetition, it could not then be used to give a

particularized meaning in a particular context. This under?

standing of the ornamental epithet, that it has no semantic

meaning in itself, led Parry to his fundamental axiom, that

the name-epithet formulas express always one simple mean?

ing, which is the name itself. Friedrich and other scholars be?

fore him have now shown that Parry's categories are

over-simplified. He brings to our attention many examples where a formula, while undoubtedly a formula by Parry's strict definition, seems to be responding to context, or cer?

tainly on occasion enriching a specific context. These exam?

ples remind us of what by now must be obvious to all

Homerists, that even the commonplace epithets are never en



8o UNCANNY HOMER

tirely devoid of semantic significance. "Zeus the husband of

Hera" and "Zeus who gathers the clouds" are both formu?

las by Parry's definition, and certainly they served to facili? tate the poet's versification in performance, yet few today

would insist that the epithets have no other function than

utility in the poet's verse-making performances. Formular Economy's table 2, for the Zeus systems, lists

some fifty formulas for Zeus in all the cases and for all the

metrical shapes. Many of these are variants of each other; some are made of two epithets strung together. Even allowing for such manipulation of simpler formulas to form more

complex ones, the system as a whole gives us a wide range of

the functions of Zeus in myth and religious cult. Many have to do with his function as the Weather God; others have him

as lord of Mount Ida, lord of Dodona, lord of Olympus. Others have him as the son of Kronos, the husband of Hera, father of men and gods, Zeus most high and best of the gods. These formulas did not arise spontaneously in the bardic

schoolrooms as the bards pressed on urgently with their task

of facilitating their compositions. They emerged first in myth. Zeus undoubtedly was the husband of Hera before he be? came a formula in the epic repertoire. It would call for a

monograph to explicate all the mythical and religious func?

tions expressed in the Zeus systems of the Homeric formulas.

In the eighty years since Parry published his theory, much

has been done to refine the analysis of the Homeric system. Friedrich has accumulated some excellent examples that

show that even the most ornamental epithet can, on occa?

sion, step out of its niche and shed its influence on the action

in its immediate context. As an example well worth our

closer attention, Friedrich gives us the name-epithet formula

"Zeus the cloud-gatherer" (ve^e^rryep?Ta Zevq). In what fol?

lows, I have taken up Friedrich's suggestion and carried the

analysis further than he himself chooses to go. The phrase is entirely formulaic as Parry defined the term.

The formula is used thirty times in the Iliad and the Odyssey; it is combined with a variety of verbs, but its commonest use



Norman Austin 81

is in the whole verse formula, "and then answered him and

said Zeus the cloud-gatherer" (x?v ?' a7Eau?i?ou?voc npoa?^if]

v?(|)??r|Y?p?Ta Zcu?). The epithet is also used six times in the

genitive, for "Zeus"gen. In most instances, the epithet has no

obvious relevance to the context. By Parry's definition it must

be ornamental but also distinctive, since it is used only of

Zeus; therefore its "essential idea" can only be "Zeus."

Not so fast, Friedrich argues, and he takes us to Iliad 14, where Zeus the cloud-gatherer is shown actively pursuing his

cloud-gathering function. This passage is a provocative chal?

lenge to Parry's absolute distinctions between the ornamental

and the particularized epithet in Homeric verse. The formula

is used three times in the so-called "Deception of Zeus," where Hera visits Zeus on the topmost peak of Mount Ida to

distract him with her erotic charms from his more important duties as supervisor-in-chief of the Trojan War (Iliad

14.292-351). Bathed, perfumed, gowned, and bejeweled, the

Queen of Heaven makes her way to the summit of Mount

Ida; we are told that she is seen by v?(|)?^r|Y?p?Ta Zevq as she

approaches (14.293). The formula seems purely ornamental.

But wait. We think of Mount Ida looming south of Troy, its peaks reaching into the clouds. How often had the Tro?

jans looked up and watched their mountain gathering clouds

around its summit? Mount Ida has here a double function, as does Zeus, who in this context is the great mountain god. In book 14, Mount Ida has one function as the seat from

which Zeus can watch the battle scenes on the plains below.

But it has another function outside the poem, in the life of

the people who dwell beneath the mountain, who depend on

it for their timber and their water, a function that we may call broadly cultural. Its peaks are the home of the Weather

God. Thus the Zeus in this passage has two functions, one as

the supreme god of the Iliad and the other, less obvious to

us, as the Weather God. His two functions intersect in this

passage. "He who gathers the clouds" may be an ornamen?

tal epithet in the narrative of the Iliad, but the epithet was

far from ornamental in the lives of the Greeks. The formula



8z UNCANNY HOMER

ve^e^rr/ep?xa Ze?c may have come to mind for thousands of

Greeks on thousands of occasions, especially when they saw

clouds gathering around their mountaintops. As the scene continues, Zeus, seeing Hera approach, is cu?

rious. Why, he asks, is she on foot when she has her horses

and chariot to take her wherever she wishes? Hera replies with an elegant obfuscation, which does not answer the

question, but is sweetly perfumed in allusions to sex and

marriage. She is on her way to the ends of the earth, she ex?

plains, to settle a matrimonial disagreement between their

primal parents, Okeanos and Tethys. Her horses, so she

claims, are tethered down in the foothills and she has made a detour, walking to the summit of Mount Ida, to pay a

courtesy call on her husband, much like a lady taking an af?

ternoon's walk in her private park. This information would hardly satisfy Zeus' curiosity, but

obfuscation is the theme and it has been magnificently suc?

cessful. Zeus has lost whatever polite interest he might have

had in Hera's motives for taking a walk on the topmost peak of Mount Ida because he has been already obfuscated by her

charms and beauty; he is in a state of full sexual arousal. Why not, he suggests, postpone her goodwill mission and bed

down with him then and there on the mountaintop? Here we

are given the second instance of the formula ve^e^rryep?xa

Zevq (14.312). Hera professes to be deeply offended. Imagine her shame if one of the gods were to spy on them and broad? cast it to the other gods that he had seen Zeus and his wife

making love en plein air} If sex is on her husband's mind, Hera suggests a more seemly location?her own bedroom

built by her son Hephaestus "with its well-fitting doors." Now we are given the third instance of the formula

(14.341). Zeus, "He who gathers the clouds," spells out that

function in his own words. He assures his wife that he has

all the clouds at his beck and call: "Hera, have no fear that

you will be seen either by the gods or by any human being. I

will cover us in a cloud of gold, such that not even Helios

could see through it, whose eyes they say are the sharpest for



Norman Austin 83

seeing into things." We might not think a mountaintop blan?

keted in fog with zero visibility the ideal location for love

making, but we are mortals, and this is the Weather God

speaking and clouds are his element. The golden lining should reassure his queen that making love in a fog would not be as chilly for her as it might be for us.

No sooner said than done. The hard ground blossoms into

their bed. Suddenly, miraculously, it is blanketed in clover, soft as velvet, and graced with spring flowers in profusion? the lotus, the crocus, the hyacinth. And over the amorous

couple Zeus throws his canopy of cloud. Once we perceive that nebulosity is the theme of this passage, we notice the

fog swirling around this mountain at several altitudes?

Hera's visit first to Aphrodite to borrow her most winsome

charms, then to Hypnos to borrow his sleep-inducing skills, then her approaching Zeus on foot so as to diminish suspi? cion, and then her sweet prevarication, resulting in the cloud

that comes over the mind of Zeus when it is aroused by his

wife's perfumes, her jewels, her body. Then, when Hera has

shed her own cloud over the scene, Zeus adds his small

cloud to the occasion in his catalogue of the beautiful god? desses who have enjoyed the privilege of his machismo, none

of whom could arouse his lust as does his present beautiful

wife, Hera.

Modern critics might hesitate to credit the poet of the Il?

iad with the plan here to work out the theme of cloudiness at so many levels. But whatever the terms of our critical

analysis, it can hardly be disputed that the passage taken as

a whole is an aesthetic triumph, with na?vet? and sophistica? tion delightfully mixed. When Hera obtains from Aphrodite the breast-band that will ensure the success of her mission, she smiles; the poet tells us twice over that she smiled

(222-23), and we smile too. Hera's smile may be enhanced

by Schadenfreude but ours is the smile of pure childish de?

light as we watch our favorite magician at his work, a fresh

flower springing up wherever his wand touches the ground. For a full comprehension of the aesthetics here, we need to



84 UNCANNY HOMER

keep in mind the two functions of the mountaintop and the two functions of the mountain god. When Zeus recites the

list of the goddesses whom he has bedded as a rhetorical ar?

gument for his present passion, we are in a comic farce. But

beneath the farce is a deeper mythology. The picture of Zeus

and Hera making love on the mountaintop has long been

recognized as an image of the Hieros Gamos, the sacred

marriage of Sky and Earth, king and queen, male and fe?

male. But less often noted is that this passage in Iliad 14 de?

scribes in mythological terms the end of winter and the birth

of spring. Trojans, like any people living beneath a moun?

tain, must have been accustomed to spring's arrival several

weeks earlier in the mountain meadows than on the plains

below, brought about by the more bountiful rainfall at the

higher altitudes. The catalogue of the other goddesses who

have succumbed to Zeus' passion is a stenographic list of the

various myths of the Weather God's matings in the spring with various versions of the Earth Goddess. We might con?

jecture that this catalogue, with suitable adaptations, might be used in a variety of poems.

The Oral Theory in its strictest form is concerned only with the narrative techniques that can be deduced from the

Homeric poems. But their narratives are embedded in a

larger narrative. This narrative is larger even than the whole

collection of poems that made up the epic tradition. It is

what Arendt calls the meaningful stories that humans in a

society tell each other.11 The Iliad and the Odyssey were

meaningful both in themselves and because they were frag? ments of a vast cultural narrative. A bard who sang the Iliad was singing two epics simultaneously. One was the Iliad as

we have it, the poem attached to the name of Homer, which

tells of the anger of Achilles and whatever else the poets deemed contingent on that story. But the bard's other epic was the story of Greek culture itself or the mythology that

sustained that culture and gave it form and substance. "Zeus

who gathers the clouds" (ve^e?riyep?xa Ze?cJ may be metri?

cally useful in the epic repertoire but it was also the distillate



Norman Austin 85

from hundreds of stories that farmers and sailors told each

other of their Weather God's actions and dispositions. We can turn to some other passages in the Odyssey, which

Friedrich did not include in his analysis, where the cloud-gath? erer's epithet certainly makes its own contribution to the con?

text. Odysseus encounters four great storms in the Odyssey. For one of them, Poseidon is responsible; the other three are

raised by Zeus. We are mildly amused that Odysseus, in telling of three of these storms, does not make the mistake of at?

tributing the Poseidon storm to Zeus, or vice versa. The first of

the Zeus storms occurs at the beginning of Odysseus' home?

ward journey (Odyssey 9.67-78). After Odysseus and his ships leave the land of the Cicones, as Odysseus tells the story,

"Zeus, He who gathers the clouds [v?(|)??r|Y?p?Ta Zevq], drove

the North Wind against the ships, with a fearsome gale, and

hid both land and sea. Night came down from the sky. The

ships were thrust plunging forward, the force of the wind

ripped the sails into three and four parts. We stowed them in

the ship, fearing destruction, and energetically rowed toward

the land. For two days and nights we lay in our ships, eating out our heart with weariness and pain, but when the third day dawned, we hoisted the sails, and the wind and our helmsmen

steered a straight course."

The next storm enters the story after Odysseus, much

against his own instincts, with now only one ship, has

landed on Thrinakia, the island where Helios the Sun God

pastures his herds. This storm's function is to keep Odysseus weather-bound, trapped on the island until, in desperation, his men slay and cook the Sun's sacred cattle, a very great

transgression indeed. This storm is the briefest exposition of

the theme (12.312-15): "It was the third watch of the night, and the stars had passed toward their setting, and Zeus, He

who gathers the clouds [v?(j)??r|Y?p?Ta Ze?cJ, aroused a

strong wind, with a fearsome gale, and hid both land and sea in clouds. Night came down from the sky."

The third storm in the sequence rises after Odysseus leaves

the island with his ship and crew. This storm has a larger



86 UNCANNY HOMER

role to play in the narrative, being the penalty both

Odysseus and his sailors must pay for the sailors' sacrilege, and it is treated with the surplus of detail that such an inci?

dent deserves. The storm occupies some fifty verses in the

narrative (12.377-426). The story, again told by Odysseus,

begins with Helios going to Zeus to register his outrage at

the transgression committed by Odysseus' sailors in killing and feasting on his sacred cattle. He threatens to withdraw

his light from the world and to shine only for the dead in

Hades' realm unless this transgression meets with its fitting

penalty. The full-verse formula, "and answering him spoke Zeus, He who gathers the clouds [ve^eXnyep?Ta Ze?cJ," leads into the response. Zeus assures Helios that he will

strike the ship with a lightning bolt when it is out at sea, in?

formation that Odysseus, fastidious about his sources, claims that he was told by Calypso herself, who learned it

from Hermes.

Zeus is as good as his word. Once Odysseus' ship is at sea

and out of sight of land, he sends a black cloud to stand over

the ship and hide the sea. The ship proceeds forward, but not

for long. Suddenly Zephyros arises, with a fearsome gale, and the force of the wind breaks both forestays of the mast.

The mast falls backward and all the apparatus falls into the

ship. The mast falls on the head of the helmsman in the stern

and smashes his skull, and he plunges into the sea like a diver.

In the sky above, Zeus shoots forth a bolt of lightning, which

strikes the ship. The ship spins from the force of the strike

and the air reeks of sulphur. All Odysseus' sailors are swept off the ship to a watery grave. But Odysseus, never one to cry

uncle, manages to make his way down the ship, and when

the mast and keel are snapped apart, somehow binds them

together. And when the whole ship breaks in pieces, voilai a

lifeboat. This small but sturdy craft carries Odysseus through the storm, taking him back to the whirlpool Charybdis,

where he would have lost the little boat altogether were it not

for his canny calculations of the rhythm of the whirlpool's

upward thrust and downward suction. Eventually, the



Norman Austin 87

makeshift raft brings him to Ogygia, where Calypso rescues

him and nurses him back to life.

To introduce our student to the use and meaning of the ep? ithet phrase v?())?^r|Y?p?Ta Ze?c in the Homeric poems, we

could certainly begin with its utility as a metrical formula, used thirty times, most often because it neatly completes a

hexameter verse in which Zeus responds to another speaker: tov ?' an;au?i?ou?voc 7cpOG?<|)r| v?0??ir|Y?p?Ta Zevq.

But that is only the beginning of the story. Next we should

walk our student through the passage in Iliad 14.292-351.

Here, we would say, is where our poet gives us his painting of our Sky God as the Father of spring. Next, we would take our student through the last 150 hexameters of Odyssey 12, and here, we would say, is our poet's painting of our Storm

God at his worst, when every sailor crosses himself, vows to

sacrifice hecatombs well beyond his means, and promises that he will never put to sea again, if only the Storm God

will forgive him his trespasses this one last time.

Parry, for good pragmatic reasons, settled on the principle that each name-epithet formula expresses as its "essential idea" no more than the name itself. All Zeus formulas mean simply "Zeus." The definition was useful as a starting point but it was

not science. Unfortunately, it has generated controversy and de?

bate as if it were a scientific axiom. But poetry, whatever its pe?

riod, of whatever kind and provenance, always includes many aesthetic factors that statistical analysis alone cannot address.

The name-epithet formulas have various functions besides their

convenience for the bard's oral performance. They add immea?

surably to the rhythm of the hexameter, and rhythm in formal

poetry is at least as important as the diction.

Pope might feel the need to excuse them as flaws from a

simpler age, but surely the ancient Greeks who heard their

rhapsodes sounding forth the roll call of those noble formu?

las loved them for their aesthetics as much as the bards loved

them for their utility. Who even today does not love Homer's

"swift-footed Achilles," "grey-eyed Athena," or his "wine

dark sea"?



88 UNCANNY HOMER

The Homeric poems are music. Later epic might aspire to

the condition of music but the Homeric verse was composed and performed by musicians and those who listened to it

heard it as music. The formulas are the basic chords. The

dactylic hexameter is itself a line of music, and the epithet

formulas, in elongating the name, create a musical phrase.

The poems contain many instances of the name used with? out epithets and these do not diminish the musical effect, be? cause even the simple name never floats free but is woven

into the fabric of the formulas. But certainly the music

would be seriously diminished if all the formulas were re?

moved from the poems. One effect of the formula system is

that even the simplest and most-often repeated sentences?

"and so X spoke, and Y replied"?are made into music.

Empedocles offers us an interesting comparison, a poet and a philosopher of such genius that Lucretius eulogizes him as

being of "scarcely human stock." Empedocles' surviving

fragments show a truly remarkable poet. He is revolutionary, not only in his thought but also in his use of the dactylic hexameter. His genius is due in large part to his magnificent cosmic vision and his bold intellect, which is able to bring that vision before our eyes, but it is indebted also to the rich

mythological tradition from which he was just beginning to

emerge. There is much music in Empedocles. Empedocles is a

great cathedral organ, which now whispers with the sound of

the slenderest reed, now thunders in our ears with the noise

of a hundred pipes. But, lacking the intricate phraseology of

the Homeric formulas, he cannot give us the music of the

quotidian, which is Homer's glory. Empedocles' surviving

fragments make for a fine reading in ancient poetics, but

when they are memorable, their power is more in their bold

metaphors than in the rhythm of the hexameter itself. Read?

ing Empedocles, we are aware of this man as an author who

has inherited the epic tradition, and from the epic the idea of

the sublime, but his poetry is not embedded in that tradition as were the poems of Homer, Hesiod, and the Homeric

Hymns. We recognize here an individual genius, writing as



Norman Austin 89

subsequent poets have written, creating his own diction, his own mythology, his own tropes and metaphors, creating his own dactylic hexameters one dactyl at a time.12

Friedrich admits that le mot juste could never be found in

Homer, given the severe metrical constraints of the Greek

hexameter. The closest we can come to that ideal is to locate

places in Homer where the epithet formula seems relevant to

the context, or some evidence that on occasion the poems

demonstrate the principle of deliberate variation in the use of

alternative formulas. The evidence of this flexibility leads

Friedrich to postulate that the poems as we have them now

are transitional texts, which he calls "post-oral" (141). Here

he picks up a suggestion made by Adam Parry in his 1966 es?

say, "Have We Homer's Iliad}" Parry thought Homer might have started as an oral bard but had acquired the skill of writ?

ing and slowly his new skill affected the way he composed his verse. Lord had argued that a poem was completely oral or

completely written; it could not be something in between.

When Adam Parry proposed a transitional text, Friedrich

writes, his father's "hegemony then was at its height and still

unchallenged, and its premises and conclusions not yet ques? tioned on the basis of contrary evidence" (144). Friedrich ar?

gues both that such a transitional text is possible and that the

Homeric poems represent exactly that kind of text. "Econ?

omy of expression," he writes, "would no longer serve as a

proof of the orality of the Homeric texts, but attest, as its

powerful residue, to the oral provenance of their post-oral diction" (144). This is a difficult proposition to accept. It is

based on the assumption that a truly oral poem must show one hundred percent economy in its formula systems; any?

thing less than one hundred percent economy would be the

telltale evidence of post-oral influence in the composition. But

what text has ever been shown to be one hundred percent sys? tematized in its formulas? And how could this economy be ac?

curately measured, since it would have to include every verb,

every name, every noun, with and without epithet? Even a

bard who is absolutely illiterate, if he has been delivering the



90 UNCANNY HOMER

same song over several decades, must be given a certain al?

lowance for invention, for generating a new formula, for ma?

nipulating familiar formulas in a new way. If the poems have two formulas for "Agamemnon answered him and said," is

this fact alone evidence for writing's influence on the text? If

there are two formulas of the same metrical shape for

"Hera"nom, one being used nineteen times, the other fourteen

times, and if some restriction can be found for one of these

formulas to certain contexts and associations, this does not

add up to evidence for writing. As I mentioned earlier, in his

table 2 Friedrich lists six separate formulas for the same met?

rical unit, i.e., "Zeus"nom, in what he gives as position num?

ber three in the hexameter (-4 ? --5 ? ?

6-y ?ut sucn

duplication of formulas is not in itself evidence of writing, since all are formulas by Parry's definition; that is, metrical

and semantic units designed for oral performance. They sound more like formal cult titles than devices to introduce

variety into the performance. If a writer's object is to avoid

repetition and clich?, we would expect such a poet to liberate

himself from the formula system altogether. If we are talking of a bardic tradition and can attribute no

single formula to a single bard, but assume that bards borrow

from each other, and pass their formulas from hand to hand, we must allow that any one bard, proficient in his craft, might well have accumulated over the years two or three alternative

formulas for some of the commonest names. Perhaps the vari?

ations could be attributed to the influence of different singers from different cities living at different moments in the history of the tradition. Formular economy, while a useful tool for our analysis, could never be proven in any absolute way when we do not know the identity of the poet or the moment when

the poem was committed to writing. Oral performance and writing are such different forms of

communication that we might wonder whether they depend on different parts of the brain. The writer, certainly at least

the writer who has inherited a long tradition of the written

text, inhabits a different world from the poet who is himself



Norman Austin 91

non-literate and dwells among people who are also non-lit?

erate. When the Greeks adopted the Phoenician writing sys? tem and invented their own alphabet, this innovation did not turn them into writers overnight. Nagy notes that the

earliest Greek inscriptions, appearing first in the eighth cen?

tury but continuing as late as 550 bce, normally communi? cate "in the first person, as if they were a talking object."T3 Thus for some centuries, funerary markers and a large num?

ber of votive objects ("about a thousand") may certainly document the existence of writing in Greece, but are to be

understood not as inscriptions to be read but rather, in a

sense, as speakers to be heard.

The evolution of the Homeric poems into written texts was

a long and complex process. J4 In the course of this "textual

ization," as Nagy calls it, writing must have had some influ?

ence, but the nature of this influence is still an open question. Friedrich writes as if the Homeric poems reached their apogee as oral performances at some point, whereupon the master

poet acquired the alphabet and became forthwith a writer, in?

troducing into his performances the habits of a writer. But in

those first stages of writing, which Nagy argues must have

lasted over several centuries, the poems were still perform? ances and any writing must have had as its object the further? ance of the performance. To postulate that at the end of the

oral tradition some poets began to introduce flexibility into

the formula system is to think of them making editorial deci?

sions such as a writer might make today, introducing criteria

that belong to the craft of the writer rather than that of the

performer. It is difficult to imagine the master poet and the master writer incarnate in the same person, following two dif?

ferent pathways of composition, a person equally comfortable

performing his song before a live audience and revising the

song according to the criteria of the writer. Nagy writes of the

factors affecting the development of the text of the Homeric

poems; these include the ever-widening diffusion of the poems

throughout Greece and also, equally important perhaps, the

control being exerted over the text, whether by tyrants like



92 UNCANNY HOMER

the Peisistratids at Athens, or perhaps by bardic academies of one sort of another. Also implicated in this control is the idea

of these songs as divinely transmitted. The poet, like Demod ocus in the Odyssey, was inspired by the gods and sang his

song as delivered to him through his personal gods, Apollo or

the Muses.15 The concerns of a modern writer?introducing variation into the narrative, for example, or avoiding repeti?

tion?would play only a minor role in the transmission of this

sacred tradition. We might even hypothesize that such

changes would be for the most part accidental rather than de? liberate attempts either to escape the mnemonic system of oral

formulas or to alter the material of the song. The Homeric po? ems, even though they are now written texts, still represent a

performance. But writing, once it diverges from speaking and

evolves its own criteria, is a different medium: it becomes the

stylized imitation of performance. Friedrich argues that formular economy belongs exclu?

sively to oral composition since "in written composition it

would be not only pointless but counterproductive." We can

put the case more strongly. For a writer, the system of for?

mulas that we find in Homer is not only pointless but im?

possible. No writer could create such a system in order to

compose a poem. A writer who composes for the written

page, whether working in prose or poetry, employs entirely different strategies. Writers can read their own compositions and revise them, word-by-word, line-by-line, until they light upon le bon mot. The singer in performance does not have time for that kind of revision. He carries out his rehearsals

perhaps while shepherding his flock in the lonely mountain

vale, where he can declaim his formulas loudly to the echo?

ing cliffs and his awestruck sheep. If the Homeric poems are

only eighty percent oral but twenty percent the product of

writing, we need to see more specific evidence in Homer of a

writer's kind of poetry. Manipulation of the formulas is not

in itself evidence of writing. Friedrich imagines a spectrum of narrative composition,

with the most traditional and schematized oral poetry at one



Norman Austin 93

end and at the other what he calls "the most autonomous

style of a Flaubert ruled by the fastidious quest for the mot

juste" (145). Where would we place Homer along this axis?

Not, he says, at the "extreme end and as the exact antipode of Gustave Flaubert" (145). Rather, we would place Homer not far from two subsequent epic poets of antiquity, Apollo? nius and Virgil. But this is to use only one criterion, the con?

straints imposed by a formal verse-system. By the same

criterion, we would argue that Homer is closer to Milton

than to the nineteenth-century novelist, since Milton, like

Virgil, also has a highly formalized verse scheme. But this

criterion takes the formula itself out of consideration. Virgil has less in common with Homer and more in common with

Milton, because neither Virgil nor Milton employs formulas at all. No narrative poets of our tradition after Homer (or Homer and Hesiod together) are oral poets, not even to a

minimal degree. They are all writers, as Homer was not.

Virgil's hexameters betray no hint of a formula system;

they have nothing in common in their compositional tech?

nique with the Homeric hexameters, except as a writer's im?

itations of a style as foreign to him as it is to us. Virgil has a few faux formulas like pius Aeneas, but these do not make

him an oral poet. Virgil did not grow up hearing bards in

their dozens singing in Latin hexameters of the fall of Troy and the founding of Rome. He learned his Latin hexameters

from Ennius and Lucretius, writers both of them. Homer's

hexameters were an acquired taste, as was Homer's Greek

diction, his gods, his similes, his epic monumentality. Sunt

lacrimae rerum is a world away from Homer. The idea and

its expression are closer to Milton. Sic ait atque animum

pictura pascit inani?"so he speaks and feeds his soul on

the empty picture" (Aeneid 1.464). This verse, describing Aeneas gazing at the story of the fall of Troy on Juno's tem?

ple in Carthage, a confession of Bloom's "anxiety of influ?

ence," marks the distance between Homer and his Roman

prot?g?. The line expresses the melancholy of Virgil's hero,

Aeneas, as he looks at his once-vibrant Troy, now razed to



94 UNCANNY HOMER

the ground and reduced to no more than a picture in some

other nation's picture book. But it expresses also the melan?

choly of the poet himself as he admires, studies, and imi?

tates the Homeric hexameters, now long gone and far

beyond his reach.

Here are a few hexameters from Virgil's Eclogues

(6.13-17):

Pergite, Pierides. Chromis et Mnasyllus in antro

Silenum pueri somno videre iacentem,

inflatum hesterno venas, ut semper, Iaccho; serta procul tantum capiti delapsa iacebant,

et gravis attrita pendebat cantharus ansa.

Proceed, my Pierian Muses. Chromis and Mnasyllus, the boys, saw

Silenus lying in the cave, his veins bloated as usual with yesterday's wine. His garlands, fallen from his head, lay at some distance, and

by its well-worn handle hung his weighty cup.

Nothing here suggests a system of formulas. The Homeric

hexameter is a wave that unfurls as it reaches the shore, not

the boisterous wave driven under a high wind, but the gen?

tler, quieter roll of the surf, with one wavelet after another

breaking on the shore, until the final wave, cresting, breaks

and completes the line. Virgil does not create waves in the

Homeric fashion. He is cubistic, not Picasso but a Rubik's

Cube, where small, colored squares are variously distributed on the faces of the cube, and the reader's task is to assemble

all the squares of a like color on a single face, until each face

is uniformly colored and the test is over. Virgil no doubt read

his own poems aloud to himself and probably to his friends, but his hexameter is the product of a writing culture; it could never be mistaken for the product of a pre-literate age.

Friedrich has given us a useful list of examples where the

principle of formular economy is seen to be more flexible

that once was allowed, but whether this flexibility in itself

makes for a more creative poem is open to question. Does

having two formulas of the same metrical shape for a single



Norman Austin 95

Statement like "and X said," with one formula used ninety five times and the other seventy-two times, make the poems

significantly more artistic than having the same single for?

mula used 167 times? Does any relaxation of the principle of

economy really document a shift from oral performance to a

writer's influence? Why could not the singer, with years of

experience singing the same themes and the same songs, have two or three formulas for the commonest recurrent sit?

uations? The instances that Friedrich has tabulated of the

breaches of economy all look like formulas of the oral style. To find evidence of the writer's work, we should look for

places in the poems where the writer leaps out of the for?

mula system altogether and creates a different kind of hexa? meter. Herodotus has sometimes been compared with

Homer, but the likeness is superficial. In truth, their styles have little in common, since one was a singer and the other a writer. The sentence with which Herodotus opens his His

toriae, so seemingly effortless, is an intricate composition such as could not be found in all of Homer. In his opening

words, Herodotus makes manifest that what follows is the

work of a writer.

Parry organized his analysis according to some straightfor? ward principles, but we would be limiting our own analysis if we mistook them for science. They were more like the car?

penter's rule of thumb, a useful beginning in the new ap?

proach to the Homeric poems. To understand the nature of

the Homeric poems as products of an oral culture requires more than Parry's analysis of the system of formulas and for?

mulaic themes. Analysis may begin with the formulas, but it must be broadened to include the many kinds of evidence that

other scholars have brought to the table. Peabody's study of

formulas building into hexameter lines, hexameters building into stanzas, is important.16 Vivante 's ear for the subtle

rhythms of the Homeric hexameter is as necessary for Ho?

meric studies as Parry's tables, eloquent as they are. Nagy's

study of the cultural matrix of the Homeric poems gives us ev?

idence of a different sort for oral composition.17 No writer



96 UNCANNY HOMER

could have created this immense matrix of his own accord, and even if the matrix as a whole were the common inheri?

tance, no single writer could have incorporated such a matrix so extensively into an epic poem like the Iliad or the Odyssey. Homer, for all that we now know of his techniques of

composition, is as uncanny today as he was for Alexander

Pope. Parry's theory threatened at first to deliver the coup de

gr?ce to the idea of Homer as an artist, since it seemed to

turn the genius into some kind of automaton. The race was

on for ways to rehabilitate the genius, for examples from the

poems that the poet was not merely automatic, but could ex?

ercise some control over his material, even granting that the

control must be tenuous compared to the poetic skills of a

Virgil or a Milton. Friedrich also searches in his way for ev?

idence of Homer's art, but the implicit assumption of his

study is that the art lies in the breaches of the formula sys?

tem, that the "justness of expression," as he calls it, is to be

looked for only in the relaxation of the formulaic system. But the magnificence of the Homeric style lies not in the

breaches of the system but in the system itself. If we are told

that Homer's "early-born rosy-fingered Dawn" is a formula,

we are grateful for the information, grateful too that time

has preserved the simple formula for several millennia, but we are even more grateful for the formula itself, which still

breathes its rosy tints across our morning skies and makes

them yet more lovely. Virgil and Milton have greatly enlarged our imagination, but have they given us dawns any more

beautiful than Homer's?

NOTES

i. See Adam Parry's Introduction to The Making of Homeric Verse: The

Collected Papers of Milman Parry, Adam Parry, ed. (Oxford 1971), ix-lxii, for a good history of the Homeric Question, from its earliest intimations to

Milman Parry's more thorough scientific demonstration, and the scholar?

ship as affected by Parry's discovery. 2. The hypothesis that the poems were transcribed almost as soon as the

Greeks had created their writing system is, however, now a subject of con?

siderable debate. The question of the circulation of various texts and their



Norman Austin 97

culmination into one fixed text is beset with many problems and many un?

knowns. Gregory Nagy, Homeric Questions (Austin, tx 1996), 41-42, ar?

gues that the "textualization" of the Homeric poems was a process that

took several centuries, and that written texts did not begin to emerge until

the sixth century.

3. Denys Page, History and the Homeric Iliad (Berkeley 1959).

4. Cedric Whitman, Homer and the Heroic Tradition (Cambridge, ma

1958), 108, writes to counter the idea prevalent in Homer studies that the

formulas have nothing to do with Homer's "genius, which has to be sought instead in his departures from the oral method."

5. Paolo Vivante, Homeric Rhythm (Westport, ct 1997).

6. But see also Whitman (note 4), ch. 6, for his discussion of the power and aesthetics of the Homeric formulas.

7. Nagy (note 2), 20, objects to our speaking of the hypothesis put for?

ward by Parry and Lord as their "Oral Theory"; he would prefer to say that

"Parry and Lord had various theories about the affinity of Homer's poetry with what we acknowledge as oral poetry." Friedrich, however, defends the

term and in this review I have followed his example.

8. M. W. Edwards, "Some 'Answering' Expressions in Homer," AJP 89

(1969), 87.

9. W. Beck, "Choice and Context: Metrical Doublets for Hera," AJP 108

(1986), 40-88.

10. Milman Parry (note 1), 133. Adam Parry, translating from Milman

Parry's French, has given the phrase as "the mot juste. "

I prefer to use le mot juste.

11. Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago 1958), 236. 12. On the hymnal and hence oral associations of Empedocles' poetry,

see Gregory Nagy, "Hymnic Elements in Empedocles (B 35K = 201 Bol

lack)," Revue de Philosophie Ancienne 24 (2006), 51-62.

13. Nagy (note 2), 35.

14. Nagy (note 2), especially 29-112, ch. 2 and 3.

15. On this point, see Nagy (note 2), 20: "In Odyssey 8.72-83, the first

song of Demodokos, we see a link between the oracular clairvoyance of

Apollo and the poetic composition of Homer."

16. Berkley Peabody, The Winged Word (Albany, ny 1975).

17. Gregory Nagy, The Best of the Achaeans (Baltimore 1979).



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