Homeric scholarship is a vast and complex field, with a history that spans thousands of years. Over the past two millennia, scholars have employed diverse perspectives, methodological approaches, and interpretative frameworks to explore the meaning, composition, and transmission of the Iliad and the Odyssey. In Part I, we will review the history of Homeric scholarship, tracing the evolution of the field and examining the key intellectual currents and theoretical perspectives that have shaped our understanding of these monumental works. This comprehensive overview will provide the necessary foundation for the discussion of the various components that constitute “the world of Homer,” which will follow in Part II.

Homeric Scholarship in Antiquity

The earliest known references to a poet called “Homer” (Figure 1) appear in the second half of the sixth century bce, when Ionian philosophers and poets engaged in a critical examination of the theology of the Iliad and the Odyssey.Footnote ¹ Xenophanēs (ca. 570–475 bce) criticized Homer for what he thought were the ethical failings and moral ambiguity of the gods and Herakleitos (fl. ca. 500 bce) scorned the poet for creating a fragmented and divided picture of the world, which did not reflect the unity of the universe.Footnote ² Other philosophers and poets argued that the actions and nature of the Homeric gods were not meant to be taken literally, but represented physical and moral allegories. Such were the approaches of Pherekydēs (fl. ca. 540 bce), who framed Homeric stories in terms of moral behavior, sin, and punishment; and of Theagenēs of Rhegion (fl. ca. 530–520 bce), who saw in the Homeric gods elements of the natural world (water in Poseidon, air in Hera, fire in Apollo, Hēlios, and Hephaistos) and thought that battles among the gods were allegories for conflicts between those elements. Theagenēs appears also to have been the first to show an interest in biographical information about Homer and recorded the poet’s parentage and date.Footnote ³ Toward the end of the sixth century, the poet Kynaithos is said to have been the first to recite Homer’s works at Syracuse and Simōnidēs of Keos expressed praise for Homer. Anecdotal episodes from Homer’s life, such as the poet’s inability to solve the riddle of the lice, appear to have been already circulating at that time.Footnote ⁴

1 Bust of Homer 2nd–1st c. BCE Roman copy of lost Greek original. Original photograph was taken and filed on Wikicommons by Marie-Lan Nguyen. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.5.

This sudden emergence of Homer during the second half of the sixth century is marked by the attribution to him of not only the Iliad and the Odyssey, but also of a number of other poems. This conception of Homer, as the author of a wider corpus of poetry, suggests that the Greeks of the late Archaic period understood the Iliad and the Odyssey as integral parts of a larger, interconnected tradition of heroic epic, placing greater emphasis on resonance and shared meaning than on individual authorship.Footnote ⁵ It is also important to stress that stories about the Trojan War appear in vase iconography as early as the seventh century, but are never connected specifically to the Iliad and the Odyssey, which points to a connection with the wider epic tradition. If the Iliad had been known by then, it had limited and sporadic influence on artists, suggesting that it was not yet widely recognized or, at least, influential.Footnote ⁶

All this suggests that the second half of the sixth century marked a turning point in the views about Homer, as it was after that point in time that the epics came to be seen as the creations of one poet.Footnote ⁷ It would seem, then, that the association of the two epics with a single individual called “Homer” began during this period, as the late Archaic authors conflated a literary genre (epic) with a single poet. It is possible that those authors projected into the past ideas of authorship and texts from their own time.

It is also in the Archaic period that the composers of original poetic creations (the aoidoi) appear to give way to reciters of poetry, poets who “stitch together” pre-existing poems (the rhapsodes), perhaps marking a shift from improvisation to reproduction of poems.Footnote ⁸ The emergence of guilds of rhapsodes, two of which are known to us, could be tied to this shift. The first guild was the Kreophyleioi of Samos: According to this tradition, Homer gave to their founder, Kreophylos, a poem called “The Sack of Oikhalia” (Oikhalias halōsis/Οἰχαλίας ἅλωσις), in appreciation of Kreophylos’ hospitality. By this account, the Kreophyleioi, being in possession of the Iliad and the Odyssey, gave them to the Spartan lawgiver Lykourgos, who wrote them down and brought them to Sparta. Although this story about the preservation of the epics through the Kreophyleioi was not widely accepted in the Greek world, it was an important aspect of Spartan propaganda.Footnote ⁹

The second guild was the Homēridai, who were associated with Khios and thought to have been Homer’s descendants, although later they included in their ranks other poets who did not trace their ancestry to him. It is possible that those poets may have created the archetype of a legendary but fictitious poet, to whom they assigned their own poems – in other words, that Homer was invented by the Homēridai and named after their guild, rather than the opposite.Footnote ¹⁰ In Greek tradition, the Homēridai and the Kreophyleioi were rivals and in competition with each other about which guild was the legitimate guardian and representative of the Homeric poems.Footnote ¹¹

The etymology of the name “Homer” is problematic, as this is not a known personal name in ancient Greece. The commonest explanation is that it means “hostage,” but this is based on later stories about either the poet being taken hostage, or the Homēridai being descendants of men and women participating in a hostage ritual on Khios. It is, however, more likely that the stem homēr- (ὁμηρ-) derives from the roots hom- (ὁμ-) and ar- (ἀρ-, as in ἀραρίσκω). In this case, homērein (ὁμηρεῖν) could be related to *homaros (*ὅμᾱρος) or *homaris (*ὅμᾱρις), possibly meaning “joining smaller parts into a larger whole.” This would make Homēros “the one who joins” or “the joiner,” reflecting his role as a poet who “joins” words and verses together to create cohesive epic narratives. Another possible meaning is “coming together,” referring to the gathering of people or elements for a collective purpose, such as in a festival or communal event. If indeed the poet had been invented by and named after the Homēridai, this invention would have taken place sometime before the second half of the sixth century because, as we have seen, it was roughly at that time when stories about Homer’s life started to circulate. Whatever the etymology of the name, it seems that the name Homer was introduced in the late Archaic period as a reference to a culture hero – the cultural concept of the archetypal poet. There is no evidence at all that a real historical person stands behind this cultural concept.Footnote ¹²

It was also in the second half of the sixth century that the Homeric epics were introduced in the festival of the Panathenaia. In 566 bce, the great Athenian festival underwent significant expansion, which included the incorporation of poetic contests involving rhapsodes performing self-contained poems about the Trojan War. Then, in 522 bce, the tyrant Peisistratos and his sons, Hipparkhos and Hippias, introduced a sequential relay performance of these poems, which might have involved the Homēridai, and claimed the epics as part of the Athenian cultural heritage.Footnote ¹³ It is also possible that it was then that the poems were written down, as a written version could have served as a guide for oral performances, establishing the arrangement, order, and sequencing of the poems. Because the integration into the Panathenaia involved the establishment of rules and regulations of reciting the epics, rather than assembling previously scattered texts, it is more accurate to speak of the Panathenaic “rule” or “regulation,” rather than “recension” or “redaction.”Footnote ¹⁴

The sources for this Panathenaic “rule” or “regulation” are vague and partly inconsistent.Footnote ¹⁵ What we do know is that the poems had to be performed in sequence by different rhapsodes, and that those rhapsodes were not allowed to favor some parts of the epic narrative over others.Footnote ¹⁶ This process could have resulted in significant regularization and canonization of Homeric poetry, most likely involving the privileging of the Iliad and the Odyssey over other epic poems.Footnote ¹⁷

The sources do not make a direct link between these developments and the Homēridai, but it is reasonable to associate the prominence of this group of rhapsodes during the second half of the sixth century with the implementation of the new regulations. Such an association would have solidified the notion of the mythical ancestor of the Homēridai as the original author of the verses and led to the prevalence of the Iliad and the Odyssey at the exclusion of other epic poems and of Hesiod and Orpheus.Footnote ¹⁸

By the fifth century, Homer had been established as the poet of the Iliad and the Odyssey and was weighing heavily on the cultural production of the Golden Age. In historiography, both Herodotos and Thucydides were influenced by the poems, despite the fact that neither considered poetry a reliable source for historical information.Footnote ¹⁹ In tragedy, although much of the source material is drawn from the Cyclic epic tradition, the legacy of the Homeric epics is apparent in the “essential spirit and the mimetic form” of tragic plays.Footnote ²⁰ In philosophy, Plato’s notoriously complex relationship with Homer was defined on the one hand by his general disdain for poetry (in particular what he considered unethical behavior of the Homeric characters) and on the other by his admiration for the beauty created by the poetic art, calling Homer and Hesiod “the good poets.” Homer in fact figures prominently in the Platonic dialogues, predominantly through the persona of Socrates.Footnote ²¹

Systematic Homeric scholarship seems to start with Aristotle. In his Homērika aporēmata (Ὁμηρικά ἀπορήματα), Aristotle dealt with serious Homeric issues, including the authenticity of poems attributed to Homer, and separated the poems that he believed had been composed by Homer (the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Margites) from those that tradition had falsely ascribed to the poet. His admiration for Homer’s dramatic qualities is apparent throughout the Poetics and other works. Aristotle appears also to have produced the earliest-known critical edition (diorthōsis/διόρθωσις) of the Homeric epics.Footnote ²²

It is in the third century that a strong interest in Homer’s life emerges, mainly in the Library of Alexandria. Zēnodotos of Ephesos (ca. 325–270 bce) was the first to produce an edition of the Homeric poems, apparently without a commentary. Zēnodotos was followed by Aristophanēs of Byzantium (ca. 257–180 bce), who published another edition of the Homeric poems, which he supplemented with his own comments. The third Alexandrian scholar to produce an edition of Homeric poems was Aristarkhos of Samothrace (ca. 216–145 bce), whose commentary could very well have been the most important work of Homeric scholarship until the modern age.Footnote ²³

The interest in Homer’s biography continued in the Hellenistic age and throughout the Roman and Byzantine periods. A group of nine diverse texts, ranging in date from the third century bce to the fourth century ce, illustrate the extent of ancient fascination with the details of Homer’s life. These texts, collectively known as The Lives of Homer, do not present factual information, but offer anecdotal stories derived from older sources.

• Two of these texts are single, self-contained, works: One is a pseudo-Herodotean biography, written probably between 50 and 150 ce, and the other the story of a poetic contest between Homer and Hesiod, commonly known as the Certamen.

• Two other passages are introductions to Homeric poetry attributed to pseudo-Plutarch: The first is short and, although it appears for the first time in the late thirteenth century CE, the date of its composition is uncertain; the second is longer, possibly dates to the second century CE, and serves as the introduction to an essay on the educational values of Homeric poetry.

• The fifth text is an excerpt from the Chrestomathy by Proklos,Footnote ²⁴ which may preserve earlier information from the fourth- or third-century-bce historian Timaeus, but also replicates the chronology of Homer from one of the pseudo-Plutarchean lives.

• The sixth text is Suda’s entry on Homer, of which only the first fifty-five lines offer information not included elsewhere, whereas the remainder is taken from Athenaeaus (8e–9c) and the pseudo-Herodotean Life.

• The other three Lives are anonymous and found in medieval manuscripts of Homer or Homeric scholia: the text commonly known as Vita Romana is part of the introduction to the Iliad of a ninth-century-ce manuscript, and the two Vitae Scorialenses include one brief account of Homer’s life (essentially repeating information found in previous texts) and a longer account of Homer’s works and their recording at the time of Peisistratos.Footnote ²⁵

These texts discuss Homer’s origins, how he acquired his name, his travels, the composition of his poems, his professions, and his death. They give us an idea of what the ancients thought of Homer, but they cannot be considered historically accurate, nor are they consistent in their treatment of Homer’s life.Footnote ²⁶ None of them is close to being contemporary with the composition of the Iliad and the Odyssey, so all are based on fictional traditions about Homer and many appear to be using each other as sources.

Overall, where the ancient views about Homer and the Homeric epics are concerned, Gregory Nagy has distinguished three chronological layers:

1. a) a pre-Athenocentric (or “pre-Panathenaic”) concept of Homer, originating in sixth-century sources;

2. b) Athenocentric concepts, deriving from the late Archaic and Classical period, when the poems became a vehicle for Peisistratid propaganda and for the consolidation of the pan-Ionian character of the Athenian Empire; and

3. c) post-Athenocentric sources, belonging to the time of Plutarch and Pausanias.

Although for such post-Athenocentric sources as Pausanias and Plutarch Homer is a poet who writes (grafein/γράφειν) poems, in the Athenocentric and pre-Athenocentric sources, which are older and chronologically closer to the composition of the epics, he is considered a poet who makes (poiein/ποιεῖν) poems – to be precise, the exact phrase is that Homer empoiei es tēn poiēsin (ἐμποιεῖ ἐς τὴν ποίησιν). This distinction is crucial to our understanding of the processes that shaped the creation of the epics, because the sources closer to the epics clearly thought that the poems were created as they were being performed, unifying the composer and the performer. The act of interpolating new verses during performance is of particular importance for our inquiry, as it allows us an insight into the creative process that led to the composition of the epics.Footnote ²⁷

A process of composition-in-performance, such as the one implied by the pre-Athenocentric and Athenocentric sources, raises another issue, the definition of a poem: At which point in the process of composition do different improvised performances of the same story become a fixed poem, with an author and a title? Did pre-Homeric oral performances consist of more or less standardized poems, or were they one-off creations of singers trained in oral epic technique? These are all issues to which we will return in Chapter 9.

From the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment

During the medieval period, interest in the Homeric epics remained strong among the intellectuals of the Byzantine Empire. The numerous quotations from Homer that we find scattered in the writings of Byzantine authors attest to the fact that there was a high level of familiarity with the texts.Footnote ²⁸ Among various scholars who read, taught, and interpreted the Iliad and the Odyssey (always through the lens of Christianity), two twelfth-century scholars stand out, Eustathios of Thessalonica and Ioannēs Tzetzēs. Their writings on Homer are of major importance, because they are based on a wide collection of now-lost texts and scholia and include innovative ideas and criticisms.Footnote ²⁹

After the collapse of the Byzantine Empire, scholars who carried on the Byzantine literary tradition sought sanctuary in European intellectual centers, mostly in Italy, where they continued their philological activities. These intellectuals, and the manuscripts that found their way to Europe, contributed to the revival of the Homeric studies during the Renaissance.Footnote ³⁰

During the Enlightenment, the Homeric poems were approached through the prism of naturalism, cultural history, and ethnography, and with an emphasis on the collective mind over the individual genius.Footnote ³¹ In Homeric scholarship, these ideas provided fertile soil for a new focus on the collective, rather than the personal, creative spirit, leading to doubts about the authorship and the written character of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Already at the end of the seventeenth century, François Hédelin, the Abbé d’Aubignac, argued that the two epics had not been composed by Homer, but had been compilations of earlier poems by various rhapsodes, organized by a later editor. In the early eighteenth century, Giambattista Vico attributed the creation of the epics not to a single poet named Homer, but to a long process of evolution of Greek language and poetry, and in 1767, Robert Wood wondered if Homer had been an oral poet.Footnote ³²

Modern Approaches: One or Many “Homers”?

This new emphasis on the collective, rather than the personal, creative spirit behind the Homeric epics found its main proponent in the German classicist Friedrich August Wolf. In his magisterial Prolegomena ad Homerum (1795), Wolf argued that writing had been unknown in Homer’s time and that the epics had not been original compositions, but compilations of older poems that had been transmitted orally through memorization, before they became eventually unified by a master editor, whom Wolf identified as Peisistratos. Wolf believed that the epics continued to evolve even after they had been written down and that the texts of the Alexandrian editions were modified versions from various manuscripts, making it impossible for us to reconstruct the original parts of the poems.Footnote ³³

Wolf’s Prolegomena triggered a heated debate about the authorship of the two epics, widely known as the “Homeric Question.”Footnote ³⁴ His ideas had a significant impact on his contemporaries and established him as the main representative of the Analysts, a group of scholars who believed that the Iliad and the Odyssey had not been composed by one poet, but that they were compilations of pre-existing shorter songs. Although Wolf’s planned second volume of the Prolegomena, which would have included more detailed analyses of his views, was never published, his followers furthered his arguments and refined his ideas. The Analysts, focusing primarily on the Iliad, sought to identify those sections of the poem that may have originally been independent compositions, either from different time periods or created by multiple poets. To do so, they searched for inconsistencies and inaccuracies and condemned entire passages, scenes, or even books of the transmitted texts as later interpolations.

This line of textual criticism led Wolf’s student Gottfried Hermann to propose the nucleus or expansion theory. According to this theory, each one of the two great epics consisted of an original nucleus, a core oral poem of modest size that, over time, was expanded with interpolations by rhapsodes: The nucleus of the Iliad was the wrath of Achilles and the nucleus of the Odyssey was the return of Odysseus.Footnote ³⁵ This idea of an original core poem was quickly rejected by Karl Lachmann, who proposed instead that the Iliad was based on eighteen pre-existing individual songs (Einzellieder) or lays, originally distinct from each other, and later put together by a compiler. Although Lachmann’s lay/Einzellieder theory was initially criticized, for almost forty years it remained at the forefront of Homeric studies, as Homerists continued to search for lays that comprised the Iliad.Footnote ³⁶

Regarding the Odyssey, the internal coherence of the poem, and also the observation that it appeared to have fewer textual problems than the Iliad, initially discouraged the Analysts from subjecting it to analytical criticism. In 1859, however, Adolf Kirchhoff proposed that the Odyssey was essentially a compilation of an older core poem (a proto-Odyssey about the wanderings of Odysseus) and later insertions (such as the Telemachy and the events taking place on Ithakē after Odysseus’ nostos).Footnote ³⁷

With Kirchhoff, the nucleus theory appeared to prevail over the lay theory, but toward the end of the nineteenth century a compromise was proposed by Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff. For the Iliad, Wilamowitz proposed that sometime around the middle of the eighth century Homer unified into one larger poem pre-existing poems about different episodes of the Trojan War, the common thread of which was the wrath of Achilles; then, another poet added more episodes to Homer’s unified version, creating the Iliad that we have today. For the Odyssey, he accepted that there was an original core, but also proposed that the transmitted text was the product of an untalented patch-worker, who pieced together three distinct poems.Footnote ³⁸

The Analysts’ views were received with skepticism by the Unitarians, scholars who refused to denounce Homer’s poetic genius and argued for the unity of the Homeric epics. Although some of those scholars accepted that the Iliad and the Odyssey may have been composed by two separate poets, most believed that both epics were created by a single poetic genius. In England, academics and non-academics were equally disturbed by the idea that the epics could have come to exist without the artistry of a brilliant poet. In the German intellectual community, one of the most prominent critics of the Analytical approach at the end of the eighteenth century was Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.Footnote ³⁹

In those early stages of the Unitarian movement, the views of those who believed that Homer was the sole author of the Iliad and the Odyssey originated in a romantic approach to poetry and were not based on any concrete arguments. As time passed, though, the Unitarian approaches became more systematic, using textual criticism and literary interpretation to prove that the poems had been composed by a single poet. Although admitting that the epics contain inaccuracies and inconsistencies, the Unitarians focused on the “clear unity of composition and intent,” which, they argued, in combination with the impressive length of the poems, rendered such inconsistencies insignificant.Footnote ⁴⁰ To prove this unity of plot of the Iliad, in the 1830s, Gregor Wilhelm Nitzsch marked cross-references and links between the different books of the Iliad and proposed that the process of the creation of the epics evolved in two stages: an initial stage of short independent poems, and a subsequent stage, in which a single poet, inspired by his predecessors, employed this material to create his own masterpiece. This poet, according to Nitzsch, may have profited from the use of writing, which Nitzsch dated earlier than the Analysts usually claimed.Footnote ⁴¹ A century after Nitzsch, Wolfgang Schadewaldt sought to demonstrate the unity of plot of the Homeric epics by identifying interreferences across passages and scenes. He concluded that such a unity of plot could be explained if each one of the epics originated in a proto-epic: for the Iliad, Schadewaldt postulated the existence of a hypothetical *Memnonis, centering on Achilles’ antagonist Memnōn, and for the Odyssey, an Ur-Odyssey, which sung the return of Odysseus.Footnote ⁴²

The Homeric Epics as Oral Poems

As early as the eighteenth century, Robert Wood and Friedrich August Wolf had proposed that the two Homeric epics had not been composed in writing, but had been oral compositions. This idea received considerable attention in the second half of the nineteenth and the early twentieth century, especially by Gottfried Hermann and other German scholars. The mechanisms, however, of oral composition were not defined and studied systematically until the 1930s, when Harvard scholar Milman Parry entered the stage.

Parry’s highly influential oral-formulaic theory laid a new foundation for the study of the Iliad and the Odyssey. The basic principle behind it is that poets are able to compose orally, within meter and on the spot, thanks to formulas, “groups of words which are regularly employed under the same metrical conditions to express a given essential idea.”Footnote ⁴³ Such formulas are organized in a fixed pattern of thought, so that they can fit specific contexts. As the poet composes new lines, he does not repeat verbatim and does not recycle over and over the basic formulas, but creates new phrases using the recurrent patterns and structures established by those formulas.Footnote ⁴⁴ Essentially, formulas are “ready-made building blocks, a linguistic, formulaic system enabling the singer to say what he had to say, and to say it right, according to the laws of metre and prosody.”Footnote ⁴⁵

Milman Parry proposed that the Homeric systems of formulas are governed by the principles of economy and extension (he used the terms simplicity and extension, or thrift and length). Economy prescribes that the minimum possible range of phrases with the same metrical structure is used to express essential ideas, which means that, under certain metrical conditions, an idea can be expressed only by a single formula. Extension refers to the large number of phrases used in different metrical arrangements, allowing the poet to find a metrically suitable phrase for virtually any expression. For Parry, the complexity of the patterns of the formulaic system meant that the Iliad and the Odyssey had to be the cumulative creation of tradition, and not compositions of one poet. The elaborate, grammatical precision displayed by the systems of noun-epithet formulas could be understood, Milman Parry argued, only by assuming that the creators of the two epics had inherited and continued to use the formulaic patterns of generations of singers.Footnote ⁴⁶

Parry sought to verify his initial observations about the processes of oral transmission through ethnographic fieldwork in the Balkans. In the 1930s, South Slavic oral epic was known to be a living example of oral tradition in-the-making: the guslars, singers who sang their orally composed songs to the accompaniment of a gusle (a stringed instrument), could be found performing in various regions of the Balkans. Between 1933 and 1935, Parry conducted extensive fieldwork in the former Yugoslavia, conversing with the guslars, listening to their songs, recording their performances, and witnessing first-hand how long epic poems could be created orally and without the aid of writing. In 1934 and 1935, he was accompanied by his young assistant Albert Lord and their work led to important discoveries about the process of composition of oral poetry.Footnote ⁴⁷

One their major discoveries was that oral songs are largely created during performance, as performers interact with audiences. Because songs change with each performance, there is not one canonical version of an oral song; furthermore, songs are not memorized verbatim and in their entirety. This dynamic interplay significantly shapes how narratives like the Iliad engage listeners and readers through various narrative techniques. Focalization, embedded narratives, and direct addresses enhance the interactive creation process, immersing audiences deeply into the poems. Such strategies are foundational to the ancient experiences of the Iliad during oral performances. The immediacy of these interactions in historical contexts contributed fundamentally to the poem’s continual recreation, drawing listeners and readers into the emotional and cognitive depths of the story, connecting them profoundly with the characters and events being performed.Footnote ⁴⁸

These interactions can take various forms, ranging from changes to the lines or comments about the story and the plot, to expressions of approval or disapproval. The singer adjusts his poetry accordingly, expanding or modifying his verses to please his audience, changing the poem with each new performance. Thus, oral epic poems are “not composed for, but in performance”;Footnote ⁴⁹ because they constantly change, there is never a correct version, but each version is one of several perhaps similar but not identical ones. Furthermore, there is no need for the poems to be written down, as they are preserved by different performers working within the same formulaic system. As the practice of the guslars has no need for writing, Parry concluded that, “oral composition and written composition, oral tradition and literacy, are mutually incompatible.”Footnote ⁵⁰

Following Milman Parry’s tragic death at a young age, it fell upon Albert Lord to continue their work.Footnote ⁵¹ In his groundbreaking The Singer of Tales (initially published in 1960), Lord developed the concept of themes, constant and recurring groups of ideas that make up the story that is told with the use of the formulas: “just as the formula is the basic unit of the traditional poet’s diction, so also the theme is the basic unit of his narrative.”Footnote ⁵² He observed that, for a singer, the composition of traditional oral poetry included three stages: (1) listening to other singers to become familiar with the themes and formulas of a poem, (2) practicing singing with these themes and formulas, and (3) expanding his repertoire in order to be able to compose many stories for an audience. Regarding the issue of a possible written text for the poems, Lord dismissed the possibility that the words of the poems could have been written down during performance, as it would have been impossible for a scribe to keep up with the speed of recitation. He also dismissed the possibility that Homer could have written his songs down himself, because a literate singer would produce a noticeably different text when he recorded his poem, compared to when he performed it. Instead, Lord argued that Homer must have dictated his songs to a scribe; this scenario would explain the exceptional length of the Homeric epics, in the sense that there could not be any occasions that would warrant such long poems, or even audiences who would sit through them. Given the lack of any parallels of such long compositions in either modern Balkan or ancient Greek poetry, Lord posited that Homer composed such long epics specifically for the occasion of having them dictated, and that his poems may have been so famous partially because of their exceptional length.Footnote ⁵³

The oral-formulaic theory has had a profound impact on Homeric studies, especially in the anglophone world, and gave rise to numerous explanations for the emergence of the Homeric epics. As early as the 1960s and 1970s, Denys Page argued that the Iliad and the Odyssey were the products of the combination of shorter oral poems, whereas Geoffrey Kirk saw the Iliad and the Odyssey as oral compositions by two different poets and argued for a four-stage “deevolution” of oral poems, from original inception, to creative expansion, to mechanical reproduction, and finally to decline. In the 1980s, Skafte Jensen hypothesized that Homeric poems had been composed orally but dictated to a scribe by the Peisistratids, and in the 1990s, Oliver Taplin thought that the Iliad had been composed by a single poet, who intended to perform it in its entirety.Footnote ⁵⁴

These views met with considerable criticism by scholars who claimed that the oral-tradition approach denied Homer any originality and turned him into a mere producer of verbatim repetitions.Footnote ⁵⁵ Responding to these criticisms, the “soft Parryists” adopted a wider and more flexible definition of formulas and themes and refined Parry’s notion of economy.Footnote ⁵⁶ Other supporters of the oral-tradition theory sought to develop more systematic frameworks for explaining the flexibility of formulaic language, by drawing on linguistics, sociolinguistics, and cognitive psychology.Footnote ⁵⁷ This flexibility and expanded definition of the formula impacted the core issues of unity and authorship of the Homeric epics and gave rise to oral poetics, a school of thought that explains certain characteristics of the epics, such as lack of organic consistency, repetition, and “parataxis” (the arrangement of phrases without subordination, often linked by coordinating conjunctions or juxtaposition), as a result of the workings of oral poetry. What Analysis had considered to be poetic errors and shortcomings, oral poetics praised as virtues, the features of a poetry that did not function according to the rules customarily applied to written literature.Footnote ⁵⁸

This expanded understanding of oral poetics, with its appreciation for the flexibility and variability within the oral tradition, is vividly illustrated in the Homeric epics themselves. Internal evidence from the poems shows the intricate balance between tradition and innovation that characterizes the Homeric oral poetic system. Formulaic expressions are copious and recurrent; themes can be expanded through addition of elements or contracted through compression and reduction; and features like enjambment and varied verb structures modulate rhythm and aid interpretation by playing off notions of a “baseline” way of composing. At the same time, the oral poetic system relies heavily on elements of standardization, from the formulaic language and themes as reusable templates, to metrical structures and linguistic patterns, that allow composition-in-performance by providing some of its building blocks. So, while variability brought artistry and expressiveness, the baseline of standardization enabled the tradition to cohere and survive across generations.Footnote ⁵⁹

An influential elaboration of the oral-formulaic theory has been advanced by Gregory Nagy, who considers the standardized versions of the Homeric epics products of a long evolution spanning several centuries. Employing methods from linguistics and cultural anthropology, he considers composition and performance a functional pair, but adds a third process to the equation, that of diffusion. One correlate of the triptych composition–performance–diffusion is that it does not allow for the dictation theory, as it would be unnecessary (and unparalleled in known ethnographic work) for singers operating within a system of oral literature and composing their songs while performing to have their poems written down.Footnote ⁶⁰ This means that the written texts of the Iliad and the Odyssey must have been formed through a different process, which for Nagy was evolutionary. According to his model, the creation and eventual textualization of the epics were long and ongoing processes, which underwent five stages:Footnote ⁶¹

1. 1) the fluid stage (early second millennium to about the middle of the eighth century), in which core poems were created;

2. 2) the formative stage (the middle of the eighth to the middle of the sixth century), in which the epics began to take their final form in the context of festivals like the Panionia;

3. 3) the definitive stage (the middle of the sixth to the later part of the fourth century), in which written versions of the poems were generated to be used as transcripts;

4. 4) the standardizing stage (the later part of the fourth to the middle of the second century), in which the performances of the epics were reformed in Athens;

5. 5) the rigid stage (the middle of the second century onward), in which critical editions of the epics appeared, starting with Aristarkhos of Samothrace.

A key differentiation made by Gregory Nagy is between the original creation of the epics within the framework of an oral tradition and their textualization, the process by which they became canonical written texts. Diffusion was essential for textualization and operated on the basis of both centripetal and centrifugal forces in his second and third stages. First, diverse audiences gathered in major festivals, such as the Panionia in Asia Minor (Nagy’s stage 2) and the Panathenaia in Athens (stage 3); there, as the poems were performed for those diverse audiences, they integrated elements of various local traditions.Footnote ⁶² Thus, religious festivals became bottlenecks in which local elements were made to fit more universal versions of the poems. Then, those universal versions spread out from the festival centers to other regions of Greece; during this diffusion, each composition-in-performance became progressively less and less changeable, a process that Nagy describes as “text-fixation” or textualization, and resulted in the “centralized unity” of the poems.Footnote ⁶³ Essentially, as the poems spread, there were fewer opportunities for recomposition, leading to stricter and more unified versions. The main bottleneck was the Panathenaia, where these centripetal and centrifugal forces converged and the poems acquired their Panhellenic character. This festival functioned as a sort of a melting pot of incoming traditions from the various audiences that gathered in Athens and at the same time as a “superspreader” of those traditions outwards.Footnote ⁶⁴

The addition of diffusion to the composition-in-performance model is crucial to the understanding of the trajectory of the Homeric epics, as it eliminates the need for a poetic mastermind who would edit the text into a unified whole (as the Unitarians had proposed), or the need for these epics to have been transcribed during the lifetime of their singer (as Lord had suggested). Nagy’s evolutionary model, carefully constructed with the aid of comparative evidence provided by oral traditions of living cultures, reflects a more general emphasis on audiences, which assume a greater formative role to the creation of epic poetry than a single poetic genius.

This emphasis on audiences and their interaction with the performers has been explored in depth by Richard Martin.Footnote ⁶⁵ Martin emphasizes the balance between maintaining tradition and introducing spontaneous elements in composition. He highlights the individuality of performers within established norms and analyzes “muthos” speech genres to show their importance in defining heroes and driving narratives. Using Tēlemakhos as an example, he demonstrates how familiar stories gain new life in each oral performance and how every oral composition is uniquely crafted, influenced by the dynamic interplay between audience and performer. This interaction not only shapes each storytelling instance, but also ensures that every rendition of a tale is a fresh and distinct experience. Martin’s work adds depth to our understanding of oral storytelling, particularly in works like the Odyssey, where the narrative is molded by both its content and how it is received by the audience.

Regarding the time and place where composition-in-performance may have occurred, Douglas Frame hypothesizes that the composition-in-performance stage of the Iliad occurred sometime around the end of the eighth century in the festival of the Panionia, possibly under the patronage of one of the Nēleid kings of Milētos. According to this theory, diffusion started in the second quarter of the seventh century, when, under the pressure of the Lydian attacks on the Ionian cities, the Homēridai fled to Khios, taking the poems with them. Eventually the poems ended up in the Panathenaia in Athens after the middle of the sixth century, where they were written down and the text acquired more or less the form in which we know it today, although for centuries verses were being interpolated for various reasons and by various agents.Footnote ⁶⁶

The Homeric Epics and the Pre-existing Mythological and Poetic Tradition

In 1944, prominent Greek philologist Ioannis Kakridis sought to bridge Unitarian and Analytical criticisms by recognizing that the inconsistencies and conflicting story elements of the Homeric epics do not necessarily mean that they were composed by many authors. Instead, he proposed that these inconsistencies indicate the adaptation of earlier, pre-Homeric poetry, which was eventually transferred into the Homeric poems.Footnote ⁶⁷ Among several possible sources, Kakridis explored the possibility of the Iliad being influenced by the Aithiopis, a lost epic poem that, based on its summary by Proklos, had some common themes with the Iliad. A year later, and independently of Kakridis, Swiss philologist Heinrich Pestalozzi proposed that the Iliad had been modeled on the first part of an unattested *Achilleis, which he equated with the Cyclic epic Aithiopis. This new line of thought, which Kakridis termed “Neoanalysis,” searched for the origins of the Homeric epics in pre-existing poems, originally envisaged as written texts. While the methodology of Neoanalysis was similar to that of traditional Analysis, its practice was essentially unitarian: For most Neoanalysts, the Iliad and the Odyssey had been created in writing by a single poet.Footnote ⁶⁸

In its early stages, the question that monopolized Neoanalytical interest had been the relationship of the Iliad with the Aithiopis.Footnote ⁶⁹ Wolfgang Schadewaldt argued for the existence also of another, unattested, epic, the *Memnonis; this epic could have predated the Iliad and was essentially identical to the Aithiopis, but did not yet include the Amazonia, the episode on the Amazon Penthesileia.Footnote ⁷⁰ The next step was taken by Wolfang Kullmann, one of the most prominent Neoanalysts. Kullmann fervently supported the Aithiopis connection, but expanded the possible sources of the Iliad to include other poems on the Trojan War from the Epic Cycle, a collection of now-lost epic poems, among which was the Aithiopis, which narrated events from the creation of the world to the end of the Heroic Age. The poems of the Epic Cycle survive only in fragments, but the plots of six poems that narrated the events of the Trojan War (collectively known as the Trojan sub-cycleFootnote ⁷¹) have been preserved in prose summaries ascribed to Proklos and their myths are narrated (but not connected to specific epics) in seudo-Apollodoros’ Bibliotheca and its abridged version, the Epitome.Footnote ⁷² Before proceeding, it will be useful to take a closer look at these six poems.

The Kypria was composed in eleven books by the poet Kyprias (although other sources attribute it to Stasinos of Cyprus). The poem started with Zeus’ plan to relieve earth from the burden of its population by putting an end to the Heroic Race, and covered the events leading up to and including the first years of the Trojan War. It included numerous famous episodes of the Trojan saga, most of which appear in books 2–7 of the Iliad, including the judgment of Paris, the abduction of Helen, the story of Tēlephos, Achilles’ stay at Skyros, the collection of the Akhaian troops at Aulis and the sacrifice of Iphigeneia, and the story of Philoktētēs.

The Aithiopis, in five books, attributed to Arktinos of Milētos, continued the story of the Trojan War from the point where the Iliad ended. The poem comprised two main episodes: Achilles’ duel with the Amazon Penthesileia, and Achilles’ confrontation with Memnōn, after Memnōn killed Antilokhos. Though Achilles was in both cases triumphant, his victory preluded his own death, which followed shortly. The poem concluded with the funeral of Achilles and the conflict between Odysseus and Ajax for his armor. As discussed already, the story of Memnōn and its aftermath seems to be alluded to in the Iliad, especially from book 16 onwards, and the events encompassing Patroklos’ death in the Iliad seem to reflect the events surrounding Achilles’ death in the Aithiopis. The death of Antilokhos and the funeral of Achilles are also echoed in the Underworld scenes of the Odyssey (books 11 and 24).

The Little Iliad (or Ilias parva) was composed in four books by Leskhēs of Mytilēnē and covered the events that followed the death and funeral of Achilles. It started with Odysseus’ win of Achilles’ weapons over Ajax and Ajax’s subsequent suicide (mentioned in Odyssey 11), narrated the three prerequisites for the sack of Troy (the stealing of the Palladion, the acquisition of Heraklēs’ bow and arrows from Philoktētes, and the fetching of Neoptolemos), and reached up to the construction of the Trojan horse.

The Sack of Ilion (or Iliou persis) was composed in two books by Arktinos of Milētos, whom tradition considered the poet of the Aithiopis. The poem narrated the Fall of Troy, from the Trojan horse (including the episodes of Sinōn and Laokoōn) and the destruction that followed the Akhaian ambush, to the fate of Priam and his oikos, the rape of Kassandra by Ajax the Lesser, and the sacrifice of Polyxenē. Allusions to certain episodes of this poem can be found scattered in the Odyssey (e.g., Odysseus’ speech to Achilles’ ghost in Odyssey 11).

The Nostoi, composed in five books by Agias of Troizēn, sang the returns of the Akhaian leaders to their homes after the Fall of Troy. Diomēdēs, Nestor, and Neoptolemos made it home safe and sound, as did eventually Menelaos, after a detour and a few years’ delay in Egypt. Ajax the Lesser was punished for his impious behavior and died while onboard. Agamemnon reached home only to suffer an unheroic death in the hands of his wife and her lover. These events are mentioned in the Odyssey: Nestor and Menelaos recount their stories to Tēlemakhos in books 3 and 4 respectively, while Agamemnon also recalls his atrocious death in the Underworld scenes of Odyssey 11 and 24.

The Telegony, composed by Eugamōn of Kyrēnē, picked up the story of Odysseus after his return to Ithakē. It narrated the dramatic events that followed the Odyssey, including the adversities that Odysseus faced on the island, his journey to Thesprōtia (a quest prophesied by Teiresias in Odyssey 11), and his final return to Ithakē, where he eventually was killed by Tēlegonos, his own son born by Circe.

It appears, then, that the Homeric poems share a number of stories and mythological themes with the Cyclic poems. The main question is whether these stories and themes were earlier or later than the Iliad and the Odyssey. If they were earlier, they could have influenced the composition of the Homeric epics; if later, they would have instead been influenced by these epics.Footnote ⁷³

The traditional view, going back to Aristarkhos’ time, has been that the Cyclic poems, including the Trojan sub-cycle, not only postdated the Homeric epics, but were actually composed with the view of continuing and filling in gaps in the narration of the Homeric plots. Despite the concessions that the Neoanalysts were initially ready to make, the anteriority of Cyclic in relation to Homeric epics was deemed improbable. Although often attributed to more than one poet and, in certain cases, even to Homer himself, and despite the fact that the ancient sources present conflicting views about their chronology, there is no evidence for such an early dating of Cyclic poems; even the language of the surviving fragments suggests a later date.Footnote ⁷⁴

These problems gave new impetus to Neoanalytical criticism: the efforts to identify the origins of the Homeric epics in pre-existing “poems” (i.e., fixed and stable compositions) was replaced by the study of pre-existing mythological epic material (i.e., motifs and themes drawn from a “gallery of oral traditions”) that shaped both Homeric and Cyclic epics.Footnote ⁷⁵ From this perspective, the Homeric epics were palimpsests of pre-existing poems and their composition was driven by pre-existing mythological traditions.Footnote ⁷⁶ As for the Cyclic epics, although they may have been later compositions, the fact remains that they share with the Homeric poems the myth of the Trojan War, which shows that both Cyclic and Homeric poems incorporated elements from the wider pool of Greek mythological tradition.

This shift in the approach to epic poetry, from the search for a single Cyclic epic that could have been the predecessor and ancestor of the Homeric poems, to the identification of mythological motifs and patterns shared by both Cyclic and Homeric epics, allowed the Neoanalysts to expand their investigations into the origins of the epics.Footnote ⁷⁷ The main focus now fell on the mythological motifs beyond the Trojan saga, including the Theban myths, the Argonautic expedition, the exploits of Heraklēs, as well as other unattested poems on heroes, which offer alternative versions of known stories.Footnote ⁷⁸

Indo-European and Near Eastern Influences

Together, these motifs formed a mythological koinē, rooted in local Greek traditions. Some of the motifs of this koinē seem to originate in a wider Indo-European tradition, along with elements of Indo-European language and narrative structure.Footnote ⁷⁹

One of the most evident Indo-European influences on Homeric epic is the presence of poetic phrases and formulaic collocations common in Greek and Indic poetic traditions. These phrases, composed of etymologically corresponding words in different languages, express concepts that would have been found only in elevated formal discourse, such as poetry or high rhetoric. The most famous example is the Greek phrase kleos aphthiton (“unfailing fame”) and its Vedic equivalent aksiti sravah, both expressing the warrior ideal of eternal renown, a recurring theme in many early Indo-European societies.Footnote ⁸⁰

Beyond phraseology, the influence of Indo-European tradition on Homeric poetry extends into the realm of prosody and figures of speech. The principles of Greek prosody bear resemblance to those found in the Rigveda, with the unit of metrical composition being a verse containing a fixed number of syllables and a regulated sequence of long and short syllables. Additionally, several figures of speech found in Homer, such as short similes, polar expressions, anaphora, and the juxtaposition of opposed or like terms, are typically Indo-European in nature.

The Homeric conceptions of gods and heroes also bear the mark of Indo-European influence. The distinction between gods and men as two races, defined by the antithesis of celestial and terrestrial, immortal and mortal, is a common feature in Indo-European mythology.Footnote ⁸¹ Homeric heroes often reflect a traditional model found in other Indo-European literatures. The archetypal hero is characterized by his strength, fearlessness, and unwavering desire for fame, often choosing a glorious death over a long life without renown. This heroic ideology is a central theme in the Iliad, exemplified by the character of Achilles. Another recurring motif is the hero’s combat with a serpentine adversary, seen in Apollo’s slaying of Python and Zeus’ battle with Typhoeus. The funerary rituals of Il. 23, particularly Patroklos’ cremation, also reflect Indo-European notions of death and regeneration. Similar rituals appear in Hittite royal funerals and the Vedic traditions, highlighting a shared belief in a cyclical connection between death, the sun, and eventual rebirth.

Certain key words in Homer also reveal inherited mythological concepts. The word mēnis, denoting a primordial cosmic force associated with the thunderbolt and the lord of the pantheon, has its closest parallel in its Vedic cognate manyú, suggesting that the meaning of this word contains myth within it.

The significance of the divine twins myth and its relevance to understanding the character of Nestor in Homer is another example of Indo-European influence. The Homeric formula hippota Nestōr (“horseman Nestōr”) corresponds to the two names of the Vedic twin gods: hippota is cognate with the name Aśvinā (“horsemen”) and the name Nestor itself is cognate with Nāsatyā, both deriving from the verbal root *nes-, and meaning “he who brings back to life.” Nestor’s Homeric biography is a variant of the twin myth, in which his warlike brother dies in battle, but instead of bringing him back to life Nestor takes his place, becoming, in one person, both the immortal “bringer back to life” and the warlike “horseman.”

Other areas of possible Indo-European influence may be detected in the Homeric treatment of social and religious themes. The behavior of kings, and also the relationship of kings with the gods, has parallels in Celtic and Indic traditions, perhaps suggesting a common Indo-European understanding of sacral kingship. The theme of the hero’s journey to the underworld, as in Odysseus’ visit to Hades in Od. 11, may also have Indo-European antecedents and can be seen in the Indic story of Naciketās and the Norse tale of Baldr. There is also the motif of the hero winning a bride through a test of skill, as in the archery contest in Od. 19, which has close parallels in Indic epic. These threads may suggest that the Iliad and Odyssey were not the products of just a specific Greek cultural milieu, but also heirs to a much older tradition of Indo-European oral poetry.Footnote ⁸²

At the same time, the epics may preserve elements that are not Indo-European. Some scholars have raised the possibility that the hexameter may have earlier, Minoan (and, consequently, non-Indo-European) origins, in the sense that it may have been adopted by the Mycenaeans during the Shaft Grave period. Although the specific suggestion has met with considerable criticism, the idea of Mycenaean elites adapting Minoan poetry, as part of the wider adoption of Minoan elements, is entirely possible.Footnote ⁸³

Besides indigenous (Indo-European or non-Indo-European) influences, the Homeric epics also have Near Eastern influences. These include mythological motifs, narrative structures, and similes and other allusive techniques from Mesopotamia and Anatolia. Such influences have been proposed for both specific mythological motifs and broader thematic and narrative parallels that are seen in the Homeric poems and in works such as the Epic of Gilgamesh.Footnote ⁸⁴ The great Greek hero Achilles has been compared to Gilgamesh, as they both share a divine mother and a close bond with a companion whose death deeply affects them, and a struggle with mortality.Footnote ⁸⁵ The journeys of Gilgamesh share also elements with those of Odysseus, including encounters with femmes fatales who attempt to detain the hero and a visit to a realm of the dead to consult a wise figure. The seduction by a beautiful goddess is found in Sumerian and Akkadian poetry, serving as a prelude to Inanna/Ishtar’s sexual encounters with various lovers, both divine and mortal. In the Homeric epics, it could be identified in the love affairs of Aphrodite and allusively transferred to other figures, such as Hera, for example, in the episode of her seduction of Zeus in Il. 14.

Another example is the catalogue of a deity’s former lovers. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, the main hero employs such a catalogue to reject the advances of the goddess Ishtar, citing the unfortunate fates of her previous lovers as a reason for his refusal. This theme finds its counterparts in the Homeric epics, where similar catalogues are delivered by various characters, including Zeus in Il. 14. At the same time, however, there are differences in the use of these motifs, which may suggest that things are not clear-cut: for example, Gilgamesh uses the catalogue to reject Ishtar, whereas Zeus employs a similar catalogue to justify his desire for Hera, which implies a different context for the use of the motif.

Beyond specific motifs, the Homeric epics have a range of wider allusive techniques with possible Near Eastern origins. Specific similes (such as the hero mourning the death of his friend as a lion who lost its cubs), reversals, and combinatory allusions can be found in Sumerian, Akkadian, and Hittite poems. The presence of these techniques in both Near Eastern and Greek epic suggests that the Iliad and the Odyssey may have been influenced by a system of “poetics of allusion” from Near Eastern poetry.

Historical and archaeological evidence attests to the contacts between Greece and the Near East, as demonstrated by the presence of Mycenaean and Minoan artifacts in Near Eastern sites and the role of Cyprus and Phoenicia in cultural transmission. Textual parallels, such as the epithet “rider of the clouds” shared by Zeus and Baal, and possible Hittite loanwords and myths, further indicate the role of Anatolia as a bridge between Near Eastern and Greek traditions.Footnote ⁸⁶

The Orality–Literacy Dichotomy

The identification of both indigenous and Near Eastern influences on the Homeric epics has significant implications for our understanding of the literary sophistication of these poems. In particular, the existence of a repertoire of pre-existing mythological traditions is a key element of the processes that led to their composition.

The emphasis on storyline motifs at the expense of form, language, vocabulary, and style, which the Neoanalytical school represented, sparked significant criticism by the supporters of Oralism. The bulk of this criticism concerned not just this attention to motifs, but also what the supporters of the oral-tradition approach saw as an unsubstantiated reconstruction of the Cyclic epics and the Neoanalytical insistence that the epics had been composed in writing.Footnote ⁸⁷ Supporters of the oral-formulaic theory had already questioned the primacy of literacy over oral tradition, demonstrating that the dichotomy between “true” art (which many critics had thought could be achieved only by one individual poetic genius and only in writing) and the “artless” craft of a collective oral tradition was a mirage.

The supporters of the oral-tradition approach were, however, confronted with a reality they could not ignore, in the fact that the Homeric epics have come down to us as written texts. To resolve this issue, some scholars adopted Albert Lord’s dictation theory and argued that, initially, the Homeric epics had been composed orally, but later dictated to and written down by scribes. Richard Janko, using evolutionary-linguistic phylogenetic statistical methods, proposed that the Iliad and the Odyssey had been composed orally and by a single poet. That poet used techniques of oral composition-in-performance to create the poems, but subsequently dictated his poems to a scribe. More recently, Jonathan Ready argued for the existence of a collector who dictated to a scribe the versions of the poems that he had in his collection.Footnote ⁸⁸

For many critics, the possibility of an oral composition of such elaborate works of literature remained unrealistic. Martin West proposed that the Iliad had been composed almost entirely by one poet with the aid of writing between 680 and 640 bce. That poet, whom West named “P,” was an unknown poetic mastermind who possibly lived around Smyrna and composed first a core poem consisting of books 1, 2, 11, and 16 of the Iliad and then expanded it with additional episodes.Footnote ⁸⁹ According to West, the Odyssey was composed by another poet, whom he called “Q,” who was a generation younger than “P” and lived in Attikē or Euboia. “Q” wrote the Odyssey a few years after the Iliad had been composed, with the purpose of challenging the Iliad.Footnote ⁹⁰ Both “P” and “Q” kept working on their compositions for decades, continuously inserting new passages and significantly broadening their work. West attributed the invention of a poet called “Homer” to the Homēridai and proposed that this attribution was solidified sometime late in the sixth century, when the recitation of the two poems was introduced into the Greater Panathenaia. From that point on, there was a surge of fictional biographies that shaped Homeric tradition and the Homeric question.Footnote ⁹¹

West’s theories, although based on a thorough knowledge of Homeric poetry and his undeniable expertise on the textual transmission of the epics, have been heavily criticized. The basis of this criticism is that he does not explain why the authors of the Iliad and the Odyssey did not revise their work to eliminate discrepancies, repetitions, and inconsistencies – especially since, according to his theory, they worked on these poems and kept inserting new passages for decades. Another criticism is that he sidestepped the core arguments of the oral tradition theory, without addressing its essential arguments.Footnote ⁹²

Other scholars push the theory of written epics to speculative extremes. Barry Powell attempts to link the emergence of the alphabet to the supposed need to record the epics; Robin Lane Fox proposes that an illiterate Homer dictated his poems to a scribe.Footnote ⁹³

The issue of oral tradition versus literacy was further explored by John Miles Foley. In analyzing the poetic traditional art of the Homeric epics, Foley drew attention to the existence, in texts, of oral traditional language and what he called the “false dichotomy” between written and oral. He introduced the concept of “oral-derived” texts, which encompass a broad range of different interactions between different types of media, from original handwritten copies and dictated texts to documents produced by scribes, multiple revisions, and compositions in an oral-traditional style. Furthermore, he emphasized the importance of oral tradition, defined as an enabling referent, a “language” of signs used by the poets. These signs (sēmata in Greek) are the tools that the poet uses to bring tradition into performance – they are the referents that connect poetry to the shared traditional meanings understood by both the poet and the audience.

This “traditional referentiality” or “immanence” in oral traditions explains how formulaic structures within these traditions (e.g., epithets, formulas, themes/type scenes) can evoke a larger thematic complex for an audience familiar with the tradition. Immanence differs from allusion in that while allusion specifically references a known mythological or poetic moment, immanence derives meaning from the broader syntactic principles governing the use of formulas in oral poetry. It requires a deep understanding of the oral tradition’s formulaic functions and interactions, making it more accessible to audiences immersed in that tradition. Over time, certain epithets or phrases that may have started as specific allusions can become generalized through repetition, losing their original specificity and coming to represent the broader traditional nature of a character or theme. This process can enhance narrative moments with emotional effects, thematic depth, and psychological nuance, often in ways that are subtle or indirect.Footnote ⁹⁴

The issue of oral tradition versus literacy was further investigated by Minna Skafte Jensen, Georg Danek, and Zlatan Čolaković. For Jensen, neither Nagy’s evolutionary model nor West’s “P” and “Q” composers are compatible with the workings of oral epic poetry; instead, she proposes that the Homeric epics were originally composed orally, but the final stage in their composition took place in 522 bce in Athens, when they were dictated to a team of scribes sponsored by Hipparkhos.Footnote ⁹⁵ Danek proposed that allusions to specific epics/performances were incompatible with the dynamics of oral poetics – although Foley and Arft argue convincingly that epic poets do not so much allude to specific existing poems, but to a wider “constellation” of narratives from which both Cyclic and Homeric epics draw.Footnote ⁹⁶ Čolaković distinguished between traditional poets, whose compositions are rooted in pre-existing oral tradition, and “post-traditional” poets, who break from this tradition to create unique artistic creations.Footnote ⁹⁷

Oral Neoanalysis

These new approaches on textuality widened the cross-fertilization between Oralism and Neoanalysis, following a path that had already been opened by Wolfgang Kullmann. In a seminal article published in 1984, Kullmann sought common ground between Neoanalysis and Oralism by accepting that the epics may have been the products of oral composition, but maintaining the core Neoanalytical view that both Homeric and Cyclic epics stem from a common mythological tradition.Footnote ⁹⁸ Where supporters of the oral-tradition theory used to see only typical themes, common topoi that informed Homeric and other epic poems, Neoanalysts could now detect specific allusions and references to unwritten poems, pointing toward a complex system of intertextuality, with which oral poetics once had seemed incompatible. For “Oral Intertextual Neoanalysis,” the name by which this new reconciliatory line of criticism became known, oral tradition was the medium by which the interplay among various oral epics allowed the development of a sophisticated nexus of intertextual associations. These associations concern both content, in that they derive from the common use of mythological themes and motifs, and style, in that they allow the sharing of formulas, vocabulary, and stylistic traits.

Recent work by Jonathan Burgess and Christos Tsagalis has yielded new insights into the links between Homeric and Cyclic epics. These scholars characterize the Homeric epics as “meta-cyclic” or “meta-traditional,” in the sense that they represent an advanced stage of oral poetry in which poets adapt existing narratives into innovative forms. By the time the Homeric epics were composed, these narratives had been codified into traditional themes and phrases. Some of these were incorporated into the Homeric poems, which subsequently became the primary representatives of the wider epic tradition.Footnote ⁹⁹

The distinctive identity of the Homeric epics arises from the creative interplay between the structures embedded in oral tradition and the innovative “poetic agency” of highly skilled bards. Working within this tradition, these bards often interacted with one another, sharing motifs, phrases, and narrative structures, weaving an intertextual web of meaning that extended beyond the individual poem.Footnote ¹⁰⁰

Beyond this intertextual interplay, oral poets composing in the Homeric tradition also engaged in intertraditional exchanges with entirely different epic traditions, such as the Theban tradition. Over time, these interactions fostered a symbiotic relationship in which heroic traditions gradually crystallized, becoming deeply intertwined with the Homeric epics. Such connections reveal a cultural landscape where storytelling traditions were fluid, overlapping, and mutually influential, allowing the Homeric epics to both draw from and enrich a shared narrative heritage.Footnote ¹⁰¹

Homeric Language

Through this process, the composer(s) of the Iliad and Odyssey created relatively fixed versions of their verses, skillfully drawing from earlier codified themes and phrases. This process is also reflected in the distinct linguistic form of the poems and the integration of many elements from different dialects. The combination of different dialectal elements with the use of artificial words, synonyms, and redundant forms makes Homeric language a constructed language, a Kunstsprache, distinct from colloquial Greek of any specific time and space.Footnote ¹⁰² There are four dialects that are used in the Homeric epics.

1. 1) Ionic, spoken in the central Aegean and the central west coast of Asia Minor, is the dominant dialect of the epics.Footnote ¹⁰³

2. 2) Attic, spoken in Athens, is not widely used in the epics and can be explained as a result of the fact that the final textualization of the poems appears to have occurred in Athens.Footnote ¹⁰⁴

3. 3) Aiolic, spoken in the central Greek mainland (Boiotia and Thessaly), the islands of the northeastern Aegean, and the northwestern part of Asia Minor, occurs primarily in archaisms, that is, verses with a metrical structure that fits (“scans better”) with earlier, Mycenaean, forms, suggesting a derivation from a poetic tradition that preceded the Homeric poems.Footnote ¹⁰⁵

4. 4) Arcado-Cypriot, a term describing two closely related dialects, Arkadian and Cypriot, includes words that are recognized as survivals from an earlier, Mycenaean, dialect and share peculiarities that set them apart from other Greek dialects.Footnote ¹⁰⁶

The Homeric Kunstsprache underwent continuous evolution, with newer forms replacing older ones especially when the epic tradition was brought to the west coast of Asia Minor during the Early Iron Age (EIA) migrations, resulting in the adoption of East Aeolian elements.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ The complex linguistic mix of dialects suggests an evolutionary process by which Aeolic narrative poems and story elements were incorporated into more widely dispersed Ionic oral poems.Footnote ¹⁰⁸

Some archaisms did persist, which can be traced back to the Bronze Age and are reasonably explained as survivals from earlier epics, or as loans from Postpalatial/EIA dialects, or as a combination of both (Figure 2; see the discussion in the section “Poetry, Performance, and Mycenaean Epic” in Chapter 3).Footnote ¹⁰⁹ Given these different dialectal layers preserved in the epic language, Susan Sherratt and John Bennet have reconstructed the stages and route of the transmission of epic tradition. They suggest that the bardic tradition may have originated in the royal courts of the Mycenaean “core” area during the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries (Arcado-Cypriot); in the Postpalatial period, the tradition moved to the peripheral areas of the Mycenaean world, such as Thessaly and north Euboia (Aeolic); and by the ninth century, it had reached the northeastern Aegean and northwestern Asia Minor before finally taking on its Ionic form in the EIA.Footnote ¹¹⁰

2 The two models explaining the Homeric mixed dialect (from Jones Reference Jones, Andersen and Haug2012, 46 and fig. 2.1).

Reproduced by permission of Brandtly Jones

Conclusion

In the past two and a half centuries, a staggering number of theories about the formation of the Homeric epics has emerged, often representing polar extremes and contrarian views.Footnote ¹¹¹ The complexity of the issues surrounding the creator(s) of the Iliad and the Odyssey and the possibilities regarding the process(es), time(s), and place(s) of their composition is such, that seeking a single, definitive answer is unrealistic; instead, it is more meaningful to consider a range of possibilities and differences of opinion.Footnote ¹¹²

Having said this, there is one aspect of the origins of the Homeric epics on which opinions converge. From Wood’s oral composition to Nagy’s evolutionary model, from Hermann’s nucleus and Lachmann’s lays to Nitzsch’s short poems and Schadewaldt’s proto-epics, and from the Neoanalysts’ Epic Cycle to the oral traditional poems and Friedrich’s Postoralism, there is wide consensus that the Iliad and the Odyssey integrate elements of a pre-existing tradition. There are differences of opinion about whether that pre-existing tradition was mythological or poetic or both, about how extensively it has influenced the Homeric epics, about whether the Homeric epics were composed by a poeta magnus or a collective poetic tradition, and about whether they became fixed orally or in writing. But in this profusion of approaches there is one common denominator, one shared ground on which they all stand: The Homeric epics were not composed ex nihilo, but their origins can be traced back to a pre-existing oral tradition of heroic narratives.

This means that our investigation into the emergence of Greek epic poetry should focus on the circumstances that shaped that oral heroic tradition before the crystallization of the Homeric poems into their fixed form. To do so, in Part II we will analyze the social, political, economic, and cultural aspects of the Iliad and the Odyssey in an effort to identify those elements in the poems that may originate in historical reality.