Epic Poetry
The Homeric poems are the only complete surviving examples of Greek oral epic poetry. The ancient Greek word epos, from which our word "epic" derives, means "word" or "song." An epic is a long narrative poem that celebrates the feats of heroes. Epic poetry is characterized by elevated language and conventions such as the invocation of the Muse, extended similes, and formulaic epithets ("swift-footed Achilles," "Menelaos of the great war cry").
Oral Composition
The Iliad and the Odyssey were probably composed toward the end of the eighth century B.C. and the beginning of the seventh. The ancient Greeks believed that the poems were created by a blind poet named Homer, but we can never determine whether they were composed by one man or one woman or several, whether each is of different authorship, and whether they were originally written or are transcribed oral poems. Today, most scholars believe the poems were composed orally over several generations by professional singers who worked out and rehearsed routines of story line, language, and characters. Greek epic poetry is formed in dactylic hexameters (a dactyl is a metrical foot consisting of one long syllable followed by two short syllables).
'Menin aeide, Thea, Peleiadeo Achilleos' / 'Rage—Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus' son Achilles'
Listen to translator Stanley Lombardo read Book One of the Iliad in Ancient Greek
The theory that the Iliad and the Odyssey were composed orally is based in part on references in the two poems to things known to the Mycenaeans, who lived five centuries before Homer, but forgotten by or unknown to the later Greeks. Proponents of the oral theory point to the boar's tusk helmet Odysseus borrows from the Cretan hero Meriones in Book 10 of the Iliad:
Meriones gave Odysseus bow, quiver and sword
and over his head he set a helmet made of leather.
Inside it was crisscrossed taut with many thongs,
outside the gleaming teeth of a white-tusked boar
ran round and round in rows stiched neat and tight—
a master craftsman's work, the cap in its center
padded soft with felt.
(Iliad 10.304-310)
These helmets were very common in Mycenaean Greece. Because no system of writing is know to have survived the collapse of the Mycenaean culture, scholars assume the oral, not written, transmission of such details.
In the early 1930s, the American scholar Milman Parry and his assistant Albert Lord traveled to Yugoslavia to study South Slavic epic song. Parry and Lord interviewed bards, transcribed songs, and recorded live performances, such as this one by Avdo Medjedović. Avdo's song is not memorized; he is composing it as he performs, from "formulas." Parry and Lord's pioneering work seemed to prove that the Iliad and Odyssey were the result of oral composition, that they were composed of traditional phrases, lines, scenes, and characters.
Listen to Avdo sing, composing as he goes!
Ring Composition
Ring composition is a device in which the narrator will return at the end of a speech or passage to a topic introduced at its beginning. These formal symmetries often exhibit a type of chiasmus (from the Greek khiasmos, "placing crosswise"), a figure of speech in which the order of terms (words or ideas) in the first clause is inverted in the second (e.g. "All I can say is that I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me"—Winston Churchill). In the Iliad we see chiastic patterns within single speeches and scenes, and chiastic patterns which structure the entire work. See an elaborate chart of narrative symmetries in the Iliad, taken from Cedric Whitman's book Homer and the Heroic Tradition.
Geometric Art
The structure of the Homeric poems has been likened to the intricate designs on vases that date to the period when the Iliad and Odyssey are believed to have been composed. Symmetry and repetition are pervasive principles in "geometric" vase painting, a style developed in Greece between the 10th and 8th centuries B.C. Its precise geometric patterns can be seen as visual versions of ring composition. It may be that Greek vase painters, like oral poets, thought in terms of basic theme-units. View the famous Dipylon Vase (c. 750 B.C.).
The Walls of Troy
The Heroic Code
A few basic principles, the so-called "heroic code," guide the conduct of the Homeric heroes: to be the best and the bravest and to be distinguished above others; to stand fast in battle; and to help one's friends, while harming one's enemies. The Homeric hero endlessly competed with his peers for prestige (timê) with the goal of being recognized as "best" (aristos) and winning the imperishable glory (kleos) celebrated in epic song. His exemplary death is dazzling. It is a "beautiful death" (Gk. kalos thanatos). The hero's greatest fear was failure and the resulting public shame. His responsibility and loyalty were directed towards his immediate circle of friends and companions (philoi).
'The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long'
In Ridley Scott's film Blade Runner (1982), Roy Batty—a super-smart, super-strong biorobotic being with a fixed life span—struggles with the same fate as Achilles: a glorious but short life. In this scene he confronts the genetic designer who built him.
The crisis of the heroic code comes to a head in the embassy to Achilles in Book 9. Agamemnon admits his error and sends Achilles's philoi—Ajax, Odysseus, and Phoenix—to try to placate the absent hero . The ambassadors offer Achilles lavish gifts as compensation for his outraged honor:
'But now at last,
stop, Achilles—let your heart-devouring anger go!
The king will hand you gifts to match his insults
if only you'll relent and end your anger ...
So come then, listen, as I count out the gifts,
the troves in his tents that Agamemnon vows to give you.
Seven tripods never touched by fire, ten bars of gold,
twenty burnished cauldrons, a dozen massive stallions'
(Iliad 9.315-322)
And so on and on! But Achilles refuses Agamemnon's presents, famously reflecting that 'Cattle and fat sheep can all be had for the raiding, / tripods all for the trading, and tawny-headed stallions. / But a man's life breath cannot come back again' (Iliad 9.493-495).The embassy scene is a good place to review some of the key terms and concepts in epic:
ate bewilderment; infatuation; reckless impulse
And Agamemnon the lord of men consented quickly:
'That's no lie, old man—a full account you give
of all my acts of madness [ate]. Mad, blind I was!
Not even I would deny it.'
(Iliad 9.136-139)
kleos report; reputation; glory
Achilles was lifting his spirits with [his lyre] now,
singing the famous deeds [kleos] of fighting heroes ...
Across from him Patroclus sat alone, in silence,
waiting for Aeacus' son to finish with his song.
(Iliad 9.227-230)
nostos homecoming
'Mother tells me,
the immortal goddess Thetis with her glistening feet,
that two fates bear me on to the day of death.
If I hold out here and I lay siege to Troy,
my journey home [nostos] is gone, but my glory never dies.
If I voyage back to the fatherland I love,
my pride, my glory [kleos] dies ...
true, but the life that's left me will be long,
the stroke of death will not come on me quickly.'
(Iliad 9.497-505)
aretê goodness; excellence
'But now, Achilles, beat down your mounting fury!
It's wrong to have such an iron, ruthless heart.
Even the gods themselves can bend and change,
and theirs is the greater power [aretê], honor [timê], strength.'
(Iliad 9.601-604)
menis wrath, anger
'If Agamemnon were not holding out such gifts,
with talk of more to come, that son of Atreus,
if the warlord kept on blustering in his anger, why,
I'd be the last to tell you, 'Cast your rage [menis] to the winds!'
(Iliad 9.627-630)
timê that which is paid in token of worth or value; honor
'It degrades you to curry favor with that man,
and I will hate you for it, I who love you.
It does you proud to stand by me, my friend,
to attack the man who attacks me—
be king on a par with me, take half my honors [timê]!'
(Iliad 9.748-752)