narrative patterns or “typical scenes.” Frequently in the Iliad and the Odyssey the poet describes a
sacrifice or the arrival of a messenger or the arming of a warrior. The sequence of events in these scenes
usually follows a regular pattern, sometimes including verbal formulae that are repeated in other, similar
scenes. These “typical scenes” are not repeated word for word from one occurrence to the next, but are
shaped and modified to suit the specific requirements of the narrative. It should not be thought that this
adherence to patterns or formulae deprives the poet of the opportunity for originality. These merely
represent the essential framework within which composition can take place, whether that composition is
banal or brilliant, oldfangled or novel.
DACTYLIC HEXAMETER A metrical form in which each line of verse is made up of six (Greek
hex) dactyls (a unit consisting of one long syllable followed by one or two further syllables), a
meter appropriate to epic poetry, prophecies given by the Delphic oracle, and other poetry of a
serious or philosophical character (for example, the poems of Hesiod).Parry had the opportunity, rare among researchers in the humanities, to subject his hypothesis of oral
composition to empirical testing. In the 1930s, in the country then known as Yugoslavia, there existed a
tradition of bards who were mostly illiterate and who performed original poems which they composed in
the course of performance. Parry was able to study and record the performances of these Serbo-Croatian
bards and he found that many of the same features present in the Homeric poems – repeated verbal
formulae, “typical scenes,” the co-existence of old and new elements, a thriftiness comparable to the
Homeric “economy of epithets,” subject-matter concerned with glorious military accomplishments of the
distant past – were present in the Yugoslav tradition as well. (This Yugoslav oral tradition has since
fallen victim to the spread of literacy, but it has been artificially preserved for the benefit of tourists.) The
work of Parry and his followers has shown conclusively that the Iliad and Odyssey derive from a
tradition of orally composed verse, and Parry was himself convinced that these poems were in fact
themselves orally composed. But, as we have seen, the language, style, meter, and dialect of Homer and
Hesiod are nearly identical, and there is every reason to believe that the works of Hesiod were originally
composed in written form. The similarity between the works of these two poets can readily be explained
by the fact that their language, style, and dialect are the products of a tradition of orally composed poems,
even if the poems themselves were composed by literate poets with the aid of writing. The formulae, the
typical scenes, the stories themselves may have been transmitted orally by a tradition that preserved and
transformed all these elements over a period of hundreds of years, but the poems in the form in which we
now possess them are likely to be the product of a literate age which, as we have seen, began in Greece in
the eighth century BC.
The poems of Hesiod seem to have originated in the period close to 700 BC, at the end of the eighth
century or the beginning of the seventh. What about the Iliad and the Odyssey? And what about Homer, the
man who is supposed to have composed them? Unfortunately, despite the enormous amount of research
that has been undertaken, there is nothing even approaching a scholarly consensus regarding the questions
of when these poems were composed, whether the same poet was responsible for the composition of both
poems, or what the nature of that act of composition was. The reason for the difficulty is precisely the
traditional nature of the Homeric poems, which include elements of language and references to artifacts
that can be dated to various times ranging from the Mycenaean Period down to the sixth century BC. It
might be possible to take the date of the latest element represented as giving an indication of the time of
composition, with earlier elements having been preserved because of the inherently conservative nature
of the tradition. On the other hand, it is equally possible that individual passages containing those isolated
“late” elements were subsequently added to an already “complete” text. It does seem very likely,