himself takes charge of the guest at once; but here there is a wedding feast in progress and Telemachus is
met by Menelaus' henchman, who is not sure what to do and consults Menelaus while Telemachus waits
outside. Menelaus is angry at this and insists that the strangers should be treated properly whatever the
circumstances. The variation in the pattern shows the example of really noble hospitality. The pattern of a
'typical sequence' can also be carefully adhered to and thus create a sense of order and orthodoxy. A
remarkable use of this possibility comes in the last book of the Iliad. Feasting in Homer, and no doubt in
epic bards before him, is narrated with a set of procedures which include many recurrent formulaic lines.
A sense of ceremony and normality is thus imparted to this daily social occasion which ratifies a
communal bond. In Iliad 24. 621 ff., however, these regular procedures, told in the familiar way, take on a
special colour and significance since the two parties are Achilles and Priam. The uniqueness of the
occasion, and its boldness, gain greater depth from its typicality.
Parry's discoveries have, then, opened up new explanations and significances for the 'repetitiousness' of
Homer. They also account for the strange linguistic phenomena of Homeric diction. His language is
evidently nothing like the Greek that any native speaker ever spoke. Most of the word-forms are variants
drawn from the dialects of different places and periods, but never spoken together in any one time or
place. Some of the forms are even, it seems, completely artificial, the word-forging of poets, especially
under metrical pressure. Philologists are largely agreed that, while the basic dialect of Homeric Greek is
that of Ionia in the archaic period, there are many features quite foreign to that time and place. The most
interesting is perhaps the occurrence of outcrops of so-called 'Arcado-Cypriot'. The evidence of Linear B
tablets confirms that this is the Greek of the Mycenaeans some 500 years before Homer and on the
mainland of Greece. The oral tradition can accommodate all this: travelling bards will over the years have
picked up some phrases and discarded others according to their tastes and needs. Gradually a language
comes into being which is special to epic poetry. Some phrases go back hundreds of years; others are
recent acquisitions; others are new on the very day of performance. In this sense hundreds of anonymous
bards may well have contributed to the Iliad and Odyssey, in that they will have contributed phrases,
lines, or scene-sequences which became part of the tradition.
This 'artificiality' of epic language does not mean that it was precious or outlandish. Although it contained
words and forms that the audience will never have heard outside poetry, it will have been a language
made familiar by poetry and proper to it. It makes for pace and assurance infused with an epic and high
colour. These qualities were well seen by Matthew Arnold: 'He is eminently rapid; he is eminently plain
and direct both in the evolution of his thought and in the expression of it ... he is eminently noble.' Colin
Macleod has brought out the insights underlying these epithets: 'Arnold saw, with the acumen of the
critic, that what is artificial in origin need not be artificial in effect ("rapid ... plain.. .") and that
judgements of poetic quality are vacuous if they take no account of moral quality ("simple ... noble.. .").'
The idea that dozens of nameless bards have made their contribution to Homer is an attractive one. The
poems become the achievement of a group or guild. But Milman Parry and some of his successors have
been carried away by this 'folkist' romance, and have become so set on the notion of traditional poetry that
they have denied all individuality to the bard within it, adding that such a tradition has no place or value
for originality. For them 'Homer' is the tradition, handed down over the centuries. This runs into
problems, if only because the tradition must somehow have developed and grown; it cannot have