surely be the same. The oral poetic tradition has created, by a long process of addition and rejection, an
amalgam. In matters of armour, burial, and so forth this amalgam, while historically impossible, is
aesthetically coherent and convincing. What mattered to the poet was not that he should be accurate-why
should that matter?-but that he should be plausible and enthralling, that he should create a past that was
solidly imaginable and yet suitable for heroes.
Just as Homeric language included an element of poetic diction which no one had ever spoken, so there
was surely a considerable made-up element in the world of Achilles or Odysseus. The twin springs of the
river Scamander in Iliad 22. 145-56 provide a good illustration since much of the topographical search for
a real setting for the Iliad and the Trojan war has concentrated on them. There are two springs, one icy
cold, the other steaming hot, and close by them are the stone-washing troughs where the Trojan women
used to do their laundry. It is by them that Hector, after being chased three times round Troy, takes his
final stand against Achilles. Needless to say, no explorer has managed to find such a hydrological
curiosity outside the walls of any ancient city, though apparently there are springs of varying temperatures
somewhere in the mountains of north-west Turkey. The springs are not there for the sake of descriptive
accuracy, but for their dramatic and poetic topicality. Not long before, in Book 21, Hephaestus and
Achilles defeated the Scamander, the river of Troy; now Hector, the protector of Troy, runs for his life
past the springs of Scamander. The washing troughs stand for Troy's former delight and prosperity. Troy
will never know that peace again, once Achilles has caught Hector. Its fine clothes will be taken as booty,
and its women will labour at far-distant springs.
Could it be that, even if Homer's material world is mixed from different periods with a strong leavening of
invention, its social structures and values are still drawn from the real world, indeed from a particular
historical reality? Fin-ley's case is that Homer is consistent and anthropologically plausible on such
matters as Agamemnon's constitutional position, the inheritance customs on Ithaca, the status of wives
and monogamy, the legal and social treatment of murderers, to give four examples. I would maintain that
in all four cases the poems are in fact inconsistent, treating the issue differently in different contexts.
There is no need, for instance, for the Achaeans to have a consistent constitutional procedure or a defined
hierarchy of kings, elders, assemblies, etc., as long as their debates and deliberations convince the poet's
audience on each particular occasion. It is, in fact, important for the Iliad that Agamemnon should not
have a definite constitutional position.
When it comes to morality and values, it is also widely claimed that these are consistent and furthermore
simple. The 'Heroic Code' consists of precepts such as that you must strive to be first, you must kill and
humiliate your enemies, and you must preserve your honour, which is measurable in material goods. But
much of the Iliad is spent in disputing and debating about these very precepts, and many others. One of
the reasons why so much of the poem consists of direct speech is that so much of it is spent in argument
about values. If the 'Heroic Code' were agreed and beyond dispute, there would be no real conflict. In fact
the criteria for approval and disapproval are open for consideration; and much of the power of the Iliad
comes from its lack of moral simplicity and consistency.
Scholars have been even more determined to impose a religious 'reality' on Homer (and here the Old
Testament analogy may have been particularly influential). Out of all the variety of manifestations of the