In the Odyssey, Telemachos, both as a guest of Nestor and Menelaos, sleeps beneath a portico, so basically outside. (Book 3-399 , Book 4-297, ὑπ‘ αἰθούσῃ)
This struck me as odd and a bit inhospitable, but Middle Liddell states that this is the ‘sleeping place of travellers’. Does anyone have more references to this portico sleeping?
The point according to Stephanie West in the Oxford commentary is that the guests can be given shelter there without giving them access to every part of the house. Also, we’ll have to remember that Greece is a warm country at least in the summer…
The Oxford commentary (Alfred Heubeck et al., 3 parts) is the basic “serious” reference work, but on this subject there doesn’t seem to be much more there.
Interestingly, this scene - Telemachos and Peisistratos, unmarried boys sleeping together - has been interpreted as homosexual encounter. I once saw a book on the history of homosexuality on Amazon.com or somewhere, where this was taken an plain, unquestionable fact. I don’t really believe this, I don’t really see it in the Greek - it just says Peisistatos slept next to Telemachus. I don’t think this interpretation can be absolutely excluded, but I think there’s just not enough evidence. Anyway, I pointed this out because this the one thing I remember about this scene.
I didn’t recognize any reference to homosexuality, so I think people might be overreaching there. Was not sure about the season this episode takes place in, but I guess it can’t have been winter. Still , it never occurred to me the ancient Greeks didn’t have guest rooms.
Apparently West also considers it a bit surprising that even the splendid palace of Menelaus doesn’t have guest rooms.
As to whether this and other architectural statements reflect a reality of Homer’s own time or Mycenean times is a very difficult and controversial question. I have no idea…
Not at all, we really oughtn’t to be thinking of Mycenaean palaces when we read Homer, in the sense that its clear he doesn’t have the descriptive vocabulary for that, indeed he seems to be thinking of a much larger, grander, hyperbolic version of the large archaic houses of chieftains, you know…big megaron, nice fence, gardens etc rather than several demarcated, specialised, chambers.
This behaviour too, guests on the portico, seems to be somewhat genuine from the archaic/classical eras if I recall. I don’t know to what degree it would be uncomfortable since it wasn’t a small piece of space but most likely large and sheltered and not very much different from the usual pallets.
There’s no reason to see it as homosexual, what the hell at that book!?! I mean…whole families would have slept together in many cases. Were they all orgying it up? Were military expeditions one big gay orgy? I think not…
Probably the material culture, palaces and all, generally reflect Homer’s time rather than Mycenean times. Also probably you’re right that the palaces are more a “hyperbolic version of the large archaic houses of chieftains”. But Homer might partly reflect also more ancient times, and to a certain point we may have an amalgam of different periods. Homer can be using some older concepts for archaism’s sake, sometimes without fully understanding them. A lot has been written on the subject of chariot tactics in the Iliad I think. Also, think of such archaic features as Telamonian Aias’ shield, the bear tusk helmet etc., which really seem to be reliques from Mycenean times. But I think there’s a controversy about these things.
As for homosexuality in the passage in question, I don’t really believe it. I mentioned it because I have seen it cropping up in many places, usually with a note of scepticism (E.g. The Homer Encyclopedia, article “Sexuality”; also Stephanie West in the Oxford commentary says Zenodotus athetized lines 400-1 and suspects it was because Zenodotus “may have suspected that the couplet had been added to introduce homosexual overtones”.) Unfortunately, I don’t remember what the book I mentioned earlier was; it was totally uncritical, obviously written by someone without knowledge of Greek who had taken it from somewhere else.
I don’t think a homosexual theme in this passage can be completely excluded, only unlikely, because at least theoritically Homer could be suppressing an older, more explicit account of homosexuality here. He does seem to do this elsewhere: in the Iliad, Zeus abducts Ganymede just to serve wine, whereas in other sources he clearly makes him his lover.
The take on Homer suppressing homosexuality is an interesting one, certainly, I’ve never thought of it quite like that re: Ganymedes. To my mind such homosexually focused readings only really occurred during the classical period where we’re starting to see significant changes in culture. Yet, despite my misgivings, I suspect you’re right and this is an extension of Homeric tendencies to suppress and nullify/change and refashion other aspects of the epic tradition that are usually so prominent. Interesting, you’ve given me something to think on.
Homer and Mycenae: Complicated debate, not really controversial in the sense that those familiar with Homeric philology all fall into one camp (with its many shadings, of course) and those specialising in, say, Bronze Age archaeology produce very shallow, facile, readings which basically go like: found a bronze age cup, Homer mentions cup, therefore Homeric cup.
Basically I’d summarise it as its obvious the hexameter, whilst not the earliest Greek metre, has a long history and there are occasional lines which are best rendered with some older phonological features whether they be intervocalic /r/ or the /w/ or whatever have you, at any stage. In addition, obviously some content is reminiscent of earlier stages, but all that is natural in ANY epic tradition since these phrases and formula are passed down generation after generation and part and parcel of the deliberate archaising we can see throughout epic (the placement of tribes, the lack of iron etc etc). Basically the bulk of it seems to be roughly contemporaneous with Homer’s time, but obviously he’s singing in a tradition some centuries old. A bit like how modern north Indian singers constantly use Vedic/Sanskritic phraseology and characters etc, or the Slavic stuff goes back to an earlier stage but is not necessarily a direct representation so much as a highly developed artform.
The idea of Homer suppressing homosexuality isn’t mine. For this passage, it remains speculative, because we don’t have evidence outside Homer, unlike with Ganymedes.
Homer and Mycenae: Complicated debate, not really controversial in the sense that those familiar with Homeric philology all fall into one camp (with its many shadings, of course) and those specialising in, say, Bronze Age archaeology produce very shallow, facile, readings which basically go like: found a bronze age cup, Homer mentions cup, therefore Homeric cup.
I think you’re right here. One thing is that philologists tended to be more optimistic before about Homer telling about Mycenean times. It can take decades before new ideas reach standard commentaries, and now the standard commentary for the Odyssey is over 20 years old. And people are still reading also Stanford’s commentary, which is 60 years old. So it’s easy to get the idea that there’s a controversy when in fact there really isn’t.
Indeed, I think it was more…the shock of the recent (then) discoveries which lead to such over optimistic thinking, we’ve since calmed down and a considerably more nuanced view of things. I mean, the progression of time has considerably re-wrote our understanding of epic and tradition and formula and history blah blah blah. Unfortunately, the memo has not reached the bronze age guys despite people like Chadwick speaking as early as the 70s on the tyranny of Homer. Wonderful phrase!
Saying that the updated commentary on the Iliad, the BK, is definitely on the optimistic side, but then that’s because its edited by Latacz and is also firmly anti American oralist scholarship too, so. Swings and machetes.
Hey, I found out the book I mentioned earlier! I had put it in my Amazon cart, not that I was ever going to buy it, but to be able to find it again… The passage is to be found in the preview, pages 142-143. Pretty shallow to my taste.
James Neill: The Origins and Role of Same-Sex Relations in Human Societies
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0786469269/ref=ox_sc_act_title_4?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER
What do you think about new German Iliad commentary? Haven’t really opened it, because my German is rusty. For me, anti-American oralist is not a pejorative term (anti-oralist that is, not that I’m anti-American…); Homer is oral poetry, but not a transcript of tape record, so the findings of analytical scholarship can’t just be discarded. (ML West has written on the subject at least)
I just got hold of a copy of the book here, flicked through the chapters on the Indo-Europeans (always a warning sign…) and Early Greece…well…what can I say? shallow argumentation, poor grasp of the source material and secondary scholarship, constant use of logical fallacy. This is the problem when one wants to argue from an ideological stand point rather than an academic one. Its just as bad, perhaps worse, than those books it castigates whose wont was to so fiercely deny any homosexual presence in these ancient cultures.
The German Commentary (BK) is overall absolutely indispensable. They use West’s text, which is a god send, and provide some really good philological and cultural commentary throughout. There is a problem that it is too neoanalytical at times, that it seems to much concerned with the failure of oralist scholarship, that it is a bit too permitting of Mycenaean influence in certain areas and has a very…yes almost literary concept of the poem. But besides those points, it really is one hell of a tool.
I do largely agree with West’s work and often find the work based in what is now known as hardcore American oralism to be shocking and fanciful, as well as too uncritical…no not every line is a performative alternation! and the evolutionary model goes against the bulk of evidence at positing such a late “crystalisation” to my mind. Regardless his latest book, is a little odd to say the least and if one removes the concept of tectonic expansions etc it does suddenly become very…illuminating. I guess I’m pretty central overall, not too exciting I know…
Saying that, best overall commentary on a book of Homer has to be A Kelly’s OUP commentary on Iliad 8. The referential lexicon and apparatus are an amazing idea.
With the latest book, I guess you mean The Making of the Iliad. I read the “disquisition” part of it sometime ago already, but didn’t read the “commentary” part except here and there. It was some time ago already and I’m not completely sure what “tectonic expansions” means, so I’m not sure which part you found odd. For me, the idea was very convincing - that the Iliad was basically the work of one single writer, and all those little incongruities the Analysts have been making a fuss about are due to this writer making changes and expansions to his text afterwards. Because that’s just the kind of thing that happens when anyone makes changes to a text of his own later on; also, we should remember that no one was supposed to be reading the Iliad, it was probably just some kind rehearsal aid to be used between performances.
As far I’m concerned, this is the first convincing account I’ve come across on how the Iliad came to be written down. Sure, for some people, even the idea that somebody wrote the Iliad is heresy, as if it could have come about by itself. When I started studying Homer, I was much more of an Oralist then; but I never understood (and still don’t) how exactly we’re supposed to imagine that the text came about - I think the scenario we’re supposed to believe is that it was dictated in a couple of days or weeks from starting from Α and ending with Ω with the Poet making occasional slips and creating incongruities, mostly because he’s told the story so many times before in different ways that he’s forgetting which one he’s telling at present; I’m sorry, but I’m not convinced. The problems of the text just aren’t of the right kind to fit this scenario.
As for Nagy and crystalization, I believe it even less. But I haven’t really read Nagy himself, because I find his writing style tedious.
With West like with any analytic scenario (maybe you shouldn’t call him an Analyst, I don’t know), the problem is that the more detailed the analysis gets, the more speculative it gets. But I think West’s idea was in the main very convincing, the original author making long insertions into his text afterwards. Of course I’ve read the Iliad from beginning to end in Greek only twice (plus of course here and there now and then), so I’m not a real judge. Next time I read the Iliad (probably not too soon), I’m going to do it with West’s commentary; then I hope I’ll know better.
Well I once asked West if he thought of himself as a neo-analyst, he sort of shrugged. Its a shame he turned from writing a similar analytical and disquisition book on the Odyssey, but I know I will lustfully caress the commentary on the Epic Cycle when its out. In a recent conference on Stesikhoros, he gave an interesting paper we he showed once more how this idea of expansion would work using Odyssey VIII, it was very very interesting. I mean, as I say, I’ve my misgivings. I’m not really sure to what degree we’re able to identify discrepancies, problems etc in the texts outside of glaring grammatical errors in the textual history. I mean how do we call something incongruous or superficial? So I’m not sure to what degree I stomach us detecting seams and fissures.
I’m still largely a Westian though, if only because I think some oral scholarship has went waaay too far with some of the stuff they’re positing. You’re right, its as if people expect a text to just suddenly…pop up out of nowhere. A text implies a lot of things in an ancient culture…
Nagy’s work is certainly not negligible and there is a lot of good stuff there, I do often feel his work is unfairly neglected in Europe. In a way its the opposite of the Oxford school - massive emphasis on an impersonal tradition rather than a single authorative voice. For me, it has to be a mixture. obviously the tradition and peformance etc is important but traditional forms of performance tend to rely, occasionally, on supremely gifted individuals. I’m not happy with a supreme writing bard figure either. Colocovic has coined the term “post-traditional”, which is interesting but I’m not sure it works for Homer either.
The other leading idea is that put forth by Janko and, most recently, Skafte-Jensen, about an oral dictated text. That itself is fascinating and the latter’s latest book promises to be a treat though getting hold of it is nigh on impossible.
Actually this (finally free to access!) review is a cool overview: http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/article993731.ece
Wow, you have actually met the guy… I am the only person I have physically met that has read Homer in Greek.
I would guess that with the Odyssey, it’s even more complicated than with the Iliad. The question of the Pisistratean recension, Aristarchus’ statement that the Odyssey ended originally somewhere in Book 23, I wonder what general conclusion he would draw out of all this.
As for discrepancies, I’m thinking about classical ones like the mix up of duals and plurals in the Embassy to Achilles in Iliad Book 9; another less known one in the Odyssey has been discussed by West in an article, as well as others, Odyssey 7.103-130, where a description of the Gardens of Alcinous suddenly changes from past tense to present, which is linguistically totally anomalous (no historic present in Homer). This sort of thing just can’t be explained by a mistake in the transmission of the text (oops, I accidentally miscopied 30 lines of text and changed all past tenses to presents) and I think it would be just too easy to explain this by saying that oral poets don’t use language consistently. I think meddling with a written text is just so much more credible in these cases, which are in plenty even if leave out the less glaring ones.
I’m still largely a Westian though, if only because I think some oral scholarship has went waaay too far with some of the stuff they’re positing. You’re right, its as if people expect a text to just suddenly…pop up out of nowhere. A text implies a lot of things in an ancient culture…
Nagy’s work is certainly not negligible and there is a lot of good stuff there, I do often feel his work is unfairly neglected in Europe. In a way its the opposite of the Oxford school - massive emphasis on an impersonal tradition rather than a single authorative voice. For me, it has to be a mixture. obviously the tradition and peformance etc is important but traditional forms of performance tend to rely, occasionally, on supremely gifted individuals. I’m not happy with a supreme writing bard figure either. Colocovic has coined the term “post-traditional”, which is interesting but I’m not sure it works for Homer either.
The other leading idea is that put forth by Janko and, most recently, Skafte-Jensen, about an oral dictated text. That itself is fascinating and the latter’s latest book promises to be a treat though getting hold of it is nigh on impossible.
Actually this (finally free to access!) review is a cool overview: > http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/article993731.ece
Janko I’ve read, his Iliad commentary is superb, but I can’t agree with him in this. I should probably have a look at Skafte-Jensen; I’ve already read the review you linked to and it had left me a bit dubious, but probably she’ll have some good points to say too. And probably Nagy has, too, but his arguments are always so convoluted that I find myself bored before getting anywhere…
Another thing, I don’t remember reading this anywhere, but probably someone has said this before: If Homer and epic singers in general couldn’t read and write and Homer had to dictate his text, who and what was it for, since he didn’t have any use for it himself? People weren’t reading books just for kicks then like they are now. But if he could read, it could have been some kind of rehearsal aid.
Ha yes I have met him, rare instances since he was made emeritus before I even started my BA I think (or not long after I finished, can’t recall…). He’s amazing as a sheer didactic force.
Ah the Odyssey, yes, I mean one of the problems here is simply its relationship to the Ilias. One’s position on that affects the entire approach here…
I think with discrepancies, yes, there is a difference between those clear and obvious ones like the problems of the duals and, say, the more subjective ones thrown up by later scholia and early German criticism. Obviously the former are something we need to work with, the latter are a more tetchy case and we always risk running into the subjectivity barrier.
Yeah Janko is good in general. Actually, there’s a series of papers in the journal S. Osoloensis where Skafte-Jensen debates with others (including West, Janko, Nagy) about the book divisions in the Iliad which are well worth a read on all this stuff if you can access it.
“Another thing, I don’t remember reading this anywhere, but probably someone has said this before: If Homer and epic singers in general couldn’t read and write and Homer had to dictate his text, who and what was it for, since he didn’t have any use for it himself? People weren’t reading books just for kicks then like they are now. But if he could read, it could have been some kind of rehearsal aid.”
Well I don’t know, it depends on what the earliest texts looked like and how they were being used. I would think in general the sheer size of the poem points to a special circumstance, perhaps itself the dictation. Gods know, whenever anthropologists get songs dictated they tend to be massively expanded. I think in a sense simply having the text would bring some prestige. I don’t feel the need to exclude a bard who can write in general though.
I don’t really know where I land on these questions to be honest, I mean I’ve been writing a paper on something related for about 18 months now, and I’m still sort of…having difficulty nailing myself down enough to concretely answer my problems.
I’m continuing with this, because the Homeric question is one of the driving forces of my life… 
How is tradition or performance important in order to understand how the text came about? A performance is a performance and it won’t leave any trace in the text. Parry of course showed that whoever created the Iliad & the Odyssey was native in the Kunstsprache, as well as how economical the formulaic system was etc; so the texts of Homer are written in a language that could essentially be a performance - but it’s NOT. Its not a performance and I’d like to be explained just how performances should affect a written text. (Rhapsodic interpolations are interpolations and are so a different matter)
Traditions don’t write poems, people do. Somebody wrote those epics. Maybe several people, but somebody did it. He/they were part of a tradition, but he/they wrote the epics and not the tradition. Or dictated, of course.
Many scholars seem to assume that the Iliad was first created and only afterwards written down, but what on earth does that mean? Hasn’t it been showed that in an oral tradition, every performance is different - how could it still be the same Iliad? Did Homer make a 15000 verse mental draft he then performed at the Panathenaic festival or wherever and afterwards wrote or dictated the same story? It couldn’t possibly have beem written down at the performance itself, I mean in those times writing equipment was just too clumsy to write fast enough.
Anyway, oral dictation theory just doesn’t explain the kind of textual problems I mentioned earlier.
Gods know, whenever anthropologists get songs dictated they tend to be massively expanded
Yes, but I think they say those expanded songs are quite awful in quality, not at all like our carefully thought out Iliad.
For Nagy and crystalisation, we both agree I think it runs against the evidence - the preserved variants are just not varied enough.
Isn’t West’s idea just so much more elegant - an oral poet, himself a performer, decides to write down for some reason a longer, greater epic than the ones he usually performs, and takes many years to do so and makes insertions to his own story while creating it? I would gladly take one supreme writing bard figure (but let me first read that commentary of West’s really thoroughly…). At least for the Iliad, I don’t know about the Odyssey, it seems more likely to reworked by different hands.
Well, I think it would be much worse if you thought you had a definite answer to the Homeric question!
A tradition of performance is an important element for several reasons. On a bland methodological level its an important variable. More seriously, it dictates so many things; the style, format, length, even the genre of the “text”. The role, and expectations, of both audience and patron and so on. It really is important. we have to try and establish something about the context from which these poems sprung. I agree that traditions don’t write poems; but they dictate the type of poems being written, how and when they circulate. The problem is the epic tradition is the one we know the least about, frustratingly, we’ll always know more about Stesikhoros or Pindar than a Homer or even a Peisandros.
“Many scholars seem to assume that the Iliad was first created and only afterwards written down, but what on earth does that mean? Hasn’t it been showed that in an oral tradition, every performance is different…ktl”
Well technically in a living tradition even an exact reproduction would be “different” due to slight differences in intonation etc since its a performance. But, no not necessarily, I think the rubric of “ever changing” as established by Parry and Lord has long been shoved aside. I mean we know of traditions where exact reproduction is imperative, like with the Vedas. Actually this kind of subservience to a notional poet/group of poems would be just the kind of situation where written copies might be handy. In that sense the earliest texts might have belonged to groups like the Homeridai or the Kreophylidai, as attempts to control the text. Again though, there is a lack of evidence and it all depends on how productive you think the tradition is around the 6th century or so.
I do think it possible that the creation of the poem and the writing occured at different times though.
“Anyway, oral dictation theory just doesn’t explain the kind of textual problems I mentioned earlier.”
Well, again, how do we imagine the earliest text(s) to be used? Say we have an archetype, we can roughly guess that long/short vowels a, e, o weren’t differentiated, no breathings, boustrophedon etc were attributes. Say it was taken down as via dictation, as other copies are made and circulated, other versions are sung, then of course the kind of problems like you highlight would be introduced. Perhaps enough to spur editorial activity like that of Zenodotos et al. Even if the poet wrote it out himself, he didn’t make all subsequent copies and mistakes are bound to occur.
“Yes, but I think they say those expanded songs are quite awful in quality, not at all like our carefully thought out Iliad.”
No, this is subjective. I mean we possess a certain aesthetic, itself heavily influenced by the Odyssey. Highly wrought literature can exist along different lines, look at the Mahabharata. Actually quite a lot of the dictated texts from India and Crete are pretty damn good. I basically reject the “argument from quality” as inherently flawed and defer to the oralists on this one.
“Isn’t West’s idea just so much more elegant …ktl”
I think once we free ourselves from the earlier baggage of the oralist position, that a poet can have nothing to do with writing, that all poems are inherently alluvial, that they must represent single time events then we realise it doesn’t have to be either/or. We need to entertain the posibility of oral poets who can deliberate, change and alter. God knows there is enough ethnographic evidence. My favourite being the Irish filid spending time in dark rooms to contemplate their songs. I just don’t necessarily think this figure is also the writer. Possible, I just don’t see the need for it.
“I’m continuing with this, because the Homeric question is one of the driving forces of my life…”
Dw, I literally have the same obsession. It is not a shameful one. 
I know I’ll never have a definitive answer, on the other hand I just wish I could for once feel safe making a statement without a dozen citations and bars and charts backing me up. I know, I know, it goes with the territory. Sometimes, I really wish I had just ended up pursuing tragedy instead…but it doesn’t have the same lure does it? It doesn’t have the same…incomparable… fervour to it!
I don’t know much about the Vedas or Vedic scholarship. But aren’t those quite a bit shorter hymns that had a definite position in the cult, in religious rituals? (A side note: is it really, really sure that they were passed only orally for like a 1000 years? And how can we know for sure they were passed unchanged anyway, if we don’t have evidence of the early transmission?)
It’s hard to imagine a situation where an epic like the Homeric ones would be seen as so sacrosanct that they had to be exactly fixed in wording right from the beginning, before they were even written down, since they don’t seem to have be associated closely with religious or other rituals. I mean they are just stories. Of course, by the time they were part of the Panathenaic festival, they were fixed in wording, but then we had definitely a text as well.
If they were attempts to control the texts, I still don’t see how that explains the kind of problems like the dual/plural mixup in Il. 9 or the presents in Od. 7. And these are many.
Somehow I feel we have situation here where scholars are forcing every possible finding in the field of oral poetics into Homer, when in fact they should deploy Occam’s razor…
Also, isn’t there an increasing tendency to think that actually the Cyclic poems might be closer to “traditional” Homeric poetry than Homer himself, who would be an innovator? To me, the sheer length of the epics could be one the most important innovations - they can’t be performed within the space of one day, which I would think is definite limiting factor in truly oral tradition. Like you said, the text could have been just a prestige object beside being a rehearsal aid. Somebody (maybe West) has pointed out that the complete Homeric epics need not have even been performed in Homer’s lifetime, and compared them to a similar situation with some of Bach’s larger works.
I do think it possible that the creation of the poem and the writing occured at different times though.
I do think it quite unlikely… But it depends on how you define “creation”.
Well, again, how do we imagine the earliest text(s) to be used? Say we have an archetype, we can roughly guess that long/short vowels a, e, o weren’t differentiated, no breathings, boustrophedon etc were attributes. Say it was taken down as via dictation, as other copies are made and circulated, other versions are sung, then of course the kind of problems like you highlight would be introduced.
Yes, but how would they be introduced, except by meddling with a written text? In this case different written versions would somehow interfere with each other and cause the textual problems. Possible but I don’t see exactly how.
“Yes, but I think they say those expanded songs are quite awful in quality, not at all like our carefully thought out Iliad.”
No, this is subjective. I mean we possess a certain aesthetic, itself heavily influenced by the Odyssey. Highly wrought literature can exist along different lines, look at the Mahabharata. Actually quite a lot of the dictated texts from India and Crete are pretty damn good. I basically reject the “argument from quality” as inherently flawed and defer to the oralists on this one.
I didn’t say this very elegantly, I just meant the kind of situation where a Serbo-Croatian or other epic singer artificially prolongs his song because a scholar asks him to make the longest song possible. Do we have real, “natural” examples of exclusively oral songs that go on for 15000 verses? I don’t know much about the Mahabharata, but it’s not “exclusively” oral, it’s a text; I mean I suppose exactly the same kind “Homeric” questions apply to it as to Homer.
“I don’t know much about the Vedas or Vedic scholarship. But aren’t those quite a bit shorter hymns that had a definite position in the cult, in religious rituals? (A side note: is it really, really sure that they were passed only orally for like a 1000 years? And how can we know for sure they were passed unchanged anyway, if we don’t have evidence of the early transmission?)”
I’m not an expert either outside of the usual comp phil reasons but in short: Well they were certainly passed orally longer, linguistic data puts them somewhere between 1200 and 1500 bc, whilst we get quotations of them from around 300bc we don’t get manuscripts until around 1500ad and the level of fidelity between the manuscripts and translations and the ever living illiterate oral performance is ridiculous. The Vedic tradition is an important example though of sings which are memorised/kept in high fidelity rather than constantly recreated. There are others, but nothing like the sheer size of the Vedic corpus.
Obviously Homer is not directly analogous, but there was indeed more than one tradition which rendered unto him some quasi patriarchal authority. The were various colleges of bards and actually we do have evidence of attempts to control the text, e.g the Scholia to Pindar Nem 2 with the kurfuffle over Kinaithos’ meddling, the various traditions about “receiving Homer” and what not. This is before the editorial activity, obviously. Clearly several singers thought these poems were extra special, like a guild protecting its property. All before talk of recension and so on. Even if there was such an event in Athens, it requires there to be several disparate texts and/or performers.
"If they were attempts to control the texts, I still don’t see how that explains the kind of problems like the dual/plural mixup in Il. 9 or the presents in Od. 7. And these are many.
Somehow I feel we have situation here where scholars are forcing every possible finding in the field of oral poetics into Homer, when in fact they should deploy Occam’s razor…"
Again, I don’t think there are that many problems when you look at the poems as a whole. Its like people taking vast linguistic divergences as evidence for different bards of a lengthy period of time. I do think such things can occur in textual transmission. Look at Ovid’s Heroides. This sort of stuff happens when you have lots and lots of texts flying around, language change etc. There are problems, many problems, in assuming that these errors were assumed in an autograph. Obviously the poet could have re-read, or the recipient of the text, or anything. Its easier to just assume that regardless of origin, when the poem was rendered into text it was subject to the same problems as every other text.
“Also, isn’t there an increasing tendency to think that actually the Cyclic poems might be closer to “traditional” Homeric poetry than Homer himself, who would be an innovator? To me, the sheer length of the epics could be one the most important innovations - they can’t be performed within the space of one day, which I would think is definite limiting factor in truly oral tradition”
Well scholarship surrounding the kyklos is relatively in flux, I certainly think that they contain quite a lot of conservative features. The problem is how we account for the differences. I’m much more in line with Burgess’ work than Griffins or even Aristotle’s in this regard. Homer appears to be innovative, but we ought not to assume that innovation here = quality. But, not just the length, his vision over the past, his treatment of the Trojans etc is almost certainly markedly different.
Well as for length inhibiting performance, this goes back to what I said above about us needing to know more about the context. Taplin’s Homeric Surroundings show how this might have happened. I’m unsure. For me I foresee something like an exemplary poet being invited to sing at longer and longer festivals, working on his song until eventually it is taken down. In expanded form like most dictations. Perhaps at the behest of a sponsor, or his students or whoever. As I said, this text is subject to the same things as every other texts. The things you’re in consternation about are quite common in any text really, I gave the example of the Heroides as a thorny one. The Iliad is made more problematic in that there were evidentially still performances post textualisation.
“I didn’t say this very elegantly, I just meant the kind of situation where a Serbo-Croatian or other epic singer artificially prolongs his song because a scholar asks him to make the longest song possible. Do we have real, “natural” examples of exclusively oral songs that go on for 15000 verses? I don’t know much about the Mahabharata, but it’s not “exclusively” oral, it’s a text; I mean I suppose exactly the same kind “Homeric” questions apply to it as to Homer.”
No, you do get quite a few good ones that seem natural. I chose India and Crete since you do get lengthy songs. The Mahabharata has problems which make Homeric scholarship seem facile, glad I don’t have to work with it. Though, ironically, likewise with some of the Near Eastern stuff, Neo-Analysis works really well here…