To Sing the Deeds of Men: Epithet and Identity in Homeric Epic

Abstract

The most distinctive feature of Greek epic poetry, especially of the Iliad and Odyssey attributed to Homer, is its highly developed system of epithets that mark out heroic characters and allowed for improvised oral performance. The question of how the epithet system conveys the identities of particular heroes, and of what “identity” means in the context of oral poetry, has generated a great deal of discussion, but some problems have yet to be dealt with. In particular, the leading proposed theories of signification and characterization grapple insufficiently with the need for narrative character development. This dissertation attempts to offer a correction, and to demonstrate how oral-formulaic characterization through repeated tellings of traditional stories is not only compatible with narrative but enriches it.

This dissertation also attempts to demonstrate the Homeric tradition’s awareness and deliberate manipulation of the possibilities and limits of oral-formulaic characterization, as well as the afterlife of Homeric characterization and identity in one of the lyric poets, Pindar.

Although chapter 3 contains a brief discussion, by way of example, of some treatments of identity in modern social psychology, the primary method throughout is philological, both internal and comparative. Examples from other poetic traditions in the greater Indo-European language family are used where appropriate.