Simpsons Reference Goes Here

Just some commentary on Homer, inspired by Ong's discussion... To my mind, the Iliad and Odyssey are obviously works composed in the oral tradition to be written down. Most scholars now date the epics to the sixth century BC, well after the creation of the Greek alphabet.

There are several reasons I believe that the poems were composed to be written down. The most important is their sheer length. The Iliad is over 15,000 lines long and the Odyssey over 12,000. (For comparison, Beowulf, a literary creation and considered a very long poem, is only about 3200 lines.) They are both far too long to have ever have been performed as unified works; it would have taken several nights to read either. We tend (influenced by the use of the term to describe movies) to think that "epic" means "long", but epic poetry was probably never meant to describe anything on this scale.

Second, there is the well-established narrative and psychological unity of the poems. Ong dismisses this rather shortly, but while the poems use oral language and themes it's the genius of the poet that puts these together brilliantly.

Third, there is no sign that these poems were ever actually transmitted orally; there's little variation between versions, which would be expected if they were. (See Ong on the lack of "exactness" in oral tradition.)

So anyway, here's what I think happened... In the 6th century BC, someone (perhaps the Athenian tyrant Peisistratos; Cicero says that the epics were written down on his orders) got the best poet he could find to compose a "great work" in the epic tradition, getting scribes to record it. This work was the Iliad. Some years later, the same poet or someone trained by him was brought in again, and that led to the Odyssey. Copies of the two works were made -- at major expense considering their length -- and eventually were accepted as the paramount works of epic poetry at a time when epic must have been on the decline.