The Odyssean notes in this passage of a hundred lines ( Iliad, XI. 670-762) are the occurrence of "a purely Odyssean word" (677), an Attic form of an epic word, and a "forbidden trochaic caesura in the fourth foot"; an Odyssean word for carving meat, applied in a non-Odyssean sense (688), a verb for "insulting," not elsewhere found in the Iliad(though the noun is in the Iliad) (695), an Odyssean epithet of the sun, "four times in the Odyssey" (735). It is also possible that there is an allusion to a four-horse chariot (699).
These are the proofs of Odyssean lateness.
The real difficulty about Odyssean words and grammar in the Iliadis that, if they were in vigorous poetic existence down to the time of Pisistratus (as the Odysseanism of the Asiatic editor proves that they were), and if every rhapsodist could add to and alter the materials at the disposal of the Pisistratean editor at will, we are not told how the fashionable Odysseanisms were kept, on the whole, out of twenty Books of the Iliad.
This is a point on which we cannot insist too strongly, as an argument against the theory that, till the middle of the sixth century B.C., the Iliadscarcely survived save in the memory of strolling rhapsodists. If that were so, all the Books of the Iliadwould, in the course of recitation of old and composition of new passages, be equally contaminated with late Odyssean linguistic style. It could not be otherwise; all the Books would be equally modified in passing through the lips of modern reciters and composers. Therefore, if twenty out of twenty-four Books are pure, or pure in the main, from Odysseanisms, while four are deeply stained with them, the twenty must not only be earlier than the four, but must have been specially preserved, and kept uncontaminated, in some manner inconsistent with the theory that all alike scarcely existed save in the memory or invention of late strolling reciters.
How the twenty Books relatively pure "in grammatical forms, in syntax,
and in vocabulary," could be kept thus clean without the aid of written
texts, I am unable to imagine. If left merely to human memory and at
the mercy of reciters and new poets, they would have become stained with
"the defining article"—and, indeed, an employment of the article which
startles grammarians, appears even in the eleventh line of the First
Book of the Iliad? {Footnote (exact placing uncertain): Cf. Monro and
Leaf, on Iliad, I. 11-12.}
Left merely to human memory and the human voice, the twenty more
or less innocent Books would have abounded, like the Odyssey, in
{Greek: amphi} with the dative meaning "about," and with {Greek: ex} "in
consequence of," and "the extension of the use of {Greek: ei} clauses
as final and objective clauses," and similar marks of lateness, so
interesting to grammarians. {Footnote: Monro, Odyssey, ii. pp.
331-333.} But the twenty Books are almost, or quite, inoffensive in
these respects.
Now, even in ages of writing, it has been found difficult or impossible to keep linguistic novelties and novelties of metre out of old epics. We later refer ( Archaeology of the Epic) to the Chancun de Willame, of which an unknown benefactor printed two hundred copies in 1903. Mr. Raymond Weeks, in Romania, describes Willameas taking a place beside the Chanson de Rolandin the earliest rank of Chansons de Geste. If the text can be entirely restored, the poem will appear as "the most primitive" of French epics of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. But it has passed from copy to copy in the course of generations. The methods of versification change, and, after line 2647, "there are traces of change in the language. The word зo, followed by a vowel, hitherto frequent, never again reappears. The vowel i, of li, nominative masculine of the article" ( li Reis, "the king"), "never occurs in the text after line 2647. Up to that point it is elided or not at pleasure.... There is a progressive tendency towards hiatus. After line 1980 the system of assonance changes. Anand en have been kept distinct hitherto; this ceases to be the case." {Footnote: Romania, xxxiv. pp. 240-246.}
The poem is also notable, like the Iliad, for textual repetition of passages, but that is common to all early poetry, which many Homeric critics appear not to understand. In this example we see how apt novelties in grammar and metre are to steal into even written copies of epics, composed in and handed down through uncritical ages; and we are confirmed in the opinion that the relatively pure and orthodox grammar and metre of the twenty Books must have been preserved by written texts carefully 'executed. The other four Books, if equally old, were less fortunate. Their grammar and metre, we learn, belong to a later stratum of language.
These opinions of grammarians are not compatible with the hypothesis that allof the Iliad, even the "earliest" parts, are loaded with interpolations, forced in at different places and in any age from 1000 B.C. to 540 B.C.; for if that theory were true, the whole of the Iliadwould equally be infected with the later Odyssean grammar. According to Mr. Monro and Sir Richard Jebb, it is not.
But suppose, on the other hand, that the later Odyssean grammar abounds all through the whole Iliad, then that grammar is not more Odyssean than it is Iliadic. The alleged distinction of early Iliadic grammar, late Odyssean grammar, in that case vanishes. Mr. Leaf is more keen than Mr. Monro and Sir Richard Jebb in detecting late grammar in the Iliadbeyond the bounds of Books IX., X., XXIII., XXIV. But he does not carry these discoveries so far as to make the late grammar no less Iliadic than Odyssean. In Book VIII. of the Iliad, which he thinks was only made for the purpose of introducing Book IX., {Footnote: Iliad, vol. i. p. 332. 1900.} we ought to find the late Odyssean grammar just as much as we do in Book IX., for it is of the very same date, and probably by one or more of the same authors as Book IX. But we do not find the Odyssean grammar in Book VIII.
Mr. Leaf says, "The peculiar character" of Book VIII. "is easily understood, when we recognise the fact that Book VIII. is intended to serve only as a means for the introduction of Book IX...." which is "late" and "Odyssean." Then Book VIII., intended to introduce Book IX., must be at least as late as Book IX. and might be expected to be at least as Odyssean, indeed one would think it could not be otherwise. Yet it is not so.
Mr. Leaf's theory has thus to face the difficulty that while the whole Iliad, by his view, for more than four centuries, was stuffed with late interpolations, in the course of oral recital through all Greek lands, and was crammed with original "copy" by a sycophant of Pisistratus about 540 B.C., the late grammar concentrated itself in only some four Books. Till some reasonable answer is given to this question—how did twenty Books of the Iliad preserve so creditably the ancient grammar through centuries of change, and of recitation by rhapsodists who used the Odyssean grammar, which infected the four other Books, and the whole of the Odyssey?—it seems hardly worth while to discuss this linguistic test.