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Formulas
So long as attention lingered on the noun-epithet expressions denoting
gods and heroes it did not matter much whether the formula was thought
of as a repetition in the text or as something in the composer's mind for
which repetition in the text was evidence. A 'formula by analogy', however,
unless it is adduced, implausibly, as an argument that the expression is an
under-represented formula, is implicitly an attempt to enter the poet's way
of thinking; he is thought to be creating new diction while retaining the
syntax and phrase-structure of the old. In the end these modifications,
which were designed to save Parry's model, so modified it as to turn it on
its head, making the structures, patterns, and other generative processes of
the poetical grammar primary and the formulas an incidental result of their
use. 4
Understanding, as Aristarchus taught, begins from the text. Consider
then a few verses from the beginning of Phoinix' discourse at 9.4346°., verses
that express thoughts which are neither alien to the heroic world of the Iliad
nor, like scenes of battle, central to it. In such a passage, it is suggested, the
poet composed easily in the traditional style but composed, rather than
recreating some well-rehearsed episode.
et uev 8f| I voorov ye | UETOC 9peai, | 901811/ 'AxiAAeu,
|3dAAeai, I ouSe TI Trdjjnrrav | duuveiv | vrjuai Oofjai
Ttup eOeAeis dt8r|Aov, | frrel xo^°S I euTreae OUUCO,
7TC0S OCV 6TT81T* | OCTTO aeTo, | 91A0V TEKOS, | OtOOl AlTroi|iT|V 437
oTos; I croi 8e u' e-rreiJiTre 1 yepcov iTTTrr|AdTa TTrjAeus 438
fjuom TCO I 6T6 a' EK OOiris I 'Ayaueuvovi TreuTre 439
vfjTTlOV, I OU TTCO 8l860' | 6|iOUOU
ou8 J dyopecov, | iva T' dv8pes
Phoinix, as it happens, uses no hapax legomena. However, he uses a number
of phrases that do not recur and several words or tight word-groups both of
which singly fill a colon: VOOTOV ye, pdAAeoa, duuveiv, aoi 8e \x iTreuTre, ou8'
dyopecov. There is a strong enjambment between 437 and 438, which
throws the pathetic word olos into relief, and the main caesura of 439 is
overridden; elsewhere the phrases into which the sentences fall closely follow
the colonic structure of the hexameter. However it arrives upon the
singer's lips, what arrives is a minimal unit of composition shaped according
to the structure of the verse.
el uev 8f) (8x //., 7 x Od.): a formula, but not specifically a verse-formula.
4 This is in essence the position taken by M. N. Nagler TAP A 98 (1967) 269-311, Spontaneity
1-19. The generative processes described by Nagler are, so to speak, the low-level rules of
the poetical grammar.