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Formulas
verse. 7 The units need not be formulas. //. 1.4, for example, contains no
formulas (= repeated phrases), yet falls easily into the characteristic cola of
the hexameter:
fjpcocov I auTous 8E | eAcopia | TEUXS KUVSCTCTIV 8
For a minority of verses in the Iliad the poet has used no resources
more arcane than these, for example Diomedes' opening words in reply to
Agamemnon in book 9 (verse 32):
'ATp£t8r|, cjoi TTpcoTa uaxTjo-oucu &9pa5eov*n
The verse practically composes itself. 'ATpeT8ri is put in the initial position
in 32 of its 35 occurrences in the Iliad, and uccxricTouai immediately after the
caesura in all of its 5 occurrences. That conforms to the normal practice
for words of their respective shapes. &9pa86OVTi is a unique form in the Iliad,
but forms shaped -uu-u normally fall at the verse-end. TrpcoTOt may be
thought a priori to be a free form, but no less than 29 of its 35 occurrences
are in the third foot. 9
Localization often applies to the word group rather than the single word.
Formulas indeed show an enhanced tendency towards localization resulting
from their use in patterns of sentence construction (see §iv). 10 The unexpected
locations of the words in the clumsy formula is £' daaiiivOous pdvTes
(10.576) in the first half of the verse are comprehensible only if the expression
is understood as a block - without the verb and preposition cco-auivOous
goes to the verse-end, where it belongs. Formulas are prominent in the
second half of the verse where the metrical pattern is stricter and draw
words out of the positions which in isolation they would naturally occupy.
Strings of particles gravitate towards the beginning of the verse; prepositions
and shorter adjectives must always be taken with their nouns: the
measure -uu-, if augmented, moves to the second half of the verse:
&Xvuuevos in first-second, &xvuuev6s 7rep in fifth-sixth, and KCCI &xvuuevos
-rrep in third-fifth foot.
Localization is thus a primary resource for the singer. It is not pure gain,
however, for it may happen occasionally that the singer's thought seeks
7 H. Frankel, 'Der kallimachische und der homerische Hexameter', GGN (Phil.-hist. Kl.)
1926, 197-229 (= Wege und Formen friihgriechischen Denkens (Munich i960, with revisions)
100-56). For a historical sketch of subsequent scholarship see Foley, Traditional Oral Epic
74-84, or M. W. Edwards, Oral Tradition 1 (1986) 174-80.
8 Cf. Edwards on 17.605 "ExTOpa 5' 'ISoueveus UST& AffiTov opurjOevTCc: 'A verse including
three proper names in different syntactical relationships to the same sentence must be rare;
but the metrical shapes of all three make the cola very easy to handle.'
9 E. G. O'Neill Jr, TCS 8 (1942) 105-78, provides the essential statistics of localization
(after correction from his Table 29 for natural quantity at the verse-end), updated by J. R. S.
Beekes, Glotta 50 (1972) 1-10.
10 Here as elsewhere the general statement may conceal idiosyncratic behaviour on the part
of some formulas, see Hainsworth, Flexibility 50, 54.
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