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Formulas
of the verse, sentence boundary may have a serious effect on what follows.
The last two feet can accommodate only the shortest clauses or sentences if
necessary enjambment is not to ensue. Short sentences in that position,
however, are not infrequent: fj TI uaAa XP 60 * 5 ? ouc >£ \xs TTEICTEI, ?)PX£ 5'
'O6uacj6us, ei TTOT' ITJV ye. Strings of particles and pronouns effectively
postponing the beginning of the following sentence to the beginning of the
next verse are also common, e.g. the notorious ocuT&p ITTEITCC, but also (in
book 9) &AA' ITI KCCI vOv, ei 8E KEV CCOTE, O9pa as piaAAov, cos *al eyco TTJV, O08'
av IV aC/Tis, aAAa TTOAU irpiv, Trap 8* apa Kai TCO, &AA' ETI |jaAAov, OTTTTOTE
KEV uiv. In spite of the necessary enjambment that is entailed the singer finds
it easy to bring back an important word from the following sentence into
the last colon: aCrrap 'AxaioOs, av 8' 'Ayaueuvcov, OCVTI vu TTOAACOV, O08E TI
liflXOS. A longer sentence filling the whole second half is sometimes used to
complement the thought of what precedes: TOO yap Kpcnros ECTTI UEyiorov,
auv yap OECO siAfjAouOpiEv, au yap (3aaiAEUTOT6s laai, TO yap yspas ECTTI
yEpOVTCOV.
(v) Minimal statements
In principle the apparatus outlined in §§ii-iv would enable an cxoi86s to sing
what no &0180S had sung before, but it is obvious that he was not put under
such pressure continuously. What he sang was to a large extent thematically
determined, and because his thoughts were similar so was his language. In
such circumstances it was inevitable that much of his diction through its
convenience or through sheer repetition hardened into formulas. 'Formula',
it must here be stressed, is not an absolute term. In Homeric diction there
is a gradient of linguistic similarity among the expressions we read in the
text, and even when similarity has become identity there are degrees in the
coherence of the formular group. One begins therefore with what may be
called 'minimal statements', events or actions given expression by a single
verb with its subject, object, or other complement.
The realization even of a simple idea may cut across grammatical categories:
'share' + 'honour' appears as (6|ioir|s) EWiopE Tiu-qs, Tiuffc £|juopoi
eicxi, and f|ui