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Formulas
yuioc, OTTO yuioc AEAUVTCCI, OTTEAUVTO 8E yuia, OTTO youvcrr' IAVCJE, UTreXuae 8E
yuia, OTTEAUCTE UEVOS Kai 9ai8i|aa yuia.
The spirit departs and the victim dies: AITTE 8' OCT-TECC Ov/uos, Am' OOTECC
duuos dyr)vcop, AITTT) AEOK' OCTTEOC OUUOS, AITTTI yuxil TE Kai aicbv.
A corpse must not be abandoned to the enemy; it must be seized by the
most convenient limb and pulled out of their reach: TTO86S IAKE, IAKE TTO86S
(IK TTO86S IAK' 11.398 is different), (O9') IAKE 7TO8OTIV, Aa(3cov TTO86S
(I^EpOaaCTKE/fiKE), TTO8COV Adj^E, TTo8cOV IACC^E, EXEV TTo86s. 14
Dexterous handling of language such as this relies on the singer's copia
verborum combined with the resources of the Kunstsprache in declension,
conjugation, and word-formation, together with a few transformational
rules. So the poet will say (AUTO etc.) youvccT(a) in place of yuia where
metre requires it (but by the rule of economy (§xiv) not youvoc, which
has no metrical utility beside yuia). youvcrra, 'knees', and yvia, 'limbs',
are not synonymous but may replace each other in the expression of this
thought. 'He trembled', however, is always expressed by yulcc: OTTO T'
yvia, Tpouos lAAa^E yuia. Now from the AUTO youvorra and AITTE
series a transformational rule may be extracted: uu-uu-u >
uu-uu-uu-u by the addition of an epithet in the fourth or fifth foot:
hence we may predict (and find, 8.452) Tpouos lAAa^E 9af8iua yuia.
The epithets add emotional colour to such expressions but as descriptions
they tell us nothing that we did not know already; they exemplify the
amplitude of the epic style (§xi).
(vi) Synonyms
The epic diction is fertile in synonyms. When Dionysius Thrax defined
synonymy as ovvcbvvuov EOTI TO EV 8ioc9opois ovoucccri TO OOTO 8rjAo0v, oTov
dop £i9os udxocipoc cjTrdOri 9doyccvov {Gram. Gr. p. 36.5(7)) he took his
examples, or most of them, from Homer. Perhaps he did not take TO CCVTO
8r|Ao0v too literally; Seleucus Homericus (F.H.G. in 500) wrote a book
paradoxically entitled FTEpi TT\S EV auvcovuuois 8iot90pas, and that represents
the attitude of the Homeric scholia too. As a heuristic principle it is doubtless
the better course to assume that even where words designate the same
object they differ in their overtones; their focus - and therefore the contexts
in which they are most appropriate - may differ, or they may say something
of the speaker's state of mind or of his intention, or they may separate levels
of style.
Agamemnon took a 'sword' (^upos, n.29) but it was with his 'hanger'
14 For other examples see 10.154-411. (XCCAKOS + AcxMiTEiv/XApiTrecyOai), 13.471-511. (xcopcplv
O!OTT6ACO), 19.61-211. (686^ IXov oOSas).
13