Was Homer Open Source?

We forget sometimes that some of the greatest, ancient works of literature were "open source."

Bernard Knox, in a brilliant introduction of The Iliad in 1990 for Penguin Classics, tracks the history of Iliad manuscripts. Knox postulates that the Iliad breaking up into books may originate from each book being on a different papyrus roll.

While copies of the Iliad spread throughout the Greek world in the 4th and 5th centuries, the story gets murky before that. However, as far back as 700 B.C., there is still plenty of evidence for the story's circulation.

Homer is critically believed to be an individual poet because of stylistic analysis and historical references. Yet, what is unique and interesting is that Homer uses a variety of epiphets to serve as poetic device and ornamentation, yet also to help adapt the lines to the regular meter. As Knox points out, "It meant that this system had been developed by and for the use of oral poets who improvised."

By having a variety of terms and lines that were, in a sense, stock phrases, "such passages give the oral singer time to concentrate on what is coming next, and if he is a creative oral poet, to elaborate his own phrases mentally as he recites the formulas that he can sing without effort. [...] The oral text is flexible. The poem is new every time it is performed."

Some rock bands work this way. The reason the Beatles, the Doors, Van Halen, and others had such good debut albums was because of this "open source" process. While the individuals still came up with the art, that art was tested, adapted, tweaked, in front of paying, hard-to-impress audiences, before fame and money began to make these folks comfortable. The more you test, the better quality it becomes if you make a conscious effort to improve it.

Or as Bernard Knox says, "Over the course of generations of trial and error, formulas are introduced and rejected or retained for their usefulness in improvisation, without regard to linguistic consistency or historical accuracy."

There is a need for an individual genius to tie disparate pieces together, though. Knox rejects the idea that Homer simply read his poems aloud.

"...the extant specimens of alphabetic writing of the eighth and early seventh centuries B.C. make it hard to believe in a scribe of the period who could take dictation at or, for that matter, anywhere near performance speed [...] One critic, in fact, irreverently conjured up a picture of Homer dictating the first line (or rather the first half-line) of the Iliad: "Menin aeide thea... You got that?""

Instead, critics "envisage a highly creative oral poet, master of the repertoire of inherited material and technique, who used the new instrument of writing to build, probably over the course of a lifetime, an epic poem on a scale beyond the imagination of his predecessors."

Notice how we have folks like Homer in the open source community. Dave Winer is a good example of this kind of person - a genius who can synthesize everything going on around him and create innovative technologies that others take, spread and make better. If you have an RSS feed linked to Scripting News, you'll notice the daily outpouring from Winer is like a Homer of sorts at work all day, day after day.

This give and take, between the masses and the geniuses, is always occuring at any given time. And depending on the mood of a community, one is prized more than another. Microsoft vs. open source. Classical vs. jazz. Rock vs. R&B. Nothing new.

Comments

[Tololy]

Amazing! Absolutely amazing. I cannot say I enjoy Homer that much, but if indeed he was the one behind the narration of the Illiad and the Odyssey then he must've been something.
I appreciate the way you connected the ancient Greek world with today's modern technology, that is brilliant.