Homeric Epithets
Who was Homer? Legend has it that he was a blind poet, responsible for the two great epics we know as The Iliad and
The Odyssey. Yet many now see these epic poems as collaborative works that spring out of a long oral tradition of
storytelling. Both poems refer to the Trojan War, an event commonly set around 1250 B.C.E., while the poems
themselves were written down sometime during the 7th to 8th century B.C.E.
One striking stylistic element in these epics is the Homeric Epithet, a repeated use of a noun plus an essential adjective to
identify characters within the poem.
“The names of Homer’s entities—people, animals, artifacts, places—usually have a tag attached, an identifying
adjective, the so-called epithet. It is quite often a metric filler…But at important junctures these epithets…make a
point, often poignantly.”
—Homeric Moments
Such epithets label Odysseus as a man “of many designs” (polymetis), “much-enduring” (polymechanos), and “of many
turns” (polytropos). Odysseus’s name itself suggests an important aspect of his character: someone who both gives and
receives pain.
EPITHET ASSIGNMENT
1) Create an epithet for yourself and for someone you know.
Although our translator, Stanley Lombardo, softens the use of alliteration in his epithets, emphasize this poetic technique in
yours. Use the example of “Phorcys, lord of the barren brine” as a model for something new like “Ivan, icy inventor of innuendo.”
2) Begin a list of Homeric Epithets used in the Odyssey.
Use this example to get you started: “Athena, the owl-eyed goddess” (1.87). Make sure to include parenthetical citations that
include “book” number and “line” number, as shown here.