How Homer Makes His Characters Individuals Anonymous College

The oral tradition of Archaic Greece involved reciters who recreated the individual characters and incidences each time the poems were orated. The Iliad as among literature conceived during ancient Greece were preserved through oral culture in that they were recalled in verse with formulaic language for mnemonic purposes. Thus, in the Iliad, to illustrate the individuality of his characters Homer differentiates each character with a virtue or with an accompanying flaw. To present this, Homer identifies their personal traits as archetypal social type figures such as through monikers or epithets. Subsequently, to reveal the true personality he places them in unique situations demanding responses consistent with the attributes, thus characteristic dynamism materializes.

Through ornamental epithets, Homer accompanies the names of his characters with specific monikers that are consistently repeated throughout the poem. The Homeric epithets are intended to retell the reader of key traits of the mortals even though generally used to balance the meter when the names interfere. Regardless the epithets fit perfectly at the moment of mention. In the Iliad, monikers express a character’s personal attribute such as “tactful Odysseus” or “...