PIES Graduate Seminar February 9, 2017 One or Many Homers? Using Quantitative Authorship Analysis to Study the Homeric Question Ryan Sandell (he really did most of the work) and Chiara Bozzone (I did the easy stuff and had opinions) 1. Introduction: Problem [1.1] One of the hallmarks of a great philologist is their intuition (divinatio): the capacity to intuitively pick up on small features of a text to discern discrepancies big or small. • While the philologist may (and should) retrospectively be able to articulate some of the features which informed their intuition, much of the process is unconscious. • This unconscious ability is a product of experience, which develops a sensitivity for patterns and frequencies. • Can we use computational models to replicate a philologist’s intuition, only in a much cruder but more precisely measurable way? [1.2] One of the most enduring problems in the field of Classics is the Homerica quaestio. Seneca said it best: Graecorum iste morbus fuit quaerere, quem numerum Ulixes remigum habuisset, prior scripta esset Ilias an Odyssea, praeterea an eiusdem esset auctoris, alia deinceps huius notae, quae siue contineas, nihil tacitam conscientiam iuuant, suie proferas, non doctior uidearis, sed molestior. (Seneca, De brevitate vitae, XIII.1-2) This was a disease of the Greeks — to research how many rowers Odysseus had, whether the Iliad or the Odyssey was written first, and moreover whether they were the work of the same author, and more issues of this kind — all matters which wouldn’t make you wiser if you kept them to yourself, and which, if you spoke about them, wouldn’t make you seem more learned, but only more annoying. • Tonight, we are going to annoy you with question (3) in Seneca’s list: how many authors were responsible for the Iliad and the Odyssey as we have them? [1.3] Pretty much all options have been explored, starting from antiquity, where already in Alexandria one could pit the lumpers against the splitters — χωρίζοντες. Their modern counterparts are “Analysts” vs. “Unitarians”. [1.4] Nowadays, and based on a series of qualitative arguments, most scholars believe the following: • The Iliad and the Odyssey were likely composed by at least two different authors (though some radical Unitarians remain). • The Iliad was composed prior to the Odyssey. • Oral tradition played some part in the composition of the poems (either simply as a necessary premise, as a means of transmission, or as an actual means of composition). • The poems were not immune from later interpolations: while in most cases these are likely small additions or subtractions of individual lines, most scholars agree that Iliad 10 (the Doloneia) is such a later addition. [1.5] Beyond this, disagreements are sharp, and the theories are many. A simplistic division can be set up between two different models of textualization of the poems: • Single-event hypothesis (West 2010, 2014): An individual author (for each poem) composed (and re- composed) the text over a lifetime and fixed it in writing. Few alterations afterwards. o Some of these theories tie composition to a special occasion, and see the poems as oral-dictated texts (so, even smaller time frame, and no opportunity for the poet to revise and re-compose).