Casey Dué is Associate Professor and Director of Classical Studies at the University of Houston, as well Executive Editor for publications at Harvard’s Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, D.C. She holds a B.A. in Classics from Brown University, and an M.A. and Ph.D in Classical Philology from Harvard University. Her teaching and research interests include ancient Greek oral traditions, Homeric poetry, Greek tragedy, and textual criticism. Publications include:
Mary Ebbott is Associate Professor in the Classics Department at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. She earned her B.A. in Classical Languages at Bryn Mawr College and her Ph.D. in Classical Philology from Harvard University. She is co-editor of the Homer Multitext project (http://chs.harvard.edu/chs/homer_multitext), and her publications include
Authored for DHQ; migrated from original DHQauthor format
In this article we argue for the necessity of a digital edition to most accurately represent the textual tradition of the Homeric epics and to better understand the oral performance tradition that created the poems. We demonstrate how such a digital criticism would differ from the traditional textual criticism as practiced for editions in print and suggest how a digital criticism might open new avenues for the interpretation of the poetry. In defining our needs and goals for a digital edition, we discuss what our project has in common with other digital editions of literary works, but how the oral, traditional nature of the poetry creates special requirements as well. In addition to elaborating the editorial approach for the project, we reaffirm the principles of collaboration, international standards, and open access that we have learned from Ross Scaife, the founder of the Stoa Consortium.
Digital editions for Homeric epic
The so-called Homeric Question (in reality, several related questions) that has animated and in various ways divided modern scholarship on the
privileging of one particular work versionand the inscrutability of the apparatus as problems with a codex-based scholarly edition for any classical work
A digital medium provides an opportunity to construct a truly different type of
critical edition of the Homeric epics, one that better reflects the circumstances of
its composition and transmission. The Homer Multitext of the
Center for Hellenic Studies (CHS) in Washington, D.C., seeks to use the advantages of
digital editions to give a more accurate visual representation of the textual
tradition of Homeric epic than the current use of the printed page does. Most
significantly, our digital design is also intended to reveal more readily the oral
performance tradition in which the epics were composed, a tradition in which
variation from performance to performance was natural and expected. The Homeric epics
were composed again and again in performance: the digital medium, which can more
readily handle multiple texts, is therefore eminently suitable for a critical edition
of Homeric poetry — indeed, the fullest realization of a critical edition of Homer
may require a digital medium.illustrate the very limitations of print media
and demonstrate the need for a change in media for scholarly, critical editions
it is difficult to think of any genre that is so well
adapted to the computer as the scholarly edition
because of the need to
handle multiple texts Electronic editions, however, should
essentially be organized differently
the conceptual status of the texts
does not
differ in print and electronic editions
When dealing with ancient texts, we never have access to the author’s own manuscript;
moreover, our witnesses are copies many iterations and many centuries removed from
any such original.
The practice of textual criticism, in this case as applied
to classical Greek texts, has the goal of recovering the original composition of the
author
A helpful comparison can be made to the critical editions of Shakespeare’s plays
known as the Variorum
editions, which are sponsored by and overseen by the
Modern Language Association (http://www.mla.org/variorum_handbook). Although the textual tradition of
Shakespeare is far less old than that of Archaic and Classical Greek texts, editors
for each play in much the same way painstakingly compare and evaluate readings from
different sources, make choices as to which is most likely to be correct, and justify
their decisions. The Greek New Testament is another group of texts for which a
rigorous system of evaluation of the various readings and their witnesses has
developed (see, e.g., a more correct edition closer to
Cervantes’ original manuscript
to its original form
Because the
author’s original compositionto try to recover, for there is not only no one composition, but also no one author. This fundamental difference in the composition and history of this poetry, then, means that we must adjust our assumptions in our understanding of the variations in the written record. What does it mean when we see variations, which still fit the meter and language of the poetry, in the witnesses to the texts? Instead of
mistakesto be corrected or choices that must be weighed and evaluated, as an editor would do in the case of a text composed in writing, we assert that these variations are testaments to the system of language that underlies the composition-in-performance of the oral tradition. Textual criticism as practiced is predicated on selection and
correctionas it creates the fiction of a singular text. The digital criticism we are proposing for the Homer Multitext maintains the integrity of each witness to allow for continual and dynamic comparison, better reflecting the multiplicity of the textual record and of the oral tradition in which these epics were created.
We have learned from the comparative fieldwork of Milman Parry and Albert Lord, who
studied and recorded a living oral tradition during the 1930s and again in the 1950s
in what was then Yugoslavia, that the Homeric epics were composed in performance
during a long oral tradition that preceded any written version (
formulaic,using Parry’s terminology. This traditional language is most familiar to us in name-epithet combinations (e.g.,
swift-footed Achilles), but as scholarship over the past 75 years has shown, the whole epic is composed using this formulaic system. A singer trained in this system of language and in the traditional stories, as Parry and Lord themselves observed in action, can then rapidly compose while performing
One of the most important revelations of the fieldwork of Parry and Lord is that
every time the song is performed in an oral composition-in-performance tradition, it
is composed anew. The singers themselves do not strive to innovate, but they
nevertheless compose a new song each time variant,
as employed by textual critics when
evaluating witnesses to a text, is not appropriate for such a compositional
process.variant
by practitioners of genetic criticism. Although Van Hulle
himself will use variant
as an umbrella term for both compositional and transmissional variants,
these objections arise when textual critics pay attention to the process of
composition and the natural variation that may arise within that process the word
Once we begin to think about the variations as parts of the system rather than as
mistakes or corruptions, textual criticism of the Homeric texts can then address
fresh questions. Some of the variations we see in the written record, for example,
reveal the flexibility of this system. Where different written versions record
different words, but each phrase or line is metrically and contextually sound, we
must not necessarily consider one correct
or Homer
and the other a
mistake
or an interpolation.
Rather, each could represent a
different performance possibility, a choice that the singer could make, and would be
making rapidly without reference to a set text (in any sense of that word).
Let’s look at two brief examples of such multiforms and the questions they can raise
for interpretation as well as what they add to our understanding of this system.
These examples are intended to show why making the editorial choices that classical
textual criticism demands can be disruptive for our understanding of the oral,
traditional nature of this poetry, but they are not meant to be
In 3, Priam asks Helen about a man on the battlefield, whom Helen identifies as Odysseus. Antenor, a Trojan, then reminisces about an earlier meeting he had with Odysseus and Menelaos when they came to negotiate for Helen’s return (
Many of the manuscripts have ὕφαινον (ἀλλ’ ὅτε δὴ μύθους καὶ μήδεα πᾶσιν ὕφαινον/ἔφαινον But when they began to weave/bring to lightwords and schemes among all…
weave), but other witnesses report ἔφαινον (
bring to light), which some modern editors, such as Ludwich, have preferred. In the usual criticism of a text composed in writing, as described above, this kind of variation would present the editor with a choice. There is only one letter (and breathing mark) different between the two, so a text-based assumption would be that one is original and one is a mistake made by a scribe at some point in the transmission. Are Odysseus and Menelaos weaving their words and schemes, or are they revealing them? Using the methods we outlined above, a textual critic would examine the evidence of the manuscripts to determine in which manuscripts and how often each verb shows up and consider which one is most likely to be confused for the other by a copyist. She or he would then make a decision about which one s/he thinks the author originally wrote and which one was the mistake.
But when we think about these verbs as part of the traditional system of
composition-in-performance, we can see that either verb is possible, and that either
could be used in a performance. The two epics together provide our only
database,
as it were, for seeing how the system of language works. In our
craft, scheme.(And this verb is also used with μῆτις in other metrical positions, such as at
Another example of multiformity, but one which does not involve the possibility of a spelling or copying mistake, is present in the written record of
ἀλλ᾽ οὔ οἱ τότε γε χραῖσμ᾽ Ἄρτεμις ἰοχέαιρα,This is a reading known to Aristarchus (for more on whom, see below), and is recorded both in manuscripts and in papyrus fragments. Aristarchus’ predecessor as Librarian of Alexandria, Zenodotus, however, recorded a version of this line that readsbut Artemis who pours down arrows was no help to him then.
ἀλλ᾽ οὔ οἱ τότε γε χραῖσμεν θανάτοιο πέλωρα,The name-epithet combination of Ἄρτεμις ἰοχέαιρα shows up several more times in ourbut portents of death were no help to him then.
mistakeor
interpolationcould have crept into the written record (or just ignoring it altogether, as is more likely), we can instead consider how Zenodotus might have known about that multiform and inquire into his editorial practices for recording these lesser known (to us) versions. Such questions will ultimately be far more enlightening about the textual tradition of the poems as well as the system that makes composition in performance possible.
Yet it is difficult to indicate the parity of these multiforms in a standard critical edition on the printed page. As we noted in our introduction, one version must be chosen for the text on the upper portion of the page, and the other recorded variations must be placed in an apparatus below, often in smaller text, a placement that necessarily gives the impression that these variations are incorrect or at least less important. Within a digital medium, however, the Homer Multitext will be able to show where such variations occur, indicate clearly which witnesses record them, and allow users to see them in an arrangement that more intuitively distinguishes them as performance multiforms. Thus a digital criticism — one that can more readily present parallel texts — enables a more comprehensive understanding of these epics.
An approach to editing Homer that embraces the multiformity of both the performative and textual phases of the tradition — that is to say, a multitextual approach — can convey the complexity of the transmission of Homeric epic in a way that is simply impossible on the printed page. The variations that the textual critic of Homer encounters come from many different kinds of sources and many time periods. In his edition of the
commonor
standard,and texts that are
more refined
paratexts(for example, commentary or glosses or the scholia such as we have in our manuscripts of Homeric epic) remain connected to the main texts of the document in which they are found, and then the various main texts and paratexts are aligned so that they can be compared
From these sources, we find a number of different kinds of multiforms as well. We looked at two examples of different, but equally formulaic, words and phrases, and this is one kind of multiform. There are also smaller cases of word change, differences in word division or accent, and other matters of orthography. These differences are important for what they can reveal about the textual tradition and the editorial practices of earlier stages of the transmission. As we look at the earliest sources, papyri from the 3rd century BCE or quotations in Classical authors, such as Plato or Aeschines, we also see differences on the level of entire lines of the poetry. There are numerous verses in the papyri that are seemingly intrusive from the standpoint of the medieval transmission. These additional verses, the so-called plus verses, are not present in the majority of the medieval manuscripts of the
Yet even as we emphasize the historical significance of these multitudinous channels of transmission, we must be careful to acknowledge that there was never one
commonor koinē text at the time of Aristarchus, the great second century BCE scholar and editor who worked at the ancient library at Alexandria
standardor
commonedition. But was this indeed a single edition that is reconstructable? Aristarchus himself does not seem to have ever published his own text of Homer, with his own preferred readings. But even if he had, we would know from his commentaries about the many other texts that were available to him, and so once again we are forced to confront the multiformity of the Homeric tradition.
An emphasis on actual, complete witnesses to the transmission has thus driven many of
our considerations in building the Multitext.Fundamental to the model of electronic
scholarly edition as it has developed over the past decade is the inclusion of
full transcripts of all witnesses to the text
guarantees the completely equal treatment of each version of the text in the generating processes invoked by the user,such an approach
deliberately puts some central concepts and issues of conventional textual scholarship in crisis. Amongst them the base text, the edited text, the textual apparatus, and the variant. All of these concepts are dependent on the static perception of the scholarly edition
a relative concept of calibration,where there is no one text as the
base textor
invariantthat the others are compared, but where comparison of multiformity happens dynamically in an ever shifting selection of texts
We share with many digital editions the value of including images of the sources,
especially for wider access to fragile manuscripts (
as close to perfectas possible, digital editions can take what Thaller calls a
layeredapproach, publishing each stage of the process rather than waiting until it is
complete
completedproduct
Here it is once again instructive to return to the comparison we made earlier to the
transmission of the works of Shakespeare. Now that we have a better understanding of
both the performance medium in which the Homeric poems were created and the
complexities of their textual transmission, we can better appreciate how the two sets
of texts share features but also differ in important ways. The transmission of
Shakespeare’s plays is indeed quite complex. Authoritative editions of the plays were
not overseen by Shakespeare himself, and the earliest editions seem to have in some
instances at least been made on the basis of faulty transcripts of actual
performances, requiring substantial reconstruction of the text
What the plays of Shakespeare share with the Homeric tradition is that they were created in the context of performance. Individual instances of performance could result in new texts, depending on the occasion of performance, the intervention of actors and/or others involved in the production, or the desire of Shakespeare himself. A transcript created on the basis of a given performance would no doubt vary from transcripts created on other occasions. Such variations can teach us a great deal about the performance traditions of Shakespeare’s plays, the creative process, and Shakespeare’s working methods. Scholars of recent decades have rightly seen the value in the variation that we find in the textual transmission, and several web-based projects have been developed that make the quartos and folios available to an interested public. Of particular note is The Internet Shakespeare Editions, which plans to publish high-resolution photographs of these early editions together with a variety of supplementary information, electronic texts, and fully edited (modern) editions.
But the Shakespeare analogy can only be taken so far. Homeric poetry was not only
created
Perhaps unexpectedly, a much more modern text provides us with a different and interesting analogy. The Homer Multitext faces some of the same questions, problems, and demands as those laid out by Loranger for an editor of William Burroughs’s
can be considered accidental variants … [or] deliberate authorial revisions(#2). The narrative underwent an evolution (#1), and its assembly has its own mythology, as she terms it (#6–7). She begins and ends by looking for a
postmodernHomer, but what we know about oral composition-in-performance, in which each time the song is sung it is composed anew, requires a similar attention to the evolution as much as we can trace it and to the creation or application of tools for allowing the reader to explore and understand that evolution.
The texts on which modern printed editions of the
vulgatetext on which the others are based; there is some variation to be found among the different manuscript groups. If we proceed considerably back in time, to the fragmentary papyrus texts of the Ptolemaic era (third to second centuries BCE) we find substantial variation. Still earlier are the quotations of Homer in authors of the Classical era. These too are often substantially different from the medieval texts. Further back than that we cannot go, because of the lack of textual witnesses before the Classical period, but internal evidence indicates the poetic tradition extends as far back as the sixteenth century BCE, a date that, incidentally, long precedes most accepted dates for an historical Trojan War
The questions of how much variation is natural to the Homeric tradition and how much
variation can be recovered are complicated ones to answer, because they tie into all
of the uncertainty surrounding the figure of Homer (if he ever existed) and the
nature of Homeric authorship many of the figures are
meaningless
formulaic
and what parts are innovations on the
part of a master poet, imagined as Homer. Parry, for example, by way of demonstration
analyzed the first 15 verses of the
formulaic
For Shakespeare, multiformity — that is to say, the existence of multiple versions of
the same text — is an unintended accident of transmission. For most of the plays,
there is only one version that Shakespeare himself would have considered definitive,
even if he would acknowledge other drafts he produced and even though we today would
no doubt consider those drafts worth saving. For Homeric epic, the relative
uniformity of the medieval manuscripts is the accident of transmission, and
multiformity is the natural result of the process by which they were created.
Hundreds of the relatively uniform Medieval texts of Homer survive, whereas no
complete text of Homer survives on papyrus, and only certain passages are quoted in
Classical authors. In a 2001 publication, Dué examined in detail a Homeric quotation
from the orator Aeschines together with some Ptolemaic papyri Homeric
as those that survived in our Medieval transmission. This kind of variation, which is
primarily on the level of formula and fluctuation in the number of verses, would not
interest all readers of Homer, but it is what is to be expected in a relatively late
stage of the transmission, at a point when the poems were largely fixed. For even as
early as the Classical period — whence the earliest textual evidence survives — the
Homeric poems seem to have had a cohesiveness and unity that borders on the adjective
fixed
.
Before we attempt to go even further back in time, and consider a far more fluid
state of the text, it might be helpful here to consider the evolutionary model for
the development of the Homeric poems that has been proposed by Gregory Nagy. Nagy
traces the evolution of the poems in five stages, that go from most fluid
to most rigid
Panhellenic
period, still with no written texts,
from the middle of the eighth century to the middle of the sixth BCE. eccentric
papyri.
When we discuss the relative multiformity of the Classical and Ptolemaic eras, we are
speaking of periods (3) and (4) in Nagy’s model, the definitive
period and
standardizing
period, respectively. It is interesting to compare Nagy’s
suggestion of the possibility of transcripts
at this time to our discussion of
the multiformity that we find in the textual transmission of Shakespeare, where we
noted the influence of transcripts on the early printed editions of the plays. During
these centuries, there was an interaction between performances and texts, with many
performances (and state regulations of such performances) and many texts potentially
influencing one another. The relative multiformity we see in our sources from these
periods highlight the lasting dynamism of the performance tradition. The introduction
of written texts did not shut this tradition down, but participated in it.
Can a Multitext of Homer tell us anything about Nagy’s periods (1) and (2), the
most fluid
and formative
phases of our
The most fluid and formative phases of Homeric poetry are only accessible to us
through careful study of what survived through to later periods, and in this sense
our project is somewhat speculative. Our knowledge of other oral traditions, studied
by anthropologists working while these traditions were/are still flourishing, is
another important resource that can help us go further back, as we consider the kinds
of meaning that are conveyed and preserved by performance generated texts
It has frequently been asserted that the multiformity of the Homeric tradition is not
interesting, and that the few variations we do find are banal and inconsequential.
From our perspective, this assertion is simply untrue (see especially
The multiforms go to the heart of the Homeric Question. It would be intellectually
dishonest and scientifically invalid, moreover, to try to show how multiform
our text of Homer is with percentages, charts and graphs — though as we have pointed
out, such attempts have been made. It is more intellectually honest to assert that
every verse in Homeric poetry is at least potentially a multiform, and to explore the
implications of that potential whenever we analyze the text for its poetic
possibilities. The Homer Multitext seeks to give users many of the tools they need to
confront and explore the poetics of a multiform epic tradition.
We know, therefore, that the circumstances of the composition of the Homeric epics
demand a new kind of scholarly edition, a new kind of representation. We believe that
a digital criticism of the witnesses to the poetry provides a means to construct one.
Now the mission is to envision and create the Multitext so that it is true to these
standards. The framework and tools that will connect these texts and make them
dynamically useful are, as Peter Robinson has frankly stated (
Given the complexity of the Homeric transmission and these challenges, one might well ask how such an ambitious project can be achieved. The technological infrastructure of the project has been described on the project website and a series of technological papers have been commissioned to document how we will proceed (see http://katoptron.holycross.edu/cocoon/diginc/techpub). As we continue to build our collection of texts, there are still questions to be answered about how to construct the architecture to achieve the visual representation we envision and that will achieve the results we have described here. But no matter what the details end up being, we have committed to three foundational principles: collaboration, open access, and interoperability. We would like to conclude this essay by emphasizing them, for these principles are essential to this project but also vital to the future of the humanities as a whole.
First and foremost is the collaborative nature of the project. Dozens of scholars of every rank and from many different kinds of institutions currently play vital roles, contributing their own areas of expertise. Although the model for Homeric research is most often that of the individual genius working alone, we suggest that the kind of collaboration that is at the heart of the Multitext allows for a higher quality of research and analysis that can be accomplished in a more timely manner. As other digital edition projects amply demonstrate, these large, long-term undertakings simply cannot be accomplished without this fruitful, energizing collaboration. We have been fortunate to collaborate with technologically informed classical scholars: indeed, one special aspect of our project is that the information architects, Christopher Blackwell and Neel Smith, are themselves Classics scholars, and we expect that this project will demonstrate how our sustained collaboration can lead to more thoughtful, thorough, and creative scholarship on the Homeric epics.
Second, the Homer Multitext project is an open access project: that is, it is
on-line, free of charge to all, and free of most copyright or licensing restrictions.
A prime example of our ideals of open access is the digital photographs of the three
manuscripts. These images will be a significant element of the Multitext, but even
before we have fully integrated them into the project, we want to make them available
to any and all through the CHS website so that others may use them in their own
research. As other digital scholarly editions have noted (e.g., the Cervantes
Project, see
Now that we have collaborated with so many scholars who share this ideal of open
access (and learned from the many open access projects that now exist in the
Humanities), it sometimes seems almost unnecessary to assert it. Yet almost as soon
as we think so, we are once again faced with proprietary systems that cannot work
with others, or a publishing ethos that believes barriers to access are either
necessary, profitable, or at least acceptable. (The American Philological Association,
for example, recently added a Members Only
section of the website, which
includes on-line access to the APA-sponsored journal,
Members Onlyrequires an annual membership fee and perpetuates an elitist notion of the field.) We instead believe that it is in the best interest of all who work in the humanities to embrace open access. Doing so is a matter of survival for our field in particular. The popularity of movies like
Third, we are committed to using international standards based technology. We want
our project to talk to other digital initiatives in the Classics and in the
humanities at large. We want scholars and readers to be able
For these foundational principles we are indebted to the ideals of the Stoa Consortium and its founder Ross Scaife. The Multitext was born in a summer meeting at the Center for Hellenic Studies, to which Ross was invited as a potential collaborator. He quickly became our mentor and guide in the ever-evolving world of electronic publishing in the Humanities. It was clear from the beginning that Ross had a vision that extended far past the point where most classicists were working at that time. He saw how Classics could fit into a global, interdisciplinary, and collaborative environment, and he was willing to be a pioneer in enforcing standards that today keep the web open and democratic. We are grateful for his leadership and guidance as we strive to maintain these standards and attain the ideals of all a digital medium can do for research on Homeric epic. We will miss his expertise and his patient and generous giving of that expertise, but most of all, we miss him as a cherished colleague and friend.