Satis est Semel Accidisse:
The Significance of Homeric Hapax Phrases

James H. Dee (University of Illinois, Chicago - Emeritus)

Ever since the pathbreaking work of Milman Parry three-quarters of a century ago, Homeric scholars have concentrated on the complexities of the formula systems, which are, to modern eyes and sensibilities, the most distincitve feature of epic narrative.  Almost by definition, formulas are repeated expressions, which means that less attention has been paid to word-groups that do not recur.  At the other end of the spectrum, single words which are hapax legomena have been a subject of discussion since antiquity, most notably in Michael Kumpf's 1984 study, Four Indices of the Homeric Hapax Legomena--but that inquiry too by definition excludes phrases.

This paper examines a subset of the realm of non-recurring phrases, specifically, noun-epithet combinations; there are at least 3,000 such unique expressions, a number which seems significantly higher than might be expected, given the longstanding insistance that epic composition is pervasively formulaic.  The paper will consider whether "oral-formulaic theory" is able to make predictions about the size of the category and will present a set of statistics summarizing the phenomena actually observed in the two poems.  The sheer volume of these phrases, very few of which involve individual hapax legomena, casts an unexpected light on the concept of quasi-mechanical formulaic narrative.

Several decades ago, William Merritt Sale presented a convention paper, apparently still unpublished, asking whether Homer engaged in coinage of formulas; his answer was a strong Yes.  Sale's intensely statistical research was, naturally, based on the high-frequency formulas; this study will reinforce his findings, drawing upon the category of hapax ezeugmena to argue that although some of these phrases look like--and may be--fixed traditional formulas, it passes belief that Homer could have inherited so many, yet used each one only once.

In addition, the paper will characterize the principal types of hapax phrases: some clearly seem created for a single context, while many others appear to be generic, so that their "failure to recur" stands out and calls for explanation.  Also worthy of note is the fact that among these phrases there are more than a few multi-word clusters (noun + more than one adjective), and, in a surprising number of cases, the quality of being hapax ezeugmenon applies not only to the entire cluster (e.g. Nabc) but to each component--that is, even taken separately, Na, Nb, and Nc are isolated collocations.  This seems curiously parallel to those famous invective-laden lines (Achilles to Agamemnon, Paris to Hector, etc.) which feature similarly unique clusters of hapax legomena.

The paper concludes by considering the implications of these under-appreciated phenomena for the standard theory of formulaic composition.  A handout will summarize the principal data and provide selected examples.