Therefore, it is argued, the two poems represent written versions that were set down after centuries of experimentation, of spontaneous performance, and, most important, of the development of a specialized language of formula and stereotype in which generations of poets slowly worked up ever larger story lines, refining some stories and dropping others, until two long narratives came to dominate the performance expectations of the populace. As these narratives were repeated time after time they began to coalesce into fixed versions until finally, after a Greek system of writing had been invented, these versions were somehow written down or dictated and eventually became not only fixed texts, but the two epic poems for which the Greeks would claim no equal. And thus they have entered the Western literary canon, from time to time, to be sure, challenged by the champions of the
Aeneid, the late-first-century-
B.C. epic by the Roman poet Virgil, but again and again reasserting their primacy of place.
Although there are few hard facts on which to proceed, there are tantalizing bits and pieces with which to fabricate a theory.
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