How Homeric is Hysteron Proteron?

Abstract

It is now eighty years?we go back to a time which precedes the work of Milman Parry?since Samuel Bassett's article on hysteron proteron in Homer brought to readers' notice a remarkable device, an idiosyncracy of the poet's style.1) The term, generally speaking, refers to the poet's preference for spelling out within his song a twofold instruction, proposal, or question and in a subsequent passage reversing the original order of presentation. Bassett examines the occurrence of hysteron proteron in one particular context, which he identified in the spoken discourse of both the Iliad and the Odyssey. On the basis of his observations of response patterns in Homer, Bassett had concluded that when more than two questions are asked within the same speaking turn in the Homeric text, there are three possible arrangements of answers: the order of questions may be retained, or varied, or reversed.2) The first arrangement, according to Bassett, is the 'most natural'.3) He cites as an example the replies which Mentes-Athene makes to Telemachos' questioning at Od. 1.180-194. At 1.170-177, Telemachos has asked the following questions: (1) who are you? (170); (2) where is your city? (170); (3) in what ship did you come? (171); (4) how did you happen to be sailing near Ithaca? (171-172); (5) who are your crew? (172); (6) are you a guest-friend of my father? (175-177). Mentes-Athena replies in almost the exact order of the six questions asked: (1) Mentes (180-181); (2) I rule the Taphians (181); (3) my own (182); (4) I am