Pursuing an evolutionary model for the making of Homeric poetry, I have argued that this “making” needs to be seen diachronically as well as synchronically. An unexplored aspect of this “making” is “textualizing.” To develop the idea of textualization, let us turn to the metaphorical world of the Greek word humnos. We need to consider not so much the etymology but the technical meaning of this word—as it was used in its technical sense by poets and rhetoricians. To translate the word by way of its modern derivative, “hymn,” obscures that sense. From the technical viewpoint of poets and rhetoricians, humnos is not just a “hymn”—that is, a song sung in praise of gods or heroes—but also a song that functions as a connector, a continuator. It converges with the idea of the prooimion, but that word too has a sense that goes beyond our ordinary translation as “proem” or “prelude.” Technically, both humnos and prooimion have to do with the general idea of an authoritative beginning that makes continuity possible. More specifically, as we see in the usage of Homeric poetry and of Plato as an avid listener of Homeric poetry, the humnos is not just a proem that introduces epic but also the sequencing principle that connects with epic, then extends into epic, and then finally becomes the same thing as epic itself.

This is not to say that the semantics of humnos did not ultimately get extricated from the idea of wholeness. It is precisely by way of extrication from wholeness that we arrive, ultimately, at the narrower meaning of “hymn” as we use the word nowadays.

Let us return, however, to the earlier standpoint as reflected by archaic Greek poetry. From this standpoint, the semantics of humnos are inextricably connected to the idea of wholeness, which in turn is connected to the idea of an absolutizing point of departure. In terms of these connections, we may say that a beginning—wherever that beginning may be—must have a continuum that follows it, producing a whole. The wholeness of the humnos, as performance, is marked by the beginning. It is authorized by the beginning. Its arkhē is both beginning and authorization. This idea, implicit in humnos, of wholeness as marked by an authoritative beginning is remarkably similar to Aristotle’s idea of sustasis ‘order’ in the plots of tragedies.

Aristotle in the Poetics examines the minimum requirement of plot in tragedy, that is, wholeness of action, in terms of four aspects of wholeness: (1) order = sustasis, (2) amplitude, (3) unity, and (4) probable and necessary connection. Let us focus on the first of these aspects, order = sustasis:

What I find striking about this definition is the emphasis on the fact of sequence, by way of the consequent:

To put it another way: {75|76}

Unlike the middle and the end, which both have to be a consequent, the beginning does not. The beginning may be a consequent, even though it has no consequent before it, but it does not have to be a consequent itself. To this extent, the beginning is potentially absolute.

The idea that a humnos is an absolute beginning that makes a whole out of everything that follows it is analogous, in terms of my thesis, to the idea of weaving itself. Hereafter I will use this more specific word weaving instead of the more general designation fabric-work.

Next, let us note some semantic convergences and divergences in English and other languages. Besides the English {78|79} words weft or woof, there is also web. In a marked sense, web is a synonym of weft and woof. In an unmarked sense, however, web designates simply ‘fabric’ as an entirety, consisting of both warp and weft. Similarly in Latin, tēla in a marked sense means ‘warp’; in an unmarked sense, however, tēla designates ‘loom’ as an entirety, consisting of both warp and weft. French trame, as we have seen, is the weft or web; metaphorically, however, it means the plot of a narrative.

The metaphor implicit in French trame brings us back to the metaphor of weaving as applied to the craft of the singer of songs. As the metaphor of trame implies, you cannot have a plot in a story, a horizontal weft, if you do not have a framework to begin with. That framework is the loom, which must start with a vertical warp, which in turn makes possible the horizontal weft. Further, from the standpoint of working at the loom, you cannot start the horizontal weft without first attaching the vertical warp from the cross-bar. The English word web, as we have seen, can mean the entire fabric by default, not just the horizontal weft, but that entirety still depends on the warp to start it off. Similarly, the Latin word tēla may mean the entire loom, not just the vertical warp, and the horizontal axis of the weft depends on the vertical axis of the warp to give it a frame. Let us apply here the Prague School construct of a horizontal axis of combination interacting with a vertical axis of selection. From the standpoint of working at the loom, you cannot move horizontally from one point to the next unless each given oncoming point has already been set for you vertically.

Here I return to my thesis, that the idea of weaving, just like the idea of humnos, is connected with the idea of beginnings. The essential point is the point of departure. Wherever you begin, you must have a continuum that follows. Or, in Aristotelian terms, you must have a consequent. Here we see the essence of Aristotle’s idea of order (Greek sustasis). The wholeness of the performance is authorized by the beginning. To repeat, arkhē is both beginning and authorization. {79|80}

In this Latin example, we see a direct parallel to the Greek notion of the prooimion:

The prooimion ‘proem’ is to the oimē ‘thread’ (and, probably, the oimos) as the humnos (as in a Homeric Hymn) is to the rest of the performance, as conveyed by the expression metabēsomai allon es humnon ‘I will switch to the rest of the humnos’. We may note the spondaic prooimion of Terpander (PMG 698):

There is a striking parallel in Latin: cum semel quid orsus, [si] traducor alio, neque tam facile interrupta contexo quam absoluo instituta ‘once I have started weaving [ordior] something, if I get distracted by something else, it is not as easy for me to take up where I left off [contexō] than to finish what I have started’ (Cicero Laws 1.3.9).

The absoluteness of the god’s authority is coextensive with the absoluteness of the humnos. {82|83}

This notional absoluteness of the humnos can be connected, I will now argue, with the ideological authority of Homeric poetry as it evolved in the context of the Feast of the Panathenaia in Athens. In terms of my argument, such an authority was expressed by way of equating this poetry, the Iliad and Odyssey, with the idea of humnos. It is as if the entire corpus of Homeric poetry were the notional equivalent of a single continuous—and gigantic—humnos performed for the goddess Athena on the occasion of her Feast, the Panathenaia.

A key to my argument is the cultural mentality that Plato is putting to work for his own philosophical purposes in one of his most admired masterpieces, the Timaeus. In the previous chapter, I have examined the indirect historical evidence provided by the Timaeus about the rhapsodic traditions of Homeric performance at the Panathenaia of Athens. Here I review only those aspects of my overall argumentation that bear on the metaphorical world of the humnos.

It is important for my argument that Plato evokes the prooimion of a grand narration in the same context where he equates the idea of a humnos for Athena at the Panathenaia with his own grand narration in the Timaeus, which is to be followed by his Critias. The narration by Critias of a would-be epic about Athens and Atlantis will have to wait until the Critias of Plato gets under way. In the Timaeus of Plato, which has to come before the Critias, the narration concerns the cosmogony that must precede the would-be epic.

Pursuing the idea that Homeric poetry, as it evolved, was equated notionally with a humnos for the Panathenaia, I need to emphasize that this poetry was not the only tradition that we see evolving within the larger context of the complex institution known as the Panathenaia. The festival of the Panathenaia itself was also all along evolving in its own right.

For essential background, we need to appreciate the ritual significance of the formal presentation of the Peplos to Athena on the occasion of her “birthday” at the climax of the Panathenaia. Further, we have to consider the overall setting of this ritual act of presentation—the acropolis in general and the Parthenon in particular.

The ritual drama of the Panathenaic Procession, as represented on the Parthenon Frieze, is central to the whole Panathenaiac Festival, central to Athena, central to Athens. It is an ultimate exercise in Athenian self-definition, an ultimate point of contact between myth and ritual. The dialectic of such a Classical Moment has us under its spell even to this day. And it is precisely the anxiety of contemplating such a spellbinding moment that calls for the remedy of objective observation, from diachronic as well as synchronic points of view.

The represented speaker here is Socrates, who has just remarked that the public resents him for being skeptical about various myths; he then cites as the first object of his skepticism the central myth of the Athenian State, the Battle of the Gods and Giants, as represented on the Peplos of Athena herself. The all-importance of this myth is marked here not only by the Peplos itself but also by the occasion that highlights the Peplos, that is, the Great [= quadrennial] Panathenaia.

As we contemplate the grand Athenian State narrative of luminous poikilmata woven into the Peplos of Athena at the Great Panathenaia, we can appreciate all the more the philosophical magnitude of Socrates’ challenge to the central myth of this narrative, the gigantomakhiai, in Plato’s Euthyphro and Republic. In effect, Plato’s Socrates is challenging the State’s definition of Athena and even of Athens itself.

This dramatized occasion of the dialogue that is the Parmenides coincides with a public reading by Zeno of a written text (grammata) that he is introducing for the first time in Athens and that the youthful Socrates has been eager to hear (127c). Socrates now hears the whole reading by Zeno. Not so Parmenides and Pythodoros, who are late in arriving and miss most of the reading (128c–d). A detail is ostentatiously added at this point: Pythodoros had already heard Zeno perform a public reading on a previous unspecified occasion (128d). When Zeno finishes reading, Socrates asks him to read again the first hypothesis of the first argument (logos), and this re-reading becomes the point of entry for the dialogue to begin, with a direct “quotation” of a question by Socrates (128d–e) in response to the re-reading.

By the time this Platonic dialogue gets underway, we have already been given the impression that its words may well {95|96} be just as textualized as the words of the written text from which Zeno had performed his public reading. Kephalos says that Pythodoros told the dialogue to Antiphon over and over again (126c) and that Antiphon then practiced “remembering” (apo-mnēmoneuei) the dialogue, word for word, over and over again (126c).

Such metaphors of rhapsodes performing at the Panathenaia in Plato’s Timaeus and Parmenides bring us back one last time to the occasion of the Peplos, which is coextensive with the occasion of performing the Iliad and the Odyssey in their ultimately authorized setting. That merged occasion is the Great [= quadrennial] Panathenaia. Every four years, the identity of Athens becomes definitively reaffirmed with the official re-weaving of Athena’s web and with the official re-performance of the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey. This quadrennial convergence of Peplos and authorized Homeric performance at the Great Panathenaia is I think the central historical fact to be considered in the search for answers to the ongoing questions about the textualization of Homer.

My own ongoing question remains this: was this re-performance of Homer equated, metaphorically, with the re-weaving of the Peplos? The answer, I have argued, can be found in the metaphor implicit in the usage of humnos at Odyssey viii 429, as applied to the totality of Homeric poetry.