The context of the Odyssean line which I suppose to be derived from this noble passage is as follows (xiv. 462-465):—
κέκλυθι νῦν Ἐύμαιε, καὶ ἄλλοι πάντες εταῖροι·
εὐξάμενός τι ἔπος ἐρέω· οἶνος γὰρ ἀνώγει
ἠλεός, ὅς τ' ἐφέηκε πολύφρονά περ μάλ' ἀεȋσαι
καὶ θ' ἁπαλόν γελάσαι, καί τ' ὀρχήσαθαι ἀνῆκεν,
Which is the most likely—that the magnificent Iliadic lines were developed from Od. xiv. 464, or that this line is an unconscious adaptation from Il. XVIII. 108? For that the two lines are father and son will hardly be disputed.
Which again commends itself best—that the writer of Il. XVIII. took the heating of Ulysses' bath water to heat water for Patroclus, or that the writer of the Odyssey omitted the line about Patroclus, and used the rest of the passage to heat water for Ulysses' bath?
As regards the two salutations to Thetis (Il. XVIII. 385-387, and 424-427), is it more likely that the writer of Il. XVIII. made two bites of the Odyssean cherry of v. 87-91, or that the writer of the Odyssey, wanting but a single salutation, combined the two Iliadic ones as in the passage above given?
Lastly, is the list of constellations which Vulcan put on to the shield of Achilles more likely to have been amplified from Od. v. 272-275, or these last-named lines to have been taken, with such modification as was necessary, from Il. XVIII. 486-489? Whatever may be the date of the Odyssey, I cannot doubt that Il. XVIII. must be dated earlier; and yet there is no Book of the Iliad about which our eminent Homeric scholars are more full of small complaints, or more unanimous in regarding as an interpolation. If there is one part of the Iliad rather than another in which Homer shows himself unapproachable, it is in his description of the shield of Achilles.
I will again assure the reader that all the Books of the Iliad seem drawn from with the same freedom as that shown in those which I have now dealt with in detail, and also that I can find no part of the Odyssey which borrows any less freely from the Iliad than the rest of the poem; here and there difference of subject leads the writer to go three or four pages without a single Iliadic cento, but this is rare. One or two, or even sometimes three or four, Iliadic passages in a page is nearer the average, but of these some will be what may be called common form.
Their frequency raises no suggestion of plagiarism any more than the Biblical quotations in Pilgrim's Progress would do if the references were cut out. They are so built into the context as to be structural, not ornamental; and to preclude the idea of their having been added by copyists or editors. They seem to be the spontaneous outcome of the fullness of the writer's knowledge of the Iliad. It is also evident that she is not making a resumé of other people's works; she is telling the story de novo from the point of view of herself, her home, her countrymen, and the whole island of Sicily. Other peoples and places may be tolerated, but they raise no enthusiasm in her mind.
Nevertheless, a certain similarity of style and feeling between the Odyssey and all the poems of the Epic cycle is certain to have existed, and indeed can be proved to have existed from the fragments of the lost poems that still remain. In all art, whether literary, pictorial, musical, or architectural, a certain character will be common to a certain age and country. Every age has its stock subjects for artistic treatment; the reason for this is that it is convenient for the reader, spectator, or listener, to be familiar with the main outlines of the story. Written literature is freer in this respect than painting or sculpture, for it can explain and prepare the reader better for what is coming. Literature which, though written, is intended mainly for recitation before an audience few of whom can read, exists only on condition of its appealing instantly to the understanding, and will, therefore, deal only with what the hearer is supposed already to know in outline. The writer may take any part of the stock national subjects that he or she likes, and within reasonable limits may treat it according to his or her fancy, but it must hitch on to the old familiar story, and hence will arise a certain similarity of style between all poems of the same class that belong to the same age, language, and people. This holds just as good for the medieval Italian painters as it does for the Epic cycle. They offer us a similarity in dissimilarity and a dissimilarity in similarity.
When we remember, however, that the style of the Odyssey must not only perforce gravitate towards that of all the other then existing epic poems, but also that the writer's mind is as strongly leavened with the mind of Homer, let alone the other Cyclic poets, as we have seen it to be, it is not surprising that the veneer of virility thus given to a woman's work should have concealed the less patent, but far more conclusive, evidence that the writer was not of the same sex as the man, or men, from whom she was borrowing.