ABSTRACT
The Homeric Hymns are composed in a style sufficiently like that of the Iliad and the Odyssey to demonstrate that the formulary style can be used to create poems unquestionably inferior to them both. The style as such was more developed, and the Homeric poet dealt more in blocks of words, so that there is in Homer less play of individual words. Cor Huso, then, coming at the end of the true creative period, may well have had qualities comparable to those of Homer, though his work perhaps never equaled the “monumental” compositions of the Iliad and the Odyssey. The number of epic themes alluded to in the Iliad and the Odyssey themselves is an impressive indication of how careful and particular a selection the author or authors of these poems made from the thematic material available to them.
