The early Greeks insisted that there was a single individual named Homer, to whom they ascribed the Iliad, the Odyssey, and several minor works called the Homeric Hymns. However, around the third century B.C., the so-called Homeric Question was first propounded. Several of the grammarians of the time asserted that the Iliad and the Odyssey were actually composed by two different writers. At various times, later European critics supported this view. Another school of thought, especially popular in the nineteenth century, claims that Homer never lived, and that the two epics are the collective works of groups of anonymous bards to whom the name Homer was later applied. These scholars suggest that the two poems were constantly revised and added to whenever they were recited and did not reach their present form until the 6th century B.C. when, in Athens, they were written down for the first time.
Whatever one thinks of the existence of Homer, certain facts concerning the composition of the Iliad are firmly established. Originally, it was an oral composition meant to be sung or chanted for an audience. Research, particularly on living bards in the former Yugoslavia, has shown that epic length poems are composed and presented through a combination of stock phrases and scenes coupled with extemporaneous composition. The Iliad shows evidence of similar elements. Stock phrases and scenes exist in the epithets for character ("old Gerenian Nestor"), descriptions of natural settings such as dawn, battle preparation scenes, and the battle scenes themselves. Set speeches may also be used. Agamemnon's speech is echoed in a speech by Odysseus in the Odyssey. The catalogue of ships in Book II is also such a set piece, although it was probably added when the poem was written.
