‘Lies Resembling Truth’

In so far as the song is understood as a truthful account of events that really happened, and in so far as a catalogue-like sequence seems to be the form in which Homer conceived of a truthful account, any arrangement of events differing from the point-bypoint sequence would be precluded in the ‘poetics of truth’. At the same time, it is not difficult to discern that the lilad and the Odyssey themselves can hardly be envisaged as forming the point-by-point narrative sequence presupposed by Homer’s own poetics. Both compositlonal unity and narrative diversity, the two signal characteristics of the Homeric epics, would make it impossible to account for them in such terms.

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