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Then there are the Homeric epithets, which recur and are believed to be a mnemonic device...so "wine-dark sea" is not only a descriptor, but an anchor to rememb

Then there are the Homeric epithets, which recur and are believed to be a mnemonic device...so "wine-dark sea" is not only a descriptor, but an anchor to remember the surrounding verse. I believe this was a 20th-century discovery, no less, and even "ancient" texts have dimensions that are easily overlooked

lsb 7y ago
It's a "formula". Kleos aphthiton I think was the first discovery, back in the 1790s, that's etymologically equivalent to sravas aksitam in the Sanskrit (hence, they are from an Indo-European language family), but you're dead on, it was only in the 1930s or so Milman and Parry documented oral composition of stories in Eastern Europe, with tape recorders of the time iirc The Cal Watkins book "How To Kill A Dragon" is superb for a discussion of formulae in Indo-European languages