Homeric nod

Homeric nod (sometimes heard as 'Even Homer nods') is a proverbial phrase for a continuity error. It has its origins in Homeric epic.

The phrase was coined by the Roman poet Horace in his "Ars poetica": [Lines 358-359.]

"... et idem"
"indignor quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus"

... and yet I also become annoyed whenever the great Homer nods off.

There are numerous continuity errors in Homer that resemble "nods", as for example:

*In "Iliad" [Book V Lines 576-579] Menelaos kills a minor character, Pylaimenes, in combat; but later [Book XIII Lines 643-659] he is still alive to witness the death of his son.

*In "Iliad" 9.165-93 three characters, Phoinix, Odysseus, and Aias set out on an embassy to Achilleus; however, at line 182 the poet uses a verb in the dual form to indicate that there are only two people going; at lines 185ff. verbs in the plural form are used, indicating more than two; but another dual verb appears at line 192 ("the two of them came forward").

In modern Homeric scholarship many of Homer's "nods" are explicable as the consequences of the poem being retold and improvised by generations of oral poets. So in the second case cited above, it is likely that two different versions are being conflated: one version with an embassy of three people, another with just two people.

Alexander Pope was inclined to give Homeric nods the benefit of the doubt:

Those oft are Stratagems which Errors seem,
Nor is it Homer Nods, but We that Dream. - "Essay on Criticism"

Modern Usage

In his popular online column, Best of The Web Today, James Taranto of The Wall Street Journal often uses the phrase "Homer Nods" as the title of a retraction or correction.

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