The anonymous author of a Life of Homer (on the Lives of Homer, see the inventory of Words and Ideas), in Vita 1.517–537, argues that Homer, as the poet of the Iliad and Odyssey, was an Aioleús ‘Aeolian’, and, in making this argument, he cites among other facts the existence of the form pempṓbola (πεμπώβολα) in the expression here at I.01.463, ‘and the young men were getting ready for him [= the priest Chryses] the five-pronged-forks [pempṓbola] that they were holding in their hands’ (νέοι δὲ παρ’ αὐτὸν ἔχον πεμπώβολα χερσίν). The reasoning given by the author is this: the Aeolians, he says, are the only Greek-speaking people who roast the splánkhna ‘innards’ of a sacrificial animal by using forks that have five prongs instead of three. All other Greeks use three-prong forks. This argument, based on facts of culture, is combined here with an argument based on facts of language: the Aeolic word for ‘five’ is pémpe, as opposed to the Ionic word, which is pénte. So pempṓbola ‘five-prong forks’ must be an Aeolic and not an Ionic word. (On debates about the phonology and morphology of pempṓbola, see Nagy 2011b:173–174.) In highlighting the form pempṓbola ‘having five prongs’, the narrator of Vita 1 is making the point that ‘Homer’ as a speaker of Greek defaults to Aeolic usage when he speaks about customs that are most familiar to him, as in the case of the Aeolian custom of using five-prong forks instead of three-prong forks for roasting sacrificial meat at an animal sacrifice. In terms of such an argument, that is why ‘Homer’ uses the Aeolic dialectal form pémpe ‘five’ instead of the Ionic dialectal form pénte ‘five’. This argument, combining cultural and linguistic facts, can be seen as a metaphor for explaining a linguistic process, to be defined here as the “Aeolic default.” (See also under Aeolic default in the inventory of Words and Ideas.) In terms of such a definition, Homeric diction defaults to an Aeolic dialectal form, as here, in the absence of a corresponding Ionic dialectal form. (On Homeric diction, see the inventory of Words and Ideas.) In general, it is this linguistic process of the “Aeolic default” that generates the Aeolic component of Homeric diction. But this component, it is essential to keep in mind, is secondary to the Ionic component of Homeric diction, which is primary. To put it another way: the Ionic component of Homeric diction is dominant, while the Aeolic component is only recessive. Such a relationship of Ionic and Aeolic components is metaphorized in myths claiming that the birthplace of Homer was the city of Smyrna, which was originally Aeolian but then became Ionian. (For historical background on Smyrna, see under Aeolian Dodecapolis in the inventory of Words and Ideas.) In myths about Smyrna as Homer’s birthplace, the identity of Homer as a native of Aeolian Smyrna is superseded by the identity of Homer as a native of Ionian Smyrna. (See again under Aeolian Dodecapolis in the inventory of Words and Ideas.)
* In tags for Words and Ideas, I do not write out accents of transliterated Greek words. But I do write them out in the course of strictly linguistic discussions, as in the discussion here.