The memorial language imagined here in the wording of Hector corresponds to the formulaic language of poetry written down on stone in the form of epigrams. So, Homeric diction shows here an awarenes of the genre of epigrammatic poetry. But this genre needed the technology of writing only for the sake of recording a given epigrammatic poem, not for the sake of actually composing it. Therefore, the awareness of epigrammatic language in Homeric diction does not require us to think that the technology of writing was needed for either the composition or the performance of Homeric poetry.