The Cerebral Cortex and the Songs of Homer: When Neuroscience Meets History and Literature

In this article we reconsider Homer's poetry in the light of modern achievements in neuroscience. This perspective offers some clues for examining specific patterns of brain functioning. Homer's epics, for instance, painted a synthetic picture of the human body, emphasizing some parts and neglecting others. This led to the formation of a body schema reminiscent of a homunculus, which we call the "Homeric homunculus." Both poems were largely the product of centuries of oral tradition, in which the prodigious memory of courtly rhapsodists was essential to the performance of the epics. The underlying cognitive functions required a close interplay of memory and language skills, supported by the musical and rhythmic cadence of Homeric verse.