Homeric nod

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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 358-9:

... 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 5.576-9 Menelaos kills a minor character, Pylaimenes, in combat; but later, at 13.643-59, 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.