Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by wavefunction 3172 days ago
At least in the Homeric epics epithets were used as mnemonic devices for oral story-tellers and their audience to keep track of who was who, like 'swift-footed Achilles':

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epithets_in_Homer

Apparently the Greeks got this from earlier Indo-European traditions.