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Carl Eduard Schmidt counted 1804 different lines repeated exactly in the two Homeric poems, and by increasing this figure so as to include lines repeated with very slight modifications he counted 2118 different lines used a total of 5612 times.

Thus one line in five from The Iliad and The Odyssey is to be found somewhere else in the two poems.

The ratio is thoroughly remarkable, because the lines are so long -- half again as long as those of Beowulf.

Anglo-Saxon poetry appears to have no comparable amount of repetition ; ;

there is no reason to think that the scop used and re-used whole lines and even lengthy passages after the manner of his Homeric colleague.

In determining the extent to which any poem is formulaic it is idle, however, to inspect nothing besides lines repeated in their entirety, for a stock of line-fragments would be sufficient to permit the poet to extemporize with deftness if they provided for prosodic needs.

The closest scrutiny is owed to the Anglo-Saxon kennings and the Homeric epithets ; ;

if any words or phrases are formulaic, they will be.