> We don't have the same techniques and same facilities to memorize the Iliad verse for verse, epithet for epithet as the ancients did.

it's rhymes and metric, and I'm pretty sure in ancient time people got repetitions wrong too, which is why we have stories with variations everywhere in the world. What we miss is dedication, time and a facility with the language.

There's plenty of Italian people who have memorized Dante's Divine Comedy, for example.