In 1944, a Dutch scholar named W. A. A. Van Otterlo identified a narrative technique in Homer that he called "ring composition." This was the technique of introducing digressions into the narrative that formed their own narrative arcs which circled back to the main narrative. These narrative arcs could be embedded several layers deep. One of the most famous examples of this occurs in The Odyssey. Eric Auerbach wrote about it in the first chapter of Mimesis. This is the incident in which Odysseus returns home and his old nurse is washing his feet. She sees his scar, by which she is able to recognize him as Odysseus. To explain the genesis of the scar, Homer takes a long detour to describe the boar hunt in which Odysseus was injured. This detour takes up as many lines as the scene in which it is embedded. Furthermore, embedded within the scene of the boar hunt is an even earlier scene in which Odysseus is born and given his name. Homer than cycles back through these multiple rings to return us to the present moment, in which Odysseus' nurse is washing his feet. An interesting contemporary application of this narrative technique is in the role-playing game Microscope, in which players take turns to tell a story fractally, going back and forth in time, and zooming in and out at various levels of detail. Ring composition works because it mirrors the fractal nature of our consciousness.