Epos
（
ἔπος).
1. Greek
Many indications point to the fact that the oldest poetry of the Greeks was connected with
the worship of the gods, and that religious poetry of a mystical kind was composed by the
priests of the Thracians, a musical and poetical people, and diffused in old times through
Northern Greece. The worship of the Muses was thus derived from the Thracians, who in later
times had disappeared from Greece Proper; and accordingly the oldest bards whose names are
known to the Greeks— Orpheus, Musaeus, Eumolpus, Thamyris—are supposed to
have been Thracians also. The current ideas of the nature and action of the gods tended more
and more to take the form of poetical myths respecting their birth, actions, and sufferings.
Hence, these compositions, of which an idea may be derived from some of the so-called Homeric
Hymns, gradually assumed an epic character. In course of time the epic writers threw off
their connection with religion, and struck out on independent lines. Confining themselves no
longer to the myths about the gods, they celebrated the heroic deeds both of mythical
antiquity and of the immediate past. Thus, in the Homeric descriptions of the epic age, while
the bards Phemius and Demodocus appear as favourites of the gods, to whom they are indebted
for the gift of song, they are not attached to any particular worship. The subjects of their
song are not only stories about the gods, such as the loves of Ares and Aphrodité,
but the events of recent times, the conquest of Troy by means of the wooden horse, and the
tragic return of the Achaeans from Troy. Singers like these, appearing at public festivals,
and at the tables of princes, to entertain the guests with their lays, must have existed
early in Greece Proper. It was, however, the Ionian Greeks of Asia Minor who first fully
developed the capacities of epic poetry. By long practice, extending probably through
centuries, a gradual progress was probably effected from short lays to long epic narratives;
and at the same time a tradition delivered from master to scholar handed on and perfected the
outer form of style and metre. Thus, about B.C. 900, epic poetry was brought to its highest
perfection by the genius of Homer, the reputed author of the
Iliad and
Odyssey. After Homer it sank, never to rise again, from the height to which
he had raised it. See
Homerus.
It is true that in the following centuries a series of epics, more or less comprehensive,
were composed by poets of the Ionic school in close imitation of the style and metre of
Homer. But not one of them succeeded in coming even within measurable distance of their great
master. The favourite topics of these writers were such fables as served either to introduce,
or to extend and continue, the
Iliad and
Odyssey. They were
called Cyclic Poets perhaps because the most important of their works were afterwards put
together with the
Iliad and
Odyssey in an epic cycle, or circle
of lays. The Cyprian poems (
τὰ Κύπρια), of Stasinus of
Salamis in Cyprus (B.C. 776), formed the introduction to the
Iliad. These
embraced the history of the period between the marriage of Peleus and the opening of the
Iliad. At about the same time Arctinus of Miletus composed his
Aethiopis in five books. This poem started from the conclusion of the
Iliad, and described the death of Achilles, and of the Ethiopian prince
Memnon, the contest for the arms of Achilles, and the suicide of Aias. The
Destruction
of Ilium, by the same author, was in two books. By way of supplement to the Homeric
Iliad, Lesches of Mitylené, either about B.C. 708 or 664, wrote a
Little Iliad, in four books. This embraced the contest for the arms of
Achilles, the appearance of Neoptolemus and Philoctetes, and the capture of the city. The
transition from the
Iliad to the
Odyssey was formed by the five
books of
Νόστοι (
The Return of the Heroes),
written by Agias of Troezen. The
Telegonia, by Eugammon of Cyrené
(about 570), continued the
Odyssey. This was in two books, embracing the
history of Odysseus from the burial of the suitors until his death at the hands of his son
Telegonus. These poems and those of the other cyclics were, after Homer, the sources from
which the later lyric and dramatic poets drew most of their information. But only fragments
of them remain. See
Cyclic Poets.
A new direction was given to epic poetry in Greece Proper by the didactic and genealogical
poems of Hesiod of Ascra, about a hundred years after Homer. Hesiod was the founder of a
school, the productions of which were often attributed to him as those of the Ionic school
were to Homer. One of these disciples of Hesiod was Eumelus of Corinth (about B.C. 750), of
the noble family of the Bacchiadae. But his poems, like those of the rest, are lost. See
Hesiodus.
The most notable representatives of mythical epic poetry in the following centuries are
Pisander of Camirus (about B.C. 640), and Panyasis of Halicarnassus (during the first half of
the fifth century). In the second half of the fifth century Choerilus of Samos wrote a
Perseïs on the Persian Wars, the first attempt in Greece at an
historical epic. His younger contemporary, Antimachus of Colophon, also struck out a new line
in his learned
Thebaïs, the precursor and model of the later epic of
Alexandria. The Alexandrians laid great stress on learning and artistic execution in detail,
but usually confined themselves to poems of less magnitude. The chief representatives of the
Alexandrian school are Callimachus (about B.C. 250), Rhianus, Euphorion, and Apollonius of
Rhodes. The last made a futile attempt to return to the simplicity of Homer. His
Argonautica is, with the exception of the Homeric poems, the only Greek epic
which has survived from the ante-Christian era. In the 200 years between the fourth and
sixth centuries A.D., the mythical epic is represented by Quintus Smyrnaeus, Nonnus,
Colluthus, Tryphiodorus, Musaeus, and the apocryphal Orpheus. Nonnus, Colluthus, and
Tryphiodorus were Egyptians. Nonnus and Musaeus, alone among these writers, have any claim to
distinction. The talent of Nonnus is genuine, but undisciplined; Musaeus knows how to throw a
charm into his treatment of a narrow subject. The whole series is closed by the
Iliaca of Joannes Tzetzes, a learned but tasteless scholar of the twelfth
century A.D. See
Tzetzes.
As Homer was the master of the mythical, so Hesiod was the master of the didactic epic.
After him this department of poetry was best represented by Xenophanes of Colophon,
Parmenides of Elea, and Empedocles of Agrigentium, in the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. In
the Alexandrian period, didactic poetry was much taken up, and employed upon the greatest
possible variety of subjects. But none of its representatives succeeded in writing more than
poetic prose, or in handling their intractable material with the mastery which Vergil shows
in his Georgics. The period produced the astronomical epic of Aratus of Sicyon (about B.C.
275), and two medical poems by Nicander of Colophon (about 150). Under the Roman Empire more
didactic poetry was produced by the Greek writers. Maximus and the so-called Manetho wrote on
astrology. Dionysius Periegetes on geography, Oppian on angling, and an imitator of Oppian on
hunting. The Alexandrian period also produced didactic poems in iambic senarii, as, e. g.,
several on geography bearing the names of Dicaearchus and Scymnus, which still survive.
2. Roman
The Romans possibly had songs of an epic character from the earliest times; but these were
soon forgotten. They had, however, a certain influence on the later and comparatively
artificial literature, for both Livius Andronicus in his translation of the
Odyssey, and Naevius in his
Punic War, wrote in the traditional
Italian metre, the
versus Saturnius. Naevius was, it is true, a national poet,
and so was his successor Ennius, but the latter employed the Greek hexameter metre, instead
of the rude Saturnian. To follow the example of Ennius, and celebrate the achievements of
their countrymen in the form of the Greek epic, was the ambition of several poets before the
fall of the Republic. A succession of poets, as Hostius, the tragedian Attius, and Furius
were the authors of poetical annals. Here it is proper also to mention cicero's epics on
Marius and on his own consulship, besides the poem of Terentius Varro of Atax (Atacinus) on
Caesar's war with the Sequani (
Bellum Sequanicum). Latin epics on Greek
mythical subjects seem to have been rare in the republican age. At least we know of only a
few translations, as that of the
Iliad by Mattius and Ninnius Crassus, and of
the
Cypria by Laevinus. Toward the end of the republican age it was a
favourite form of literary activity to write in free imitation of the learned Alexandrians.
Varro of Atax, for example, followed Apollonius of Rhodes in his
Argonautica;
others, like Helvius Cinna and the orator Licinius Calvus, preferred the shorter epics so
much in favour with the Alexandrians. Only one example in this style is completely preserved,
the quasi epithalamium (lxiv.) of Catullus. This is the only example we possess of the
narrative epic of the Republic.
But in the Augustan Age both kinds of epic, the mythic and the historical, are represented
by a number of poets. Varius Rufus, Rabirius, Cornelius Severus, and Pedo Albinovanus treated
contemporary history in the epic style; Domitius Marsus and Macer turned their attention to
the mythology. The
Aeneid of Vergil, the noblest monument of Roman epic
poetry, combines both characters. Of all the epic productions of this age, the only ones
which are preserved intact are the
Aeneid, a panegyric on Messala, which found
its way into the poems of Tibullus, and perhaps two poems, the
Culex and
Ciris, both often attributed to Vergil. See
Vergilius.
In the first century A.D. we have several examples of the historical epic: the
Pharsalia of Lucan, the
Punica of Silius Italicus, a
Bellum Civile in the satirical romance of Petronius, and an anonymous
panegyric on Calpurnius Piso, who was executed for conspiracy under Nero, A.D. 65. The heroic
style is represented by the
Argonautica of Valerius Flaccus, and the
Thebaïs and
Achilleïs of Statius, to which
we may add the metrical epitome of the
Iliad by the so-called Pindarus
Thebanus. The politico-historical poems of the succeeding centuries, by Publius Porfirius
Optatianus in the fourth century, Claudianus, Merobaudes, Sidonius Apollinaris in the fifth,
Priscian, Corippus, and Venantius Fortunatus in the sixth, are entirely panegyric in
character, and intended to do homage to the emperor or men of influence. Of all these poets,
Claudianus is the most important. He and Dracontius (towards the end of the fifth century)
are among the last who take their subjects from mythology.
Didactic poetry, which suited the serious character of the Romans, was early represented at
Rome. In this the Romans were in many ways superior to the Greeks. Appius Claudius Caecus and
the elder Cato were authors of gnomic poetry. Ennius, the tragedian Attius, and several of
his contemporaries wrote didactic pieces; the satires of Lucilius and Varro were also in part
didactic. It was, however, not till the end of the republican period that the influence of
Greek literature gave predominance to the Greek epic form. It was then adopted by Varro of
Atax, by M. Cicero, and above all by Lucretius, whose philosophical poem
De Rerum
Natura is the only didactic poem of this period that has been preserved intact, as
it is one of the most splendid monuments of Roman genius. In the Augustan Age many writers
were active in this field. Valgius Rufus and Aemilius Macer followed closely in the steps of
the Alexandrians. Grattius wrote a poem on hunting, a part of which still survives; Manilius,
an astronomical poem which survives entire. But the
Georgics of Vergil throw
all similar work, Greek or Latin, into the shade. Ovid employs the epic metre in his
Metamorphoses and
Halieutica, the elegiac in his
Fasti.
In the first century A.D. Germanicus translated Aratus. Columella wrote a poem on
gardening; an unknown author (often called Lucilius), the
Aetna. The third
century produced the medical poem of Sammonicus Serenus, and that of Nemesianus on hunting.
In the fourth we have Ausonius, much of whose work is didactic; Palladius on agriculture; an
adaptation of Aratus and of Dionysius Periegetes by Avienus, with a description of the
sea-coasts of the known world in iambics; in the fifth, besides some of Claudianus's pieces,
a description by Rutilius Namatianus in elegiacs of his return home. The book of Dionysius
Periegetes was adapted by Priscian in the sixth century. A collection of proverbs, bearing
the name of Cato , belongs to the fourth century. In most of these compositions the metrical
form is a mere set off; and in the school verses of the grammarians, as in those by
Terentianus Maurus on metres, and in those by an anonymous author on rhetorical figures, and
on weights and measures, there is no pretence of poetry at all.
See Lang,
Homer and the Epic (London, 1893); Haube,
De Carminibus Epicis Saeculi Augusti (Breslau, 1870); id.
Die Epen des silb. Zeitalters, etc.
(Fraustadt, 1886); and an
article by Winckelmann in Jahn's
Archiv, ii. 558. On the language of Roman
epic poetry, see Köne,
Sprachgebrauch d. röm. Epiker
(Münster, 1840).
