epic
epicThe purely metrical ancient definition of epic, or epos, epē (lit. ‘word’, ‘words’), as verse in successive hexameters includes such works as Hesiod's didactic poems and the philosophical poems of the Presocratics. In its narrower, and now usual, acceptance ‘epic’ refers to hexameter narrative poems on the deeds of gods, heroes, and men, a kind of poetry at the summit of the ancient hierarchy of genres. The cultural authority of epic throughout antiquity is inseparable from the name of Homer, generally held to be the earliest and greatest of Greek poets; the Iliad and the Odyssey establish norms for the presentation of the heroes and their relation with the gods, and for the omniscience of the inspired epic narrator. According to Herodotus (2. 53), Homer and Hesiod established the names, functions, and forms of the Greek gods; a typical specimen of the biographical and critical idolatry of Homer...
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