II. HOMER AND THE EPIC
BY PROFESSOR CHARLES BURTON GULICK
EPIC poetry might be described as that in which fewest poets have achieved distinction. Homer, Virgil, Milton are the names which occur to the mind when we try to define the type, but beyond these three it is hard to find any who have success-fully treated a large theme with the dignity, grandeur, and beauty which the heroic poem demands.
This is because the standard was set at the beginning; and when we analyze the method and the purpose of these great poets, Homer emerges as the one supreme and incomparable master of them all. For, in “Paradise Lost,”〖Harvard Classics, iv, 87–358.〗 Milton was too often diverted from the true office of the poet by theological controversy; Virgil’s “Æneid”〖H.C., xiii.〗 is the highly studied product of a self-conscious age, and was deliberately written to exalt the greatness of imperial Rome.