The epos is the calm quiet representation of an action in progress.
The Homeric Epos was the literary forerunner of the history which Herodotus wrote of the Persian Wars; and the latter often was less interested in the closeness of his facts than in their aptness and rhetorical probability.
German song and German epos were already heard in forms which were not to be cast aside, but retained and developed; of course the influence of the French poetry was not yet.
A narrative of Herodotus combined with the Epos of Pentaur, of which so many copies have been handed down to us, forms the foundation of the story.
Before the battle, [The battle about to be described is taken entirely from the epos of Pentaur.
The battle itself I have described from the Epos of Pentaur, the national epic of Egypt.
Mr. Leafs words are: "When we regard theEpos in large masses, we see that we can roughly arrange the inconsistent elements towards one end or the other of a line of development both linguistic and historical.
More accurately, the tribe gradually, in how many centuries none can tell, moved in a south-easterly direction, driven by a pressure which was no doubt exerted by the Aeolic tribe represented in the Epos by Achilles.
But the ancient epos of Thebes knew no more of Athens than did the ancient epos of Troy.
The criticism of the subsequent centuries broke off from the mass of epos one portion after another: one after another must go, because it is inconsistent with the conception which has been framed of Homer.
And yet the 'Africa' of Petrarch probably found as many and as enthusiastic readers and hearers as any epos of modern times.
Therefore it is that the epos of suffering requires not merely time for its accomplishment, but also space.
The early epos of Greece is represented by the Iliad and the Odyssey, Hesiod and the Homeric hymns; also by some fragments of the "Cyclic" poets.
They stand between the Ionian epos and the lyric poetry of the Aeolians and Dorians.
The Ionian school of epos produced a number of poems founded on the legends of the Trojan war, and intended as introductions or continuations to the Iliad and the Odyssey.
From the marriage of a Brahman with a Vaicya wife spring, according to the law, the Ambashthas,[306] who in the Epos are spoken of as nations fighting in the ancient manner with clubs.
The princes held up in the Epos as patterns are praised for their knowledge of the holy Scriptures and the law.
The tribes of the Anus, and the Druhyus, whom the Rigveda presented to us as confederates of the Bharatas, are in the Epos united with them by their ancestors.
Thus does the Epos describe the forms of Vishnu and Civa.
In the Veda and the Eposwe found this to be the chief arm (p.
According to the story which Ctesias has preserved for us from the Medo-Persian Epos of the fall of Assyria (III.
This story, as we said, comes from the Medo-Persian Epos, and moreover the Epos did not authorise this connection of Ninus and Zoroaster.
The Medo-Persian epos told us that Ninus of Asshur, after subjugating Babylonia and Armenia, attacked the Medes.
The Medo-Persian Eposshows us the successors of Semiramis in the seclusion of the palace.
This fiction is maintained in other episodes of the Medo-Persian Epos which have come down to us.
In the Babylonian epos of Istar’s Descent to Hell, v.
Or can it be said that the substance of the epos of Kalevala is not proper mythology?
Hebrew epos agrees with the Chaldaean in placing it after the development of a somewhat advanced civilisation.
It was Ennius, who in this poem for the first time introduced into literature that changeling compound of epos and of history, which from that time up to the present day haunts it like a ghost, unable either to live or to die.
And the distinctive mark of the Homeric epos is that, framed as it was to entertain feudal chiefs and their courts, it turned completely away from the sacerdotal norm and purpose.
Whatever be the determining conditions, it is clear that the Homeric epos stands for a new growth of secular song, distinct from the earlier poetry, which by tradition was "either lyrical or oracular.
The splendour of the Mykenaean epoch was therefore still fresh in the memory of the Aeolians and Ionians when the Epos arose.
If the life thus pictured in the Epos thus shows many kindred features to that of Mykenae, the Doric life of the Peloponnesus stands in harsh contrast.
A race that has no national epos is one devoid of great memories, incapable of high culture and political development, and no such has taken a place among the leading races of the world.
