Epic Conventions and the World of Homer

An epic is a long narrative poem about a hero whose actions matter to an entire people, composed in an elevated style. The Odyssey, attributed to the Greek poet Homer and composed around the eighth century BC, opens with conventions later epics would borrow for centuries: an invocation of the muse, a formal request for inspiration to tell the tale well, and a start in medias res, "in the middle of things." The poem does not begin with young Odysseus leaving for war; it begins nearly ten years after the war ended, with Odysseus still missing and his household in crisis, and his own adventures are told afterward, in flashback, at the court of the Phaeacians.

Two more conventions repay attention. An epithet is a short, repeated descriptive phrase permanently attached to a person or thing -- translators commonly render Homer's recurring phrases as "the wine-dark sea" or "Odysseus of many wiles." An epic simile is a comparison stretched across several lines and developed well past its original point, almost becoming its own small scene. Both trace back to how the poem was composed: performed aloud from memory by oral poets long before it was written down, using fixed phrases as building blocks to compose in real time. This is literature and history, studied the same way any civilization's founding stories are studied.