Classics 353
Heroes, Gods, Gore – Roman Epic
August 27, 2024

Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979)

Concept of "epic" [ἔπος/epos, "word" (vs. deed), "poem"; ἐπικός/epicos]

• traditional stories (myths, legends, folktales: gods, heroes, ordinary people); cross-pollinated & expansive bundle of interconnected stories/narratives (e.g. Trojan War)
  
  
• oral or written works: poetry or prose (elevated language), songs & singers, performers & performances; survival in re-tellings
  
  
• culturally significant, ambitious, idealizing & serious works: origins, values, ideology, relationships (social structure & supernatural), behavioral models/praise > transmit traditions across generations, expression of essential features of culture, ethno-national identity (elite & male? universal human concerns?)
  
  
  Gilgamesh (clay tablet, Library of Ashurbanipal)
  
  
• typical content: cosmic story on cosmic scale, supernatural characters & events, focus on hero(es), past setting, purpose (e.g. competition, quest, conflict; tragedy or victory at stake)
  
  
  Specific elements of content, composition & style in Greco-Roman epic:
  
  opening invocation (divine Muses) & poetic program
  in medias res ("in(to) the middle of things")
  omniscient narrator (lengthy, mostly 3rd-person narrative)
  poetic meter (dactylic hexameter)
  dramatic speeches
  similes ("the angry god moved like night down the mountain", Iliad 1.55)
  formulaic phrases (e.g. "swift-footed Achilles" or "the great runner Achilles" in Lombardo's trs., Iliad 1.66)
  type-scenes (e.g. sacrifice at Iliad after return of Chryseis, 1.486ff.)
  catalogues
  katabasis ("descent")
  ekphrasis ("description")
  
  West, Thetis Bringing Armor to Achilles (1804)
  
  Greece (Greek)
  

• Homer: Iliad, Odyssey (ca. 800-750 BCE): heroic epics (gods, heroes) in dactylic hexameter
• Hesiod: Theogony, Works & Days (ca. 750 BCE): didactic epics on the gods and farming, respectively, in dactylic hexameter
• Epic Cycle of Poems (7th-6th centuries BCE): (lost) collection of heroic epics about Troy, Thebes
• Hellenistic/Alexandrian epic (Apollonius, 3rd century BCE, Argonautica)
  
  Rome (Latin)

• Roman Epic (ca. 240 BCE) begins with Livius Andronicus' translation of Homer's Odyssey (native Saturnian meter):
  
  ἄνδρα μοι ἔννεπε, μοῦσα, πολύτροπον/andra moi ennepe, mousa, polytropon . . ., “Tell me, Muse, of the clever man” (Homer)
  virum mihi, Camena, insece versutum . . ., “Tell me, Camena, of the clever [lit., "turned, transformed" > "translated"] man” (Andronicus)
  
  
  Iapyx treats Aeneas' wound (fresco, Pompeii, 1st century CE)
  
  
• Our Roman Epics                                             
  
  Vergil, Aeneid (heroic)          
  publication: after Vergil’s death in 19 BCE                              
  subject matter: flight of Aeneas & Trojans to Italy

  Statius, Thebaid (heroic)                     
  publication: 91-92 CE                                 
  subject matter: civil war between sons of Oedipus over kingship of Thebes

  Statius, Achilleid (heroic)  
  publication: ca. 95 CE
  subject matter: personal story of Achilles (fragmentary)

  Lucan, Civil War (historical)
  publication: ca. 65 CE                                             
  subject matter: civil war between Caesar & Pompey near end of the Roman Republic (unfinished)

  Lucretius, On the Nature of Things (didactic/philosophical)
  publication: ca. 55 BCE          
  subject matter: the materialist philosophy of Epicurus

  Ovid, Metamorphoses (uniquely Ovidian)          
  publication: before Ovid’s exile in 8 CE                            
  subject matter: myths of change (beginning of the world to Ovid’s day)

Achilles fighting Hector & Aeneas (Attic amphora, ca. 550 BCE)

Homer, Iliad 1.1ff. (trs. S. Lombardo) [story of Achilles' wrath, μῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ/mēnin aeide thea . . .]

RAGE:
          Sing, Goddess, Achilles' rage,
Black and murderous, that cost the Greeks
Incalculable pain, pitched countless souls
Of heroes into Hades' dark,
And left their bodies to rot as feasts
For dogs and birds, as Zeus' will was done.
Begin with the clash between Agamemnon—
The Greek warlord—and godlike Achilles.

Which of the immortals set these two
At each others' throats?


Odysseus & Polyphemus (proto-Attic amphora, ca. 650 BCE)

Homer, Odyssey 1.1ff. (trs. S. Lombardo) [story of Odysseus' homecoming = nostos, ἄνδρα μοι ἔννεπε/andra moi ennepe . . .; postwar reconstruction of identity, community, culture]

SPEAK, MEMORY—
                                    Of the cunning hero,
The wanderer, blown off course time and again
After he plundered Troy’s sacred heights.

                                                                      Speak
Of all the cities he saw, the minds he grasped,
The suffering deep in his heart at sea
As he struggled to survive and bring his men home
But could not save them, hard as he tried—
The fools—destroyed by their own recklessness
When they ate the oxen of Hyperion the Sun,
And that god snuffed out their day of return.

                                                Of these things,
Speak, Immortal One,
And tell the tale once more in our time.

SYLLABUS