From Homer to Vergil: the texts and contexts of Greek and Roman epic

‘Epic’: the word comes to us from Ancient Greek, where the word epos simply means ‘word’. Yet today our perception of ‘epic poetry’ is arguably deformed by popular notions of heroism and the like: in this set of lectures we will seek to get to the heart of Classical epic by studying closely some of its chief specimens, particularly Homer and Vergil, the premier poets of Ancient Greece and Rome.

Our journey will start far earlier than Homer’s own period of activity (ca 650 BC?): we will need to go back into legend that antedates the famous wrath of Achilles and journeys of Odysseus, for all these epics make constant reference to a bewilderingly varied mass of Ancient Greek myth. One of our best guides through this forest will be the oft-neglected Hesiod, also considered ‘epic’ by ancient standards, and we will seek to understand how this is so. We will then move from this early strand of Greek literature to a different time and space altogether: Hellenistic Alexandria, in Egypt, where Apollonius of Rhodes, author of the Argonautica, held the position of chief librarian. Yet he is a crucial link in the chain of transmission to Roman Vergil, whose extraordinary Aeneid is thought to owe as much to earlier Roman epic (sadly mostly—but not all—now lost) as to Greek.