Epic
An epic (or epic poem) is a long narrative poem in an elevated style: it deals with a serious subject, typically with events of great significance in the life of a heroic or legendary figure or in the history of a nation. (This 'definition' of epic is close to that implicit in the brief statement by Aristotle (384-322 BCE) in his Poetics of the similarities and differences between epic poetry and tragic drama: 'Epic is similar to tragedy insofar as it is an imitation (mimesis) of serious events in metre; the difference is that it has one metre only and uses the narrative form. There is also a difference in length: tragedy endeavours as far as possible to fall within one day or not much outside that; epic has no limit as regards time' (Poetics 5, 1449b9-14).)
The earliest epics were recited or sung by poets working in an oral tradition, and the Homeric epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, the first epics in Western literature to have survived, had their origins in this tradition. The other best-known epics in Western literature are literary - or written - epics. The Roman poet Virgil (70-19 BCE) took the Iliad and the Odyssey as his models in writing the Aeneid, which tells how after the sack of Troy the Trojan hero Aeneas sailed from Troy to Carthage and from there by way of Sicily to the Italian mainland where he founded a settlement on the site of the future city of Rome. Virgil in turn influenced the authors of the other two great epics in Western literature: Dante Alighieri (1265-1321CE), whose Commedia is an allegorical account of his journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven; and John Milton (1608-16-74), whose Paradise Lost deals with the biblical Fall of Man, i.e., the temptation of Adam and Eve by Satan in the Garden of Eden and their fall from a state of innocence.
As Aristotle notes in the Poetics (1449b11), an epic poem is composed throughout in a single metre. The Iliad and the Odyssey were composed in dactylic hexameters, as were Virgil's Aeneid and all the epics of the classical ancient world. Dante composed the Commedia in terza rima, a metre which he invented and perfected expressly for this purpose. And Milton's Paradise Lost is written in blank verse, i.e., unrhymed iambic pentameters. It may be of interest that he called it "English heroic verse, without rime [sic]".
Other famous epics include: the Epic of Gilgamesh (20th-18th cent. BCE, from Ancient Mesopotamia, the oldest known epic); the Mahabharata (5th-1st cents. BCE, an epic Sanskrit poem from India); Beowulf (8th cent. CE, in Anglo-Saxon); the Song of Roland (11th cent. CE, in French); the Poetic Eddas (12th cent., a collection of Old Norse poems); and the Nibelungenlied (13th cent. CE, an epic in High German based on German history and legend).
The noun epic may also be used of any artistic work (e.g., a novel or film) which, like an epic poem, treats of heroic actions or momentous events on a grand scale - e.g., 'The film Cleopatra was a Hollywood epic.' Similarly, the adjective epic may be used to describe heroic enterprises or momentous events whether or not they are the subject of an epic poem - we may speak, e.g., of Amy Johnson's epic solo flight from London to Australia in 1930.
The word epic comes from the Greek word epikos (ἐπικός), an adjective meaning 'epic'. Epikos in turn comes from the noun epos (ἔπος), which means 'word' or 'song' and whose plural epea (ἔπεα) was regularly used to mean 'epic poetry'.
