Epic compared with tragedy

Epic poetry must exhibit the same kinds as tragedy — simple, complex, ethical, and pathetic — and the same constituent parts except song and spectacle. It requires reversals of situation, recognitions, and scenes of suffering, and it requires good thought and diction. Homer is preeminent in all these respects. Epic differs from tragedy in scale and meter: it is longer than tragedy and uses the heroic hexameter throughout.

Epic has a special capacity for extending its dimensions, and this is because the reader or listener does not see the characters — the narrative mode permits the poet to describe several simultaneous lines of action. In tragedy, the stage restricts: only one line of action can proceed at a time. In epic, multiple actions can develop simultaneously, and the poem's length accommodates them. The result is that Homer's epics contain within them the material of many tragedies.

Homer again receives the most sustained praise of the treatise: he is admirable in all respects and especially for understanding the epic poet's proper role. The poet should speak as little as possible in his own person; where possible, let the characters speak and act directly. Homer introduces himself briefly and immediately gives way to men and women in action. Other poets speak throughout in their own persons; they compete directly; they imitate little. The best epic approaches dramatic imitation.

The element of the wonderful — improbable events, divine intervention, the irrational — has wider scope in epic than in tragedy. In tragedy, absurdity is immediately visible because the action is seen on stage; in epic, the irrational is heard rather than seen and so the implausibility is less damaging. The probable impossibility is better than the improbable possibility; within the action of tragedy, the irrational should be excluded entirely or at most implied off-stage. Within epic, it can be presented more directly.