ABSTRACT
European literature begins with Homer, and Homer is the epic. That is to say, all subsequent poetry which can be described as epic is so described in proportion as it resembles the Iliad and Odyssey. This chapter considers the structure of the Homeric poems and then their style. The best way of appreciating the art with which the Iliad has been constructed is to review the materials which the artist had before him. Then Homer might have chosen to incorporate all the relevant matter of Troy in a poem which should be in effect the life-history of a particular hero. So far as the Iliad has a hero, it is Achilles. The epithets in Homer are of two kinds, traditional and ornamental. With respect to the ornamental or decorative epithets, they too are apt to be recurrent in him, but for a different reason, because the poet is satisfied with them.
