transcendent excellence of Homer is manifest. He never attempts to make
the whole war of Troy the subject of his poem, though that war had a
beginning and an end. It would have been too vast a theme, and not easily
embraced in a single view. If, again, he had kept it within moderate
limits, it must have been over-complicated by the variety of the
incidents. As it is, he detaches a single portion, and admits as episodes
many events from the general story of the war--such as the Catalogue of
the ships and others--thus diversifying the poem. All other poets take a
single hero, a single period, or an action single indeed, but with a
multiplicity of parts. Thus did the author of the Cypria and of the
Little Iliad. For this reason the Iliad and the Odyssey each furnish the
subject of one tragedy, or, at most, of two; while the Cypria supplies
materials for many, and the Little Iliad for eight--the Award of the
Arms, the Philoctetes, the Neoptolemus, the Eurypylus, the Mendicant
Odysseus, the Laconian Women, the Fall of Ilium, the Departure of the
Fleet.



XXIV

Again, Epic poetry must have as many kinds as Tragedy: it must be simple,
or complex, or 'ethical,' or 'pathetic.' The parts also, with the
exception of song and spectacle, are the same; for it requires Reversals
of the Situation, Recognitions, and Scenes of Suffering. Moreover, the
thoughts and the diction must be artistic. In all these respects Homer is
our earliest and sufficient model. Indeed each of his poems has a twofold
character. The Iliad is at once simple and 'pathetic,' and the Odyssey
complex (for Recognition scenes run through it), and at the same time
'ethical.' Moreover, in diction and thought they are supreme.