Growth and Influence of Classical Greek Poetry

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Ill Greek Epic Poetry (continued) In any just perspective of European poetry, the resemblance between the Iliad and the Odyssey must always, of course, be far more striking than the difference. Both present ideal human types, both blend divine and human action, both unite plain thought, plain style, nobleness, and rapidity, in a manner which broadly separates them from all other compositions. To those who regard the epics from a little distance, and not from those closer points of view which have been gained by modern criticism, it will not appear astonishing that this common Homeric character should even have been regarded as showing the work of one mind; for undoubtedly the stamp of mind seen in both epics is one which has no comparable record in any third poem that could be named. Nevertheless, the differences between the Iliad Differences an tne Odyssey, which every reader wLdeaenndlthe feels require to be expressly noted. If Odyssey. we omit to £Q SQ we snau not adequately appreciate the range of power which marked this early age of Greek poetry. The material of the Iliad is furnished chiefly by warfare or debate. These interests are not wholly absent from the Odyssey, but they holdTHE ODYSSEY 65 a subordinate place, and they have an inferior degree of animation. When Odysseus slays the suitors in the banquet-hall, we have, indeed, a full account of the fight, but not the tone of a fight in the Iliad; the suitors have no chance against Odysseus, who is here a personified Nemesisrather than a mere combatant. The Ithacan assembly in the second book of the Odyssey is perhaps most in the manner of the Iliad, but it is not highly effective in itself; since the appeal of Telemachus is evidently doomed to failure from the outset, and he has no remedy. The chief va...