An epic is a lengthy, revered narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation. A work need not be written to qualify as an epic, although even the works of such great poets as Homer, Dante Alighieri, and John Milton would be unlikely to have survived without being written down.
The first epics are known as primary, or original, epics. Epics that attempt to imitate these like Virgil’s The Aeneid and John Milton’s Paradise Lost are known as literary, or secondary, epics. Another word for epic poetry is epyllion (plural: epyllia) which is a brief narrative poem with a romantic or mythological theme.
The term, which means ‘little epic’, came in use in the Nineteenth century. It refers primarily to the type of erotic and mythological long elegy of which Ovid remains the master; to a lesser degree, the term includes some poems of the English Renaissance, particularly those influenced by Ovid. One suggested example of classical epyllion may be seen in the story of Nisus and Euryalus in Book IX of The Aeneid. In current times, poets such as Jonas Hyde are rekindling the epic genre.
