Epic Beginnings

I find it interesting that almost every epic beginns with the same kind of circumstances. Normally there is very strong emotions involved, a god hs been upset, there is war afoot, the poet lets the story be told by a Muse, and there is a life-changing journey that is about to take place by the protagonist. In the Aeneid, Juno is ticked off straight from the beginning, and she is angry at Aneas because he is a Trojan. There is the negative emotion. Like in the Illiad, Achilleus gets ticked off immediately because Agammemnon takes his wife from him. Juno is the angry god in the Aeneid, and in the Illiad Apollo is prayed to, and then he gets angry at the Achaians at the request of the temple priest who had his daughter stolen from him. Troy is at war in both the Aenied and the Illiad. The Greeks are attacking it in the Aeneid, and the Achaians attack it eventually in the Illiad. So fighting is a key element in both of those epics. Homer set the standard for all epics to be written, so it makes sense that all of the epics that follow his Illiad and Odyssey are similar to his works in some way. His epic was primary though, the original epis, whereas all the others that follow tend to be secondary epics. Once a standars is set, people tend to follow it.

I commented on Anna's blog.