poetry to which the general title of Epic has usually been given. Three principal schools are recognized, the French, the Teutonic and the Icelandic. Teutonic epic poetry deals, as a rule, with legends founded on the history of Germany in the 4th, 5th and 6th centuries, and in particular with such heroes as Ermanaric, Attila and Theodoric. But there is also an important group in it which deals with English themes, and among these Beowulf, Waldere, The Lay of Maldon and Finnesburh are pre-eminent. To this group is allied the purely German poem of Hildebrand, attributed to c. 800. Among these Beowulf is the only one which exists in anything like complete form, and it is of all examples of Teutonic epic the most important. With all its trivialities and incongruities, which belong to a barbarous age, Beowulf is yet a solid and comprehensive example of native epic poetry. It is written, like all old Teutonic work of the kind, in alliterative unrhymed rhythm. In Iceland, a new heroic literature was invented in the middle ages, and to this we owe the Sagas, which are, in fact, a reduction to prose of the epics of the warlike history of the North. These Sagas took the place of a group of archaic Icelandic epics, the series of which seems to have closed with the noble poem of Atlamál, the principal surviving specimen of epic poetry as it was cultivated in the primitive literature of Iceland. The surviving epical fragments of Icelandic composition are found thrown together in the Codex Regius, under the title of The Elder Edda, a most precious MS. discovered in the 17th century. The Icelandic epics seem to have been shorter and more episodical in character than the lost Teutonic specimens; both kinds were written in alliterative verse. It is not probable that either possessed the organic unity and vitality of spirit which make the Sagas so delightful. The French medieval epics (see Chansons de Geste) are late in comparison with those of England, Germany and Iceland. They form a curious transitional link between primitive and modern poetry; the literature of civilized Europe may be said to begin with them. There is a great increase of simplicity, a great broadening of the scene of action. The Teutonic epics were obscure and intense, the French chansons de geste are lucid and easy. The existing masterpiece of this kind, the magnificent Roland, is doubtless the most interesting and pleasing of all the epics of medieval Europe. Professor Ker’s analysis of its merits may be taken as typical of all that is best in the vast body of epic which comes between the antique models, which were unknown to the medieval poets, and the artificial epics of a later time which were founded on vast ideal themes, in imitation of the ancients. “There is something lyrical in Roland, but the poem is not governed by lyrical principles; it requires the deliberation and the freedom of epic; it must have room to move in before it can come up to the height of its argument. The abruptness of its periods is not really an interruption of its even flight; it is an abruptness of detail, like a broken sea with a larger wave moving under it; it does not impair or disguise the grandeur of the movement as a whole.” Of the progress and decline of the chansons de geste (q.v.) from the ideals of Roland a fuller account is given elsewhere. To the Nibelungenlied (q.v.) also, detailed attention is given in a separate article.
What may be called the artificial or secondary epics of modern Europe, founded upon an imitation of the Iliad and the Aeneid, are more numerous than the ordinary reader supposes, although but few of them have preserved much vitality. In Italy the Chanson de Roland inspired romantic epics by Luigi Pulci (1432–1487), whose Morgante Maggiore appeared in 1481, and is a masterpiece of burlesque; by M. M. Boiardo (1434–1494), whose Orlando Innamorato was finished in 1486; by Francesco Bello (1440?–1495), whose Mambriano was published in 1497; by Lodovico Ariosto (q.v.), whose Orlando Furioso, by far the greatest of its class, was published in 1516, and by Luigi Dolce (1508–1568), as well as by a great number of less illustrious poets. G.G. Trissino (1478–1549) wrote a Deliverance of Italy from the Goths in 1547, and Bernardo Tasso (1493–1569) an Amadigi in 1559; Berni remodelled the epic of Boiardo in 1541, and Teofilo Folengo (1491–1544), ridiculed the whole school in an Orlandino of 1526. An extraordinary feat of mock-heroic epic was The Bucket (1622) of Alessandro Tassoni (1565–1638). The most splendid of all the epics of Italy, however, was, and remains, the Jerusalem Delivered of Torquato Tasso (q.v.), published originally in 1580, and afterwards rewritten as The Conquest of Jerusalem, 1593. The fantastic Adone (1623) of G. B. Marini (1569–1625) and the long poems of Chiabrera, close the list of Italian epics. Early Portuguese literature is rich in epic poetry. Luis Pereira Brandão wrote an Elegiada in 18 books, published in 1588; Jeronymo Corte-Real (d. 1588) a Shipwreck of Sepulveda and two other epics; V. M. Quevedo, in 1601, an Alphonso of Africa, in 12 books; Sá de Menezes (d. 1664) a Conquest of Malacca, 1634; but all these, and many more, are obscured by the glory of Camoens (q.v.), whose magnificent Lusiads had been printed in 1572, and forms the summit of Portuguese literature. In Spanish poetry, the Poem of the Cid takes the first place, as the great national epic of the middle ages; it is supposed to have been written between 1135 and 1175. It was followed by the Rodrigo, and the medieval school closes with the Alphonso XI. of Rodrigo Yañez, probably written at the close of the 12th century. The success of the Italian imitative epics of the 15th century led to some imitation of their form in Spain. Juan de la Cueva (1550?–1606) published a Conquest of Bética in 1603; Cristóbal de Virues (1550–1610) a Monserrate, in 1588; Luis Barahona de Soto continued Ariosto in a Tears of Angélica; Gutiérrez wrote an Austriada in 1584; but perhaps the finest modern epic in Spanish verse is the Araucana (1569–1590) of Alonso de Ercilla y Zúñiga (1533–1595), “the first literary work of merit,” as Mr Fitzmaurice-Kelly remarks, “composed in either American continent.” In France, the epic never flourished in modern times, and no real success attended the Franciade of Ronsard, the Alaric of Scudéry, the Pucelle of Chapelain, the Divine Épopée of Soumet, or even the Henriade of Voltaire. In English literature The Faery Queen of Spenser has the same claim as the Italian poems mentioned above to bear the name of epic, and Milton, who stands entirely apart, may be said, by his isolated Paradise Lost, to take rank with Homer and Virgil, as one of the three types of the mastery of epical composition.
See Bossu, Traité du poeme épique (1675); Voltaire, Sur la poésie épique; Fauviel, L’Origine de l’épopée chevaleresque (1832); W. P. Ker, Epic and Romance (1897), and Essays in Medieval Literature (1905); Gilbert Murray, History of Ancient Greek Literature (1897); W. von Christ, Geschichte der griechischen Litteratur (1879); Gaston Paris, La Littérature française au moyen âge (1890); Léon Gautier, Les Épopées françaises (1865–1868). For works on the Greek epics see also Greek Literature and Cycle. (E. G.)
EPICTETUS (born c. A.D. 60), Greek philosopher, was probably
a native of Hierapolis in south-west Phrygia. The name Epictetus
is merely the Greek for “acquired” (from ἐπικτᾶσθαι); his
original name is not known. As a boy he was a slave in the house
of Epaphroditus, a freedman and courtier of the emperor Nero.
He managed, however, to attend the lectures of the Stoic Musonius
Rufus, and subsequently became a freedman. He was lame
and of weakly health. In 90 he was expelled with the other
philosophers by Domitian, who was irritated by the support
and encouragement which the opposition to his tyranny found
amongst the adherents of Stoicism. For the rest of his life he
settled at Nicopolis, in southern Epirus, not far from the scene
of the battle of Actium. There for several years he lived, and
taught by close earnest personal address and conversation.
According to some authorities he lived into the time of Hadrian;
he himself mentions the coinage of the emperor Trajan. His
contemporaries and the next generation held his character and
teaching in high honour. According to Lucian, the earthenware
lamp which had belonged to the sage was bought by an antiquarian
for 3000 drachmas. He was never married. He wrote
nothing; but much of his teaching was taken down with
affectionate care by his pupil Flavius Arrianus, the historian
of Alexander the Great, and is preserved in two treatises, of the
larger of which, called the Discourses of Epictetus (Έπικτήτου Διατριβαί), four books are still extant. The other treatise is
a shorter and more popular work, the Encheiridion (“Handbook”).
It contains in an aphoristic form the main doctrines
of the longer work.
