Beginning at the End in Imperial Greek Epic

Abstract

Whilst the beginning of a book ma get all the glor , it s the ending that reall sta s ith ou. The Stylist, 100 best closing lines from booksThere is no real ending. It s just the place here ou stop the stor . Frank HerbertEpic by its very nature is a literature of origins. Replete with topics of genealogy, family trees, famous forefathers and anxious sons, and the product of an oral tradition based self-consciously on continuity and repetition, 1 from its earliest foundations the epic song forms a crucial space for contesting multiple forms of tradition and change. As George Steiner notes, in the epic world the successor poet is al a s answerable to the original, because it puts at eminent risk the stature, the fortunes of his own work. a power game played for the highest stakes. 2 Here I trace this story of epic and the origin beyond its usual endpoint: to the outer limits of the * Thanks to Marco Formisano and Cristiana Sogno for organizing the excellent workshop from which this volume originated, and to audiences in Cambridge and Edinburgh who heard versions of this paper in earlier and different forms. I am also grateful to Max Cheung, Oliver Parkes and Simon Goldhill for their sharp comments on my first draft.